How do your customers find you online?
It seems like an obvious question. They go to your website, of course. But if they’ve never heard of your business, how else would they stumble across your site?
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in, a way for you to better your website so Google and other engines can find and share your content with their users.
A Brief History
There are many ways to optimize your site, but previously, the best way to get your page to the top of search results was through link building. This meant getting links to your site placed around the web to increase your PageRank (the level of authority Google gives your site). Then, as with most things, people went overboard with this tactic, trying to game the system by paying for links in a high volume of places.
To combat this problem, Google started assigning weight to these links. Low-quality (say, on a spammy page with nothing but a bunch of paid links) and higher-quality links (the New York Times linked to you, for example) were given appropriate values and the linked website was ranked accordingly.
Keywords were – and still are –important in helping Google decide if your website matches a certain query. But again, this was abused and keyword stuffing became an issue. Thus, Google had to change its focus again.
So how does Google determine value today? Weighted links and keywords are still taken into consideration, but the search engine has shifted much of its focus to providing value to users and creating a more personalized experience.
This is where social media comes in.
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