The easiest way to explain the concept of Search Engine Optimization to a layman is to liken the Internet to a chaotic desk
and search engines to an elaborate filing system designed to make the scores
of information on the Net accessible to us mere mortals. In keeping with this
analogy you can then proceed to explain that if a web owner wants consumers
to find and explore his or her website they have to make sure their site gets
‘filed’ correctly.
Being consumers ourselves, we know that we hardly ever glance at our search
results past the second page. This means if you want a user to notice your site
it has to rank within the first twenty websites listed (preferably the first
ten) and with the Internet becoming an increasingly saturated advertising medium
this can be much easier said than done. This is where SEO comes in. Optimizing
a page means it gets more visible and hence more accessible. There are many
ways to optimizing a website, but they can be broken into two main categories:
on-page optimization and off-page optimization.
On-page optimization requires you to change certain aspects of your website
to make them search engine friendly. You see it time and time again, people
have a really good looking website, very pleasing to the eye, but the site is
very badly optimised and ends up being almost invisible to search engines. However,
if you carefully optimize your website’s on-page presence you can drastically
increase its search engine visibility.
Off-page optimization is just what it says it is. There are things that happen
on other websites that affect the way your website ranks on different search
engines. One of these is linking, which just happens to be one of the most important
aspects of SEO. Incoming links count as a “vote” for your website. It indicates that your product is
so worthwhile and important that other websites are willing to be linked to
you, so in essence they are “voting” for you. This is an important
aspect of how search engines determine the importance of your site.
Getting the mix of on-page and off-page optimization right will ensure that
you get the strongest possible web presence for your business.
