Search Engine Optimization

Making sense of SEO

Okay, I’ll admit it. I never thought I’d really have to get to grips with ‘search engine optimization’. It sounds so clinical, so ‘tech-y’ and something that was beyond what I was capable of really understanding or even needing to use. But then, I guess that’s why I chose to do the Creating & Publishing Digital Media course.

For those of you who, like myself, only had a vague notion of SEO, I’ll elaborate on the concept. It basically means understanding how search terms work, and how to use them to get better rankings for your own keywords, whether that’s in your personal blog, your basic website or on a more professional level in your career. I had avoided looking at the categories and keywords option in WordPress (mainly because I didn’t really see its value). I downloaded the ‘Foxy SEO tool’ and played around with it for a while (as you do).

The Basics
I had always thought SEO tools were just elaborate ways of categorizing. And they are. But there’s a purpose. The Foxy SEO tool allowed a glimpse in to how they operate, but also offered an opportunity to look at how I conducted my blog. The keyword analysis function gave a list of how many words were used (‘photograph’ being the most commonly used term, perhaps unsurprisingly). Other fascinating insights were offered by the Google Trends function, giving you graphs (and who doesn’t like graphs?) about how and when particular words are searched. There was a danger that my stalker side could go crazy at this point, so I opted to try and stay focused on the task at hand. The other interesting tool was Google AdWords. I never really understood the point behind advertising particular words on a website. It nearly seems like a quaint tool of yesteryear, or one of poorly designed websites you find nowadays. That Google have a whole area dedicated to this function would suggest that I’m wrong. I have a feeling, however, that the people who click on these links do so accidentally. But a click on a link is a click on a link, I suppose.

Wordpot and Wordtracker were two areas that I found less than helpful. I understand that the basics behind all of this SEO is advertising (either obtaining revenue from it, or promoting yourself) but I found that especially with Wordtracker it was attempting to advertise to me rather than a site that was dedicated to SEO improvement. A lot of the links were for SEO improvement sites, but that’s not what I would personally want from a toolbar function. But that’s just me.

Thoughts?
All in all, I found knowing more about SEO very interesting, if not a little disturbing. Disturbing in that there’s a whole aspect of the internet geared towards making money or advertising that people might be completely unaware of, even whilst actively participating in that world. This is also, probably, the future. So remaining unaware of the power of SEO might mean you sitting on a chair in a darkened room while everyone else is at the party. Just a thought.