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Thank you for watching SEO video tips from OurChurch.Com. In this video we'll answer
the question, "What is search engine optimization?"
Hi, I'm Kurt Steinbrueck, Director of Marketing Services with OurChurch.Com. In this video
we're going to answer the question, what is search engine optimization?
You may have seen those letters around, you may have heard people talk about search engine
optimization, but what does it mean? The letters themselves stand for "search engine
optimization." So SEO - search engine optimization. Now, what does search engine optimization
mean? Search engine optimization means doing whatever is necessary to rank well for your
targeted keywords or your targeted search terms. When I say doing whatever is necessary,
I'm not referring to doing things that are unethical or anything like that; I'm saying
whatever is involved with getting your site to rank well for these targeted keywords.
There are several things that are involved with that, so we'll take a look at a few of
those things and just give you kind of an overview of what's involved with search engine
optimization. This isn't really an in-depth look at all these things, because that would
be a very long video, but we'll give you an idea of what all is involved.
The first thing is making sure your site is readable.
The search engines can't read everything that's online. For example, they can't read pictures
right now. They're working on it, and they may get there, but right now they can't read
those images. They also can't read Flash, so if your site is entirely made out of Flash,
it's very possible that the search engines can't read anything on your site. So there
are different things the search engines can read and some things that they can't, and
so making sure that there is quality content on your site that the search engines can read
is very important. There are also certain settings that can prevent
the search engines from indexing your site or following links from your site and things
like that. Having a bad code can hurt you in the search engines. Making sure that you
has a good, readable site with good structure, that has good navigation -- the way that people
move from one page to the next on your site -- you want to make sure those search engines
can crawl around your site easily and find all of the pages on your site. So that's all
the basic foundation of search engine optimization. Then from then, you can do some on-page optimization.
That's anything that you would do to your site to let the search engines know what your
site is about. That's dealing within certain tags, certain meta tags, manipulating the
content of your site to make sure that you're using keywords in your content. You want to
do that in a natural way, but you want to make sure that you are using those keywords,
because that will tell the search engines, what is your site about? What should they
be ranking you well for? The next thing is how authoritative your site
is. That's determined really by the links that
you have coming to your site. When I talk about links, I'm not talking about the links
that are on your site; I'm talking about links that are on other people's sites that are
linking back to your site. The way the search engines look at links is they're kind of like
votes or recommendations. So the more votes you're getting, the more links you're getting
-- and the more links you're getting from reputable sites -- the more important they
will think your site is, and the more authoritative and reliable they think your site is.
As you get those links, they're going to be willing to rank you for more and more keywords,
and they're willing to move you up above other sites that maybe they don't trust as much
or they don't think are quite as authoritative. So getting links, usually by putting out really
good content, is just a great way to be able to build your site up in the search engines.
More recently, social sharing has become an important part of search engine optimization.
Social has been around for a long time, but for most of that time it didn't really affect
search rankings very much. But now it's starting to. Facebook, especially within Bing, is affecting
search rankings. With Google, to some extent Facebook affects things, but Twitter and Google+
are very important in their search rankings. These are all factors that go into that search
engine optimization and what's going to determine the rankings that your site is able to get
for those search terms. In review, "What is Search Engine Optimization?"
Search engine optimization is doing whatever it necessary to rank well for your targeted
keywords. And that involves making sure your site is readable and has a good structure;
it involves on-page optimization as well as link building and getting social shares.
I hope you found this video to be informative and enlightening. My name is Kurt Steinbrueck.
If there's any way that OurChurch.Com can help you to achieve your goals and your mission
online, please fill out the form below to request a free, no-obligation consultation.