What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consists of on-site SEO and off-site SEO. Both are assessed on a point-based scale by search engines. There are many factors that contribute to the overall ranking, Google says there are 240 "signals" but overall, four factors matter the most: website size, its relevance, link popularity, and now user popularity. All four factors are measured in relation to a particular keyword or keyword phrase ("keyword" in short).

Note that user popularity became an SEO factor only in the Spring of 2013 - but it is here to stay.

On-site SEO covers your website’s design and content: your website URL, navigation structure, design and formatting principles, META tags, and above all, your site’s copy.

Off-site SEO involves building back links from other websites. The more quality links from other websites you have pointing at to your website, the better SEO you will achieve. The off-site SEO now also includes Social Media Marketing - getting "likes" and "pluses" and "recommendations" from people who visit your site.

For on-site SEO, there are many factors that matter, but overall, what matters the most is the frequency of repetitions of your desired keywords inside various elements of your site: your URL, page titles, headers and sub-headers, copy, anchor text inside links, and image titles. However, recent (May 2013) changes in Google signal that adding too many keywords per page can be counterproductive. 

Note that larger websites usually get higher SEO chances. Just like an expert professional is the one who has at least 10 years of experience, websites that have more information get more attention from search engines. For websites, "expertise" translates into number of pages, number of words per page, number of PDFs available for download, etc. In short, the more text you have on your website peppered with the desired keyword the better it is for your SEO. In particular, Google likes very long pages with information that you scroll and scroll - 1000 or more words per page. 

The websites Joomla Bliss produces all have SEO wired into design and navigation from the grounds up. We also create content and “weave in” your desired keywords where they matter the most. The way we create content is often based on the news released by industry leading organizations in your field.

For off-site SEO - for your link popularity - what matters the most is quality of links pointing to your website from other websites (what is called "back links"). "Quality" links are links from reputable websites specialized in the same field as the "keywords" you want to rank high for. It matters little whether these websites have PR0 or PR9. What matters more is their specialization and how closely they relates to the keywords you target. However, a link from a local radio station or a local news agency will outweight all others.

For off-site SEO - for user popularity, you need to get users to click on those sharing social media buttons. To help them do that, you need to have "authorship" enabled on your blog, post content on main social sites regularly, and start earning quality reputation. 

In a nutshell, SEO is four things:

01Get as much unique content up on your website as you can (as many pages as you can; pages with a lot of text, preferrably); 

02Pepper each page with your most important keywords. This is why SEO is typically measured by the number of keywords, because each keyword necessitates so much dedicated content; the more competitive your desired keyword is the more dedicated content it will require (i.e. unique content peppered with these keywords). As a rough estimate of how competitive your keyword phrase is, check the number of search result pages or SERPs returned by Google for this keyword. Anywhere over 500,000 is rather compeitive. Each keyword will have a different level of competitiveness. Note that your content needs to be unique, i.e. written from scratch specifically for your website. You can re-write an existing article(s), but do not "borrow" chunks of text from there.

  Checking number of Google search result pages

03Create as many back links from external websites as you can (especially from websites that belong to industries related to your most desired keywords). The more specialized such websites are the better it is for "quality". The more competitive your desired keywords are the more of such "quality" links you need. But keep in mind, any link is good to have. 

04And finally - add those social media icons to your pages. Create a blog and add the icons at the top and the bottom of each blog post. Use addthis.com. If your content is good, people will click "like" and "plus" and "recommend" and "share" and "bookmark" - and this will eventually help boost your SEO. If you have not done so already, create a Linkedin company profile, Google Plus company profile, Twitter, and Facebook - those four are a must. 

The more you do of these four things, the higher your SEO results will be.