Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization / SEO
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a form of marketing by way of utilizing knowledge of how search algorithms work and what human visitors might search for, to help match those visitors with sites offering what they are interested in finding. Some SEO efforts may involve optimizing a site's coding, site structure, design, presentation, and/or copy without making very noticeable changes to human visitors. One such change might be to re-tool the website so that it has a clear hierarchical structure, and avoiding or fixing problems that might keep search engine indexing programs from fully "spidering" a site. Another example of an SEO action might involve writing unique content on pages that can be easily indexed and extracted from those pages by search engines while also appealing to human visitors.
What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
SEM or Search Engine Marketing utilizes the above principles and understanding and to expand a website's pagerank and online visibility along with exploring niche audiences and accessing broad markets with targeted content. SEM works in conjunction with a regular marketing regimen in order to expand web presence and reach. Some SEM actions are geared to only improve Pagerank in Google, while other SEM actions may focus on bringing ideal customers or users to specific pages or specific content within a site.
How does Google work? What is PageRank?
Through a network of thousands of low cost PCs that were strung together to create a hyper-fast super computer combined with one of the most complex and elusive algorithms built within the most advanced search software to date is Google's software / hardware foundation that in essence organizes the world's information. Google's impact on the world of business and media (and all things connected via information) has been nothing short of profound. Google essentially provides a simple service-it indexes web pages and provides results to a user's search query. It's index of web pages is the largest in the world. Google's index contains billions of web pages of which results are drawn within less than half a second.
The core of the Google's software system is a concept entitled PageRank. PageRank is a rating system that is in continual evolution and improvement, which essentially places web page results in a hierarchical fashion. The conceptual motive of the ranking system is an attempt to democratize search results based on virtue as opposed to any other, opaque business relationship. The vast link structure of Google's web index is used as an indicator of an individual's page value through a comparative relationship. Google will analyze the text content of each site in it's index and similarly interpret the link structure for that site as well. Volume of links or keywords are not the basis for ranking a website. Google attempts to form an understanding of the relative importance of a web page and it's inherent value in terms of the information it is providing and how other valuable web pages recommend the site in question.
Interesting SEO Fact: The top 4 search engines, Google™*, Yahoo!™, MSN™ and AOL™, account for almost 90% of all searches.
Here is a quote from Google's analogy of it's ranking system:
"Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance."
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