By now most people who own or run a website have heard about Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known in it’s abbreviated form SEO.  

Most have second hand knowledge from someone who has explained some of the tricks and wizardry behind getting a site to show up in the search engines.  Many SEO clients recant the little they have heard about SEO as putting white letters on a white back ground, making sure your pictures have tags, sharing links with as many sites as you can find etc.

There are many myths about what SEO work is and what really is done.  In this posting we intend to explain what is SEO and what work constitutes SEO. 

SEO is comprised of two components, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. 

On-Page SEO is the work done to your actually website pages.  This may or may not include (depending on your SEO company):

• Keyword Research - Keyword research is the work done to determine the best keywords to target with each page.  Depending on the industry there may be one or two dominant keywords or there may be may different ways people search.  For instance in the real estate industry people may search using the city name combined with Homes, Properties, Real Estate, Realtor, Agent, Realtor Agent, Listings, Property Listings and so on.  With proper keyword research it can be determined how people are searching in your industry or geographical area. 
• Meta Tag Writing - Meta tags are the Title, Description and Keywords associated with each page that the search engines use to generate rankings.  Without good meta tags that are written properly, conforming to the rules and using the keywords your site is trying to target all the other work will be useless.  These drive the rankings, but meta tags alone can’t do the job.
• Content Optimization - Content optimization is changing the written content on the page so that it uses the keywords targeted in the meta tags. 
• Alt and H1 Tags - Alt tags are used to describe to the search engines what the images are on your website.  The search engines can’t see images or graphics used on your site, so for instance if you have “Special Sale” written in a graphic instead of text on your website the alt tag can be added “Special Sale” so that the search engines know what that graphic says.  H1 Tags are the use of putting your important titles, category names or important text that you want both the readers and the search engines to see as important.  H1 is mainly a technical term to making the font bigger and bolder but seen as important by the search engines and by readers as you clearly want this text to stand out.
• Clean Code - It’s important to check the code of each web page to ensure that there are no major errors in the code.  When search engines visit if they have trouble “crawling” your site through the code as they keep running into errors they will leave and your full site will never be visited and they will visit less often.
• Page Creation - for sites that don’t have enough pages or content additional pages may be created to allow for more keywords to be targeted.
• Sitemap - Some SEO companies if they feel the navigation can’t be seen by the search engine may create a web page that is a sitemap to all your pages of your site to ensure they can find all your pages (this is different from a Google and Yahoo sitemap which are in special coded form and separate pages that only Google and Yahoo see and are not linked to anything else on your site)
• Resources Page - Some companies may suggest adding a resources page to trade links with other websites.  There are still some SEO companies, individuals and freelancers out there that believe reciprocal linking is a good thing, therefore may suggest to add a page such as this, we suggest you read our other posting on How to Choose an SEO Company

Off-Page optimization includes all the work done to build inbound links to your site and submitting the site to the search engines.  This may include directory submissions, paid blogging, reciprocal linking, buying paid links and various linking schemes.  Submitting your website to the search engines and submitting Google and Yahoo sitemaps.

Note: Be careful as there are many linking strategies that can seriously damage your site with the search engines, make sure you are using a company that uses ethical and honest linking practices.  

SEO work is not wizardry or a set of tricks but serious work when done professionally will ensure good long lasting results.