SEO – What is it? Why Should I Care?

As I’ve been learning more and more about how search engines and blogs work, I’ve learned about the importance of SEO. These three letters stand for Search Engine Optimization. The premise on the success of your blog depends partly on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so it’s very important to understand how the search engines work for you.

According to Wikipedia.com, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords.”

All of the top search engines, ie Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, use a complex algorithm to calculate where your site ranks in terms of sites of like values. The factors that are calculated include, but are not limited to: keywords, meta tags, links, headings, and site structure. This algorithm assigns a specific page rank (this tool calculates the likelihood of your average web surfer happening upon your site).

It is apparent that I should care about SEO and the effects that it has on my site. Choosing to learn more about SEO and fully understanding SEO will clearly have a big impact on your success as well. I found a great explanation of search engine optimization on Wikipedia.com and I would encourage those of you who don’t have a complete grasp around this concept to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization to learn more! As a beginner, I’d also welcome any and all comments or explanations on SEO as well!