What does SEO mean?
SEO or search engine optimization is
one of the internet buzz words of the year.
In a nutshell, SEO is the compilation of tactics used to make web pages
rank higher in search engine results pages.
This means that when a user enters a search query, the organic or
non-paid results that are displayed are ranked in order of relevance to that
query. Many factors affect the ranking a
website receives from a search engine and there are equally as many factors
that cause search engines to rank one page over another.
Back-linking and SEO
Back-linking is currently a popular
SEO tactic that helps websites get ranked higher in organic results. A back-link is an inbound link to a web page
and its existence as well as quality; are important in terms of search engine
rankings. The number of inbound links to
a web page is a good indication of the page’s popularity on the web. Inbound links give search engines information
about what other sites are linked to a page in terms of numbers as well as
quality. The quality of inbound links is
also important and if all the inbound links are of poor quality then the site
will not be ranked as high in search engine results. Quality inbound links are ones that are
trusted by the search engine. While
back-links are not the only factor in ranking a web page in organic results,
they are one of the most important to date.
The Like
As social networking sites like
Facebook hurdle toward the 700 million user mark, the activities and elements
associated with these sites become more valuable. One element that is worth noting in relation
to SEO is the Facebook like. When a user
clicks a like button, that link, page, video, image, or other content that the
like button is attached to is shared with that person’s network. That user’s network does not have to be large
to make the content being liked valuable because anyone else in that network
that also clicks the like button will share it with their own network and so on
and so forth. What does this mean for
SEO? It means that the content that is
being liked is being noted as popular which is quickly becoming the new currency
for online rankings.
Other SEO elements
There are other aspects of a website
that cause it to be ranked higher or lower on organic results pages or
SERP’s. These include the site’s
layout and navigation, load times, the
amount of flash content on the site, the number of characters in the URL, how
relevant the content is to a user search query, how fresh the content is and if
the content has already been indexed by a search engine or not. Virtually all of these aspects can be
controlled by site developers and content management. If a person already has the knowledge and puts
forth the effort, SEO is very inexpensive and gets sites to rank up near the
top next to paid advertisements.
Technology 
