SEO Explained Simply: A Small Business Breakdown

At HubRunner, we often find ourselves helping small business owners understand their online presence. Many of these people need SEO explained simply – which is understandable. SEO has always been a confusing and intimidating concept to grasp.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Essentially, SEO is an industry designed to improve the quality and amount of traffic your website receives from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer only to Google for the rest of this article, as Google dominates the search engine market.

When you search for things using Google, you aren’t searching entire internet. You are searching through Google’s interpretation of the internet. Google’s main objective is to provide you, the searcher, with as many accurate search results as possible. Google sends out robots called spiders to crawl the web (get it?) and interpret the content and quality of websites.

An SEO expert specializes in understanding this algorithm and tailors your online presence to satisfy Google. The objective is to help searchers find your website.

What Does Google Look For?

Google guards its algorithm fairly closely. Sure, representatives like Matt Cutts will discuss its broad points with us, but never the nitty-gritty. It’s up to us in the SEO field to experiment and share our ideas. Years of experience have taught us that Google considers certain aspects of your online presence to be more important than others. Though the algorithm has changed significantly since its creation, some things have remained important.

Things Like:

• User Engagement: How people navigate your website.
• Back Links: The quality and amount of websites linking to you.
• Keywords: The search terms you are optimizing around.
• Social Shares: Social media is significantly affecting how Google understands your online presence.
• Much More: Google weighs many, many different factors when considering your website.

SEO branches into many different subcategories, but some things have always been important.

SEO boils down to two basic types: on-page and off-page SEO. For example, HubRunner gears your website to increase user engagement. We also target your pages with relevant keywords. Nearly all of our website plans include on-page SEO. An SEO firm that specializes in off-page SEO will often deal with back links and social shares.

How Can I Learn More?

Everything written about SEO has a shelf life, even this article. SEO is a dramatically changing industry. Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times a year. Search Engine Optimization looks completely different today than it did ten, five, or even one year ago. Your best bet is to keep up to date with the industry giants.

But always remember that only Google truly knows its algorithm. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Here are a few SEO websites that we read daily.

• Moz.com: One of the most trusted SEO tools. Moz also offers a library of learning materials. It’s a great resources for people who need SEO explained simply.
• Search Engine Land: A resource on the bleeding edge of SEO and online marketing.
• Inbound.org: A community-driven resource filled with industry experts.

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