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Dear Reader:
We publish this SEO page for the benefit of our Yellow Pages, Powwwerlistings, Powwwerlinks, and Powwwer-what-else subscribers. We trust most of our regular visitors and customers know us by now. First-timers may want to check out our Home, About, and FAQ pages.
Our Yellow Page customers (paid services, i.e.: Premium Listings and higher) are entitled to individual FREE SEO assistance, way beyond the scope of our SEO pages and news. Those customers are welcome to contact us for free SEO advice at any time. Please give us 2-3 business days to reply.
To many of you, much of this SEO page will look pretty elementary. Our apologies for this, but we also need to cater to those readers who are only now getting acquainted with the concept of Search Engine Optimization, one of the hottest yet most-often misunderstood and misapplied aspects of SEM (Search Engine Marketing).
Let’s jump right in.
What is SEO?
(SEO) Search Engine Optimization is (to put it very dryly and scientifically) the sum of strategies, tactics, methods (and yes, tricks !) used by webmasters to maximize and improve their web site's ranking on the major web-crawling Search Engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.). Rankings are a consequence of, rather than the equivalence to “relevance”. For Wikipedia’s definition of SEO, click here.
Less dryly and more bluntly put, we could define SEO simply as “ways of getting the Search Engines rank your web site higher.”
(By the way, the term “Search Engine” Optimization is, strictly speaking, not even correct. “Web Site” Optimization would be far more accurate. After all, it’s not the Search Engine but the web site that’s supposed to get optimized).
What’s the big fuss about SEO? Why is it so important?
The answer to this one is self-evident. Any search query submitted to one of the large web-crawling search engines gets results that come up on the relevant search result pages. Usually, there are tens of thousands of results and more, depending on the query. However, since we seem to be not only search engine-crazy but also short of time (let’s face it: who feels like browsing through 2,000 result pages, i.e.: 20,000 results?), most searchers won’t bother looking beyond the first few result pages, equivalent to, say, a number 30 ranking. Many don’t even look past the first result page. Sad but true. Click here for research results and statistics.
Other research (click here) differs somewhat, but only with respect to the extent, not the basic facts : any result that ranks lower than 30, i.e.: beyond Google Results Page 3, is unlikely to be looked at and considered for clicking.
Regrettably, also, no clicking means: no business from that search.
That’s why it gets pretty crowded (meaning: competitive) on those first few pages. And where it gets crowded, there’s often a lot of pushing and shoving (meaning: SEO) to get rankings up, and keep them high. After all, the difference between number 30 and 31 may look trivial; but as far as competing for that customer's business dollars is concerned, it’s the difference between being in the running, and running for cover.
Conclusion: Lunch with the Joneses, or become lunch. This is the essence of SEO. |
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