SEO… what?

posted in: SEO

We online marketers and web world people like to think our language is as universal as music. However, majority of people, even people who use the internet fairly regularly, have difficulty understanding the whole concept of “online marketing” or ideas like “SEO“. But what are these concepts really?

Speaking of ranking, pagerank, algorithms, links and even engaging copy designed to help Search Engines, all these concepts sound to most people like language from another planet. Sure, once its explained it all makes perfect sense.

Online Marketing: The art or study of promoting a product, service, business or idea using the internet and its different technologies. It sums the understanding of people’s behaviours online as well as the technologies and strategies required to attract the public and generate specific actions.

Search Engine Optimization: Google, Bing or Yahoo don’t show the same thing everywhere. However, it is possible to influence them to show specific web pages for specific user searches and generate traffic related to that term (be it a name, product, service or concept), given that enough interest exists in the market. Or simply put, the art of getting your website up on search results.

And even with those definitions, it sometimes isn’t clear enough. First of all, using Google, most people don’t think about how it works. A general principle is that we don’t need to know how electricity works to turn on a light or plug in a TV. Understanding that, it helps to show an actual search and where websites show up and exactly what “ranking” means. See below:

CualliOhtli.com ranks number one for that specific search. It also ranks high for many other searches that bring visitors to the site. That is SEO, getting websites up there, on top of the competition. Like when we work to rank high on SEO Guelph, we do it because we know there is people searching the term and are very likely to be our prospective customers. Same with Web Design Guelph, simple concepts that target the are of service.

Anywho. My point is that no matter how much we think it is pretty standard to know these things, the reality is that most people don’t know much about them and we need to keep that always in mind. Like when we met our client, profitablewisdom.com who was interested in ranking for phrases like exit planning or financial business consultant, so that businesses looking for financial planning services or business owners interested in exiting their business would find his firm. We work hard at ranking our clients where they want to be and the results pay off.