SEO 2009 - Content Relevancy and Link Popularity Explained

The latter point is very interesting to consider. How do you involve yourself in the Internet community? What does this have to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? Actually, involving yourself in the Internet community doesn’t directly have anything to do with SEO; however, many people seem to pigeon hole anything related to the search engines into SEO. Therefore, we will need to define the various acronyms that are used in the Internet industry. The Internet has also created an environment in which institutional control of information has been lost. As a result, control of information has trickled down to the individual level. Imagine the transition from several thousand companies once controlling messages through traditional media to today’s expansive communication via several million individuals free to distribute their own information on the Internet. What you find is that the logic process has also been spread over millions of people; and for this reason, it is harder to explain why certain things happen on the Internet.

Because the Internet has opened communications to the individual, the individuals are now exposed to the concepts of business. Not everyone has a business degree and most only have a superficial understanding. As such, the definition of marketing and how advertising plays a role in this process is not well understood at the individual level. This has caused improper usage of the various acronyms used on the Internet today. Marketing and Advertising Defined Before we can understand the various acronyms being used within the Internet industry, it is important to understand the definitions of marketing vs. advertising. * ‘Marketing’ is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.
* ‘Advertising’ is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase
You can see from the definitions that advertising is part of marketing. Marketing includes everything about raising the awareness of your business from branding, messaging, public relations, advertising, events, customer relationships and much more. Advertising is a component of marketing and should never be the only method used to promote your business.
Defining SEM, SEA, SEO and LP
Using what we have learned about the definition of marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) would include all processes related to promoting all of your website’s pages with the search engines. Included in this process would be Search Engine Advertising (SEA), which would be sponsored search advertising - or, what some also refer to as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. These are the sponsored links along the top, right side and bottom of search results. Also, included in SEM would be SEO and your outreach program on the Internet away from your website that increases the number of links to your website, also known as Link Popularity (LP).

What is SEO?
It is important to understand how to tell the search engines that a particular page of your website is an authority on a particular topic. Keywords and phrases are utilized to communicate this expert status to search engines. You will notice that we are talking about pages of your website. Each page of your website can be optimized for a topic based on its visible content. We are no longer optimizing blindly the entire website for the same information, but using each page to help drive traffic to our website. By all means, this does mean that for a particular search result, visitors may enter your website from somewhere else other than the home page!
Each search engine has a different algorithm in deciding what the person searching is seeking and how relevant the information on the individual pages of your website is to the search. They take into account the title of the page, the meta description, and the visible text. Some search engines do look at your meta keywords, but not nearly as much as they used to in the past. What you are presenting with visible text is what the visitor will see; and therefore, the content has more value than the Meta keywords. This also prevents spammers and fraudulent websites from hiding their true identity.
Why is SEO Important?
The volume of information on the Internet is staggering. The Internet seems larger than our real world. Search engines have an enormous task to filter all of this information to provide something meaningful to the searcher in a matter of seconds. Compared to the old days of using search tools like Archie and Veronica that required hours and sometimes day