SEO: Search Engine Optimization



What is SEO?



SEO stands for "search engine  optimization". In simple terms, it means the  process of improving  your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing , and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you  are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.



HOW dose SEO work?

Search engines such as Google and Bing use bots to craw pages on the web , going from site to site, collecting information about those pages and putting them in an index .Think of the  index like a giant library where a librarian can pull up a book (or a web page) to help you find exactly what you're looking for at the time.



Next, algorithms analyze pages in the index, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors or signals, to determine the order pages should appear in the search  results for a given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every single book in the library and can tell you exactly which one will have the answer to your questions. 



our SEO success factors can be considered proxies for aspects of the user experience. It's how search bots estimate exactly how well a website or web page can give the searcher what  they're searching for.
Unlike paid search ads, you can't pay search engines to get higher organic search ranking, which means SEO experts have to put in the work. That's where we come in.

Our periodic Table of SEO factors organizes the factors into six main categories and weights  each based on it's overall importance to SEO .For example, content quality and keyword research are key factors of content optimization ,and  crawlability and speed of site architecture factors. 



The newly updated SEO periodic Table also includes a list of Toxins that detract from SEO best practices .These are shortcuts or ticks that may  have been sufficient to guarantee a high ranking back in the day when the engine's  methods were much less sophisticated. And ,they might even work for a short  time now -at least until you're  caught.




We've also got a brand new Niches section that deep-dives into the SEO success factor behind three key niches: Local SEO, News \publishing and Ecommerce SEO. While our overall SEO periodic  table will help you with the best practices ,knowing  the nuances of SEO for each of these niches can help you succeed in search results for your small business , recipe blog, and/ or online store. 



The search algorithms are designed to surface relevant, authoritative pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Optimizing your site and content  with these factors in mind can help your pages rank higher in the search results.