A Business Guide to SEO in Layman’s terms

If you own a business than you have no doubt comes across the term SEO. This simple guide will

help you to understand what SEO is in layman’s terms, without complicated and technical jargon.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”; this essentially means making your website and its

pages more visible to anyone who is searching for your product or service on the Internet using one

of the search engines e.g. Google, Yahoo, and AltaVista etc. For the sake of simplicity I will be

specifically referring to Google throughout the document, since that is the most widely used search

engine.

Potential customers will type in their search into Google and it will return the most relevant

websites related to their search.

What happens when people search on Google?

Google will take the search term that you have entered and will check it against its own database of

indexes and return the most relevant websites and pages.

What are keywords?

Keywords are the search words or phrases that are entered into Google to find the specific

information that you are looking for. For example if you lived in Atlanta and you were looking for a

plumber, than you would type in “Plumber Atlanta”, this is essentially your keyword phrase that

Google uses to search for relevant websites.

What is Keyword density?

Keyword density is the number of times your keyword appears on your webpage and is normally

shown as a percentage. Say for example you have an article on your website about “Plumber

Atlanta” and it is 100 words long. If the keyword “Plumber Atlanta” appeared twice in your article

than the keyword density would be 2%. If however the article was 200 worlds long than your

keyword density would be 1%.

What does Ranking mean?

Google gives websites a ranking to deem how relevant the information is in relation to search

keywords. The more relevant the information is the higher the ranking, this will insure that searchers

will get the most relevant information for what they are searching for.

What does SERPS mean?

SERPS stand for Search Engine Results Page. This is a list of web pages that Google returns to the

searcher based on what keywords they were using to search.

What is Googlebot?

Googlebot is a piece of software used by Google, which collects documents from the web to build a

searchable index for Google.

What is a site map?

A site map is a map of your website that allows Googlebot to navigate it easily. If you have a

Wordpress website, than there are a number of free plugins that you can use to generate a site map.

What does PageRank mean?

Pagerank is a numerical number assigned to your website to deem its authority and relevance. The

pagerank of a website is based on internal calculations made by Google. Everyone starts off with a

pagerank of zero or PR0, in time as your website because better know and its authority is built, your

page rank will rise. E.g. Google has a pagerank of PR9.

What does indexing mean?

Indexing means that Google has found your website and its pages and have created an index that

will be used later for when anyone searches. Similar to an index system used in a library to search for

specific books. Each Book has to be indexed so that is can be found if a related search is entered.

What is on-page optimization?

Is the work that you do on your own website to tell Google how relevant your website and its pages

are for specific keywords that you want to be related to? The information on your website helps

Google ascertain how relevant the information is in relation to searchers. There a number of ways

on-page optimization can be achieved and normally SEO consultants use a combination of the

following:

Ensure keyword density is 1%-2%

Keyword used in headings and sub-headings

Keyword used in 1st and last paragraph

Usage of internal links to other relevant and related articles/documents on your website

Usage of Bolding and italics to emphasise keywords

What is off-page optimization?

Off-page optimization is the number of other websites that either link back to your website or link

back to a specific page on your website. Off-page optimization is often referred to as “Backlinks”.

Having other websites link to you website shows that you have valuable information to share, so

valuable in fact that other websites have linked back to you. Having other websites link back to your

website is like having an endorsement or a vote of confidence that you have a quality website.

What is a contextual backlink?

Contextual backlink is a fancy way of saying a link within a text as opposed to explicitly naming your

website or webpage e.g.

Find out more about Atlanta plumbers (The phrase “Atlanta plumbers” will be a link back to a

website or website page. This is known as a contextual backlink.)

Find out more about Atlanta plumbers by visit http://atlantaplumbers.com (In this example the

website is used explicitly without any text)

After reading the above explanations, you will now have a pretty good idea of SEO and how it works.

If you need any further explanations, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help.

Nash Rahman – Freelance Writer|Blogger|SEO Copywriter “Helping Your Business To Grow and Profit”

Contact: Nash.Rahman@gmail.com