Three simple little letters, SEO. They have been known to make grown men cry! They have been known to make a perfectly logical woman turn into a babbly, procrastinating dweeb! How about extending those letters into their true meaning – Search Engine Optimization! It doesn’t make it any better does it? I was a perfectly logical woman who turned into the babbling, procrastinating dweeb! If SEO is making you cry, or turning you into a dweeb, don’t worry. It’s really not that hard! I am back to being my normal logical self and I have my 4 websites optimized and they are sitting happily on the first page of Google for a lot of keywords and phrases. Some are constantly No: 1, some fluctuate and some sit between 2 and 8. Woo hooo! Now it’s Easy SEO Let me give you a brief rundown on my venture into the world of SEO.

One of my sites in particular had a dismal search engine ranking in a very competitive field. Two others were nearly as dismal, but not so competitive. Another wasn’t quite so dismal (because it was rather niche) so I decided to tackle that one first. I started my crusade with my usual positive attitude and logical approach. I painstakingly searched and searched to find the SEO secret. I hit brick wall after brick wall. I found the same useless and misleading information time and time again. I became frustrated! Why was informative SEO information such a big secret? Why wasn’t I able to find relevant and helpful information to help me with search engine optimization. I tried using the information that I found, only to find that the majority of it was useless. But how was I supposed to know that? I had to try? This is when I when I entered the babbling phase.

I babbled along, trying this, and trying that, and getting nowhere! All I wanted to do was optimize my website. Enter Di, the procrastinator! I had tried so many SEO tactics, only to find them totally useless, that at this stage I began talking to myself. Hmmmm. I had lost all of my enthusiasm and I needed to have discussions with myself over every new “method” I came across. Should I try it? Will it be another waste of time? Maybe this will work? Nah, don’t be a sucker! Obviously, I had lost it!!! Does all of this sound familiar? Well, let me tell you something. I finally regained my sanity and decided I was going to tackle this SEO monster head on! And I did!

It’s all in the content! To put the whole thing simply – You need to give the search engines what they are looking for. The whole idea of the Internet is to provide relevant information to people who are searching for it. There are always website owners out there “trying to beat the system” by using “unethical techniques” to generate traffic to their site, however, search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated and penalize anyone found using what is called “black hat” tactics. You need quality, original information on your site. You need this original information, linked to keywords and phrases, page titles, page names etc to give you good quality pages. You need to optimize your content with quality information, strategically making use of your keywords and phrases in the text. Gone are the days of “multiple similar pages” and “hiding keywords in text”. You need to “white hat” your site, and give the search engines exactly what they want, and you will be rewarded by receiving better rankings.

Let me expand on this a little. All search engines have “robots” or “spiders” that crawl websites to collect data that is then parsed (separate into more easily processed components, ie sorts out keywords, phrases etc) then stored in a database that is queried when a search is requested by someone using the internet on that particular search engine. Think of it as a huge database that contains “specific and relevant” information about the content of almost every website.

So when someone searches for “purple socks”, the pages the robots have searched that have content regarding “purple socks” will be shown in a list of results, according to relevance. The more relevant the content of the page is to “purple socks”, the higher the page will be shown in the search result. This is why your keywords, titles and content optimization are the most important aspects of search engine optimization. I am presuming that most of you know what keywords are. For those of you who don’t, keywords are words or phrases that accurately describe your website. They are also the words or phrases that people are likely to use when searching to find your website.

In the early days of the Internet, it was a relatively simple task of quickly popping a few keywords into your meta tags and that was it. These days, it’s a totally different story. The internet is growing so rapidly and there are so many people out there who are selling similar products/services to you, and you need to think “outside the square” and be innovative in your approach to keywords and managing your SEO strategy. You don’t have to pay SEO Companies obscene amounts of money (usually with no guarantee unless you also agree to fund an unlimited AdWords campaign).

You don’t need to agonize over “which tactic will I try next”. You don’t need to use PPC (pay per click) advertising. All you need to do is take the time to optimize your website so that it gives the search engines what they want. Relevant content! So, even if you’ve been reduced to tears, or even if you’ve turned into a babbling, procrastinating dweeb, don’t throw the towel in and pay a huge amount of money for something you can do yourself. Tackle Search Engine Optimization head on! I did, and I won. You can do it too!