The ABCs of SEO: Part One
You're about to embark on a recap of The ABCs of SEO, as published in the May issue of the TAAR Report. This is part of a series of posts recapping my "TAarticles."
Full disclosure: the title of this article may be a tad misleading. The “ABCs of SEO” kind of implies that search engine optimization is an elementary task, akin to stacking blocks and finger painting. It is not. Kindergartners could not optimize a web site in one lazy afternoon and chances are good you won’t be able to either.
But don’t let a little thing like that discourage you.
Like any other online business proprietor, you goal is to position yourself—and your agency—in front of the eyes of shoppers. Accordingly, the higher you rank on a search engine results page (SERP), the greater the likelihood that a shopper will click on your link—dramatically increasing the chances that said shopper will use your site and buy your product.
And with the impressive increase in internet shopping, it has been well documented that unless your site appears within the first three pages of search results, only a small percentage of shoppers will even find it.
When you consider that more than 80 percent of web traffic comes through search engines like Google, it’s no wonder that those in the competitive space of insurance are adding search engine optimization (henceforth SEO) to their marketing repertoire in order to position themselves in front of interested shoppers.
What is SEO?
SEO is a set of tactics used to boost a web site’s ranking on a search engine results page (SERP) for a given search term or set of terms. SEO efforts target organic search engine results—those results that are not paid for.
Online marketers have been using SEO to increase the volume and quality of visitors to their sites, as well as to boost overall site conversion. And for good reason: the 2004 iProspect User Attitudes Survey concluded that users put more stock in organic listings for commercial searches, with more than 60 percent deeming organic search results more relevant than paid listings. (Paid listings are synonymous with targeted pay-per click advertising).
To better understand how SEO can help you increase your site’s rank, it’s important to revisit how search engines like Google work:
- A search engine “spider” “crawls” though the internet, searching for pages that match the user’s request. (e.g. “Health insurance quotes.”)
- When the spider visits a page, it studies its content and follows all the links to other pages that are within the site.
- The spider selects all relevant pages and files them into a web Rolodex of sorts, which stores all the pages the spider has read.
- The search engine software then sifts though the Rolodex and ranks all the pages therein using a complex—and top secret—algorithm.
- The search engine presents search results to the user via the sponsored listings and organic listings.
SEO takes these factors into consideration, working with them to improve search engine ranking and position a site or web page in front of searchers who are looking for it.
Stay tuned for part two of The ABCs of SEO to learn the components of search engine optimization!
