In it’s basic state, SEO is the art of increasing a sites rank within the search engine results pagess (serps). For a novice, there may be some confusion pertaining to how this is actually done. While there are many details that factor into a sites rank (over 200 to be exact) there are two categories of optimization that every site owner should be familiar with, even if you never intend to master SEO.
Offsite Optimization
Offsite optimization is simple in theory but complex and tedious in practice. Primarily, It requires that others link to your site from their own sites, this is referred to as link popularity and essentially, Google counts each inbound link as a vote for your site. Of course not all links are equal, some may be worth say 5 votes, and others worth, perhaps 100 votes. An experienced SEO professional will generally be able to get good results with link building and an inexperienced link builder could literally spend 100 hours building links that would not benefit her site in the least bit.
Onsite Optimization
Onsite Optimization refers to the inclusion and placement of keywords directly on your site. For example, if you want to rank for the phrase “advertising agency”, then obviously you will want to include that exact phrase on your site. Each page of a website can be optimized for multiple terms and there are strict guidelines that should be followed or you can risk a ban by Google. Phrases should be placed within the context of your site. For example, rather than just randomly place the phrase “advertising agency” on a page, it’s better to include the phrase within the content, as part of a paragraph. Like offsite link building, there are many factors that determine the value of onsite optimization.
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