| Having a website doesn't mean much if nobody sees it. You could have the most awesome website on the planet, but if people don't visit it, then it's the same as if it doesn't exist at all. Making your site SEO friendly increases the chances of your site being seen.
SEO (search engine optimization) covers everything you do to improve your site's position in the search engines. A large percentage of people find new websites by using a search engine, but they will only go through so many results before visiting a site or trying a new keyword phrase. In fact, the further down your site is listed, the less chance there is that anybody will see it. The difference between the first page of results and the second page is huge. If you want your site to be seen, then you need to do whatever you can to have it listed on the first page of the search engine results.
In theory, SEO is fairly simple: you do a few things to your website and it starts to move higher in the search engine results. While that's what it boils down to, making your site SEO friendly is a bit more complicated, and can be, at times, quite frustrating if you don't do it right. The good news is that there are a few relatively easy things that you can start doing right away to help move your site higher up the search engine results.
You need to invest some time researching the best keywords for your website. The best keywords get plenty of searches, have relatively low competition, and also have an action element built into them. There is no magic number for the number of searches any particular keyword should have, and the same applies to the amount of competition (or how the competition is measured). That brings us to the concept of the "action element", which refers to keywords that show the person searching is already looking to do something related to your site. For example, if you offer a how-to guide on making tutus, then keywords like "tutu patterns" and "how to make tutus" would include a relevant action element, and would therefore make ideal keywords for your site.
There is more to making your site SEO friendly than just choosing the right keywords, though. Having relevant content is also very important. See, search engines make money, ultimately, by having a lot of users, and people flock to the search engines that provide the most relevant results based on their searches. It only makes sense that when you give the search engines what they want, they will give you what you want, which is to appear closer to the top of the results. A good rule of thumb to make sure you are doing this is to write your content for people first, and search engines second. |