A Brief Description and Basics of SEO

Regards Lynn International SEO based in Hillcrest, San Diego, Southern California

There are a lot of things in the computer world that people tend to find mysterious and they see as touching upon black magic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of those things that ranks way up there on the mystery and black magic scale. Today, the term has expanded to Search Engine Marketing which includes paid advertising and other online marketing activities but for our purposes we'll stick with SEO.
SEO is the practice of promoting a web site by increasing its position in search results on the major search engines. Those search engines comprise of Google mainly but also include Yahoo!, Bing, and a few others. The idea is to make the site appear higher in the list of search results than similar sites.  This is referred to as "organic" SEO meaning that the rank came as a result of plain old search results rather than having to pay for placement on the search engine.
There's a lot of value in getting it right as far as SEO goes. First of all it's free and second of all, web searches are becoming the primary means of finding information. Primary among the search engines is Google and according to some market research, Google commanded an incredible 81.22% of the global market share in June 2009. Google's success is punctuated by the fact that the word "Google" has found its way into the dictionary.
The primary goal of the search engines is to bring relevant search results to their users. When a user types in a search phrase, a search engine is successful when it delivers the information the user is searching for. If a search engine is unable to deliver relevant information it simply won't be long on the digital scene.
Performing this feat is the result of a mix of highly sophisticated programming, incredibly powerful servers, and perhaps some eye of newt and toe of frog thrown in for good measure.
Seriously, however, the full mechanics of how search engines rank web pages are kept highly confidential. It simply has to be that way or the bad guys of the world would use the knowledge to artificially inflate their own rankings.
There are some fundamental truths in SEO and it is fair to say that search engines today consider the following when ranking a given web page:

• The content of the page - what it's about, what words are used prominently.
• What words are used in the title of the page?
• What words are used in the URL of the page?
• What words are highlighted on the page?
• What internal links (links from other pages on the same site) point to it?
• How many external links point to it and more importantly, whether those pages are relevant to the page's subject matter?
• The text used to form the internal and external links.
• Even the age of the domain name plays a role in its ranking!

There is a lot more involved of course and that list could have gone on for a while. Factors such as keywords, the use of images and Flash animations, and the design of the site itself also play a role in a page's ranking.Good SEO checklists can be found on the web but probably the most important thing to think about doesn't involve search engines at all. That's the quality of the content.
Ultimately a search engine's goal is to return relevant information to its visitors. As such, search engines have become very sophisticated at figuring out whether or not content is relevant to the search term and indeed, whether a human would find it interesting.
SEO is a fascinating subject and the search engines are incredibly complex examples of computer programming. They are so good in fact that the best advice one could give someone looking to increase their placement is - write your content for people and not the search engines. You'll be rewarded for it.

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Glen Bowes is a computer professional who offers his services to would-be internet marketers who lack the time or technical skills to get their product, service, or idea off of the ground. Learn more about Glen at http://www.easy-money-online.net, or contact him at glen@easy-money-online.net. No technical skills required!

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 Regards Lynn International SEO based in Hillcrest, San Diego, Southern California

WOMAN OWNED BUSINESS GRANT IIW AWARDS THE 2009

SEO & Website Design San Diego: November 2009: "Investing In Women has awarded a $500 “stimulus package” to a woman owned business, The Underground Railroad To Success. The URS was started by Tanisha Cunningham to teach independence to foster children. This grant will give the non-profit a chance to market their business. - Investing In Women has awarded their first grant to a woman owned business in the USA. The recipient of the award is Tanisha Cunningham, founder of The Underground Railroad to Success (www.railroad2success.com). The URS is a non-profit that provides a service to foster children aging out of the system to live independently as adults while becoming an integral part of society. This is great for foster children and also has a positive affect on our society as a whole. “Aging out” is the term used for children who go into foster care, but are never returned to their families of origin or adopted by others. They stay in the system until they turn 18, or graduate from high school, and for the most part, are left to fend for themselves as best they can. Tanisha Cunningham started URS in January of 2009. A child of foster care herself, she saw the need for foster kids to have additional support when they were no longer eligible for state run services. Soon after her foster care ended, she began a career in child welfare “I wanted to stay there because my passion had always been to give back, because I knew the struggles of living in foster care, and the fear of leaving unprepared, not having a place to go or having the skills to obtain a job.” Investing In Women (www.iiWomen.com) is a free business resource site, grant program and marketing venue for entrepreneurs. The organization plans to offer several micro grants in 2010, including grants that are not awarded based on gender."

Bing, SEO, and Google

Regards Lynn International SEO based in Hillcrest, San Diego, Southern California

Bing is doing its best to differentiate itself from Google. Attempting to claim some high ground, Microsoft is positioning Bing as the world's first "decision engine" as opposed to its predecessors, the search engines. Differentiation requires using different algorithms and a new design on the search engine results page. New design or not the SERP's on Bing do resemble Google's at first glance. 
Depending on the search, Bing delivers either highly relevant results or something a little less so. Searches in Microsoft's wheelhouse of health, local, travel, and shopping are better than most others on Bing. The wheelhouse group was not arrived at by accident. These markets carry high potential for advertising revenues and have historically been among the highest revenue generators on the internet.   
Bing isn't going as far as saying that it will change search engine optimization, yet. In early June, a whitepaper released by Bing's Webmaster Center Team stated "Ultimately, SEO is still SEO. Bing doesn't change that. Bing's new user interface design simply adds new opportunities to searchers to find what the information they want more quickly and easily, and that benefits webmasters who have taken the time to work on the quality of their content and website design."
The Bing Team emphasizes that good content and SEO are crucial elements in website design so it appears that what applies to Google and Yahoo will work with Bing. It also appears that attempts to optimize for Bing will bring similar results to the other search engines as well. The Bing team hasn't given much other information beyond emphasizing on page content and standard SEO practices and maybe that what's important at the moment. Based on PowerSet, Bing will definitely give more weight to content, at the expense of visuals. 
Still in its infancy, Bing will need to broaden its wheelhouse to avoid turning off searchers that come over for a try, find a bunch of irrelevant results and never return. Initial traffic numbers were conflicted but it appeared that Bing had attracted some significant numbers, whether at the expense of Google and Yahoo, or not.  The rest remains to be seen.

Gervais Group LLC - SEO Company - for more information visit us at gervaisgroupllc.com or call 770-529-2262

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