SEO 101 - A General Overview

Learning the search engine optimization industry and its process is half the battle for people interested in either a career in the SEO field or optimizing their own web site online. When clients approach our online marketing department about search engine optimization, it usually centers around one goal and one goal only. High Search Rankings (more specifically Google). Most times, these clients are unaware of the costs and time schedule for a successful SEO campaign.

A truthful and ethical "white hat" SEMP (search engine marketing professional) will help explain the process and techniques of SEO to their client, along with realistic goals for their budget. Let's begin with a general overview of SEO and a timetable for SEO campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization involves optimizing a web page(s) to improve search engine rankings and visibility among the natural or organic search results. Organic search results are listings that are unpaid and are ranked by search engines algorithms. Algorithms are a set of rules that are used to rank websites within their index for a specific keyword phrase. In short, SEO improves natural search rankings which are ranked and filtered by a unique set of rules for each search engine.

Now let's talk about length of time. There are two different timelines. One is for a brand spanking new site and the other is a site that has been established for period of time. For the new site, it will generally take 15-120 days for the search engines to index your site and your keywords. Search engines typically don't rush to index new sites, in fear of posting content irrelevant to the search engine phrase.

For sites that have been established before the optimization process begins, the length of time to index shortens in half. If a site has been up, it has been crawled for content and keyword in the past and is entered into the search engine's indexed list. Just because your site has been indexed, does not mean you have high search engine results. It will take an additional 30-120 days to see specific and quantifiable results for your site. Sometimes, though rare, an overnight success can occur for keywords that lack serious competition. But usually, moving up the search rankings, takes time, increased optimization and additional costs.

We will stop there. I will continue to add to the beginning lesson on SEO in the coming blog posts. As always, if you have questions about the industry or comments, please feel free to post. I will answer every comment.