Content Based SEO

You use the internet frequently. You love using email. You search on Google for whatever you want to know. But do you know much about SEO, organic ranking, or Web 2.0?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of promoting websites in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Search engines frequently crawl through websites reading text and determining where exactly to place a website in the search results. They decide what comes up when you enter certain words or phrases when searching for information on the internet. SEO plays a large part in this by optimizing web pages in order to make them search engine friendly. This can result in higher positions or organic ranking in search results.

Organic Ranking

 No, it’s not just for health nuts wanting to be positioned at the top of the food chain. Organic ranking is any website that is listed in the free section of search results. It is not a paid or sponsored listing. The vast majority of internet  searchers click on the organic results. People generally trust organic results and they usually offer many choices. They are considered the most significant results.

You might think of it like watching TV. The organic ranking is the program and the paid or sponsored lists are the commercials. Trusting what is said in the program  often comes more easily than it does to a paid commercial. Many people are skeptical of the paid listings, commonly known as PPC or Pay Per Click because they know those listings are there because a company was willing to pay the big bucks to get their message in front of them.

Organic search results are based on content and keyword relevancy.  That, my friends, is where the term “Content Based SEO” was derived. The number of inbound links from other websites also plays a role in your ranking. The amount and types of links coming to your site does make a difference.

Don’t think paying for a service that says they will post 1,000 inbound links for you will do the trick. These links need to be based in content from reputable websites that are actually about or similar to what you do or what your keywords are. This can be accomplished through articles, blogs, web 2.0 pages, comments on other blogs, and social media.

Web 2.0 Pages

Web 2.0 pages have been a buzz word for a few years now in the internet marketing world. Wikipedia gives one of the best definitions.

The term “Web 2.0” is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.

Is that definition a little too gibberish and techy? To give you an idea of some important Web 2.0 pages EBizMBA listed these sites as the top 10 Web 2.0 pages. They are ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast.

1. YouTube.com
2. Wikipedia.org
3. Craigslist.org
4. Twitter
5. PhotoBucket
6. Flickr
7. Wordpress.com
8. IMDB.com
9. Digg.com
10. eHow.com

More Beginner SEO to Come

This brief explanation is just  the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more mountains to climb. I’ll be back with more fascinating SEO explanations. I’ll delve deeper into just exactly what is content based SEO.

If you have any specific questions or topics you would like covered just comment below…and if you really like this you can share it with your buddies right below here!