{"id":1738,"date":"2019-05-11T01:07:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T01:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2019-05-11T01:07:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T01:07:32","slug":"a-laymans-explanation-of-search-engine-optimization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/a-laymans-explanation-of-search-engine-optimization\/","title":{"rendered":"A Layman&#8217;s Explanation of Search Engine Optimization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Layman&#039;s Explanation of Search Engine Optimization\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/d7HD-IK9YuY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I made this video to explain what search engine optimization is at a high level.<!--more--> <\/p>\n<h2>Let&#8217;s start with a typical story of a business that has a website built&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>Yanni&#8217;s Yummi Ice Cream has a website made by a local web designer. The site looks great and this task is knocked out.<\/p>\n<p>However, the web designer didn&#8217;t work with an SEO outfit and released the site without any search engine optimization.<\/p>\n<p>Does that mean Yanni&#8217;s website will not be indexed by Google?<\/p>\n<p>No.<\/p>\n<p>Chances are Google will find Yanni&#8217;s website and crawl it. That&#8217;s basically Google&#8217;s entire business (to crawl the web).<\/p>\n<p>The important question is: Will Google understand what Yanni&#8217;s site is about?<\/p>\n<p>If Yanni&#8217;s entire website is basically a bunch of pictures of ice cream with no text or metadata filled out &#8211; it probably won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<h2>Would you have a storefront with no sign?<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1400\" height=\"947\" src=\"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign.jpg\" alt=\"storefront with no sign\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1751\" srcset=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign-768x519.jpg 768w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign-1024x693.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/storefront-with-no-sign-624x422.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is the analogy I like to use when you don&#8217;t do any search engine optimization (SEO) to a website.<\/p>\n<p>Doing the very basic initial steps of SEO means you&#8217;re properly labeling your website so search engines can understand what your site is about.<\/p>\n<p>Think of it as creating a table of contents for a book:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2296\" height=\"1988\" src=\"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents.png\" alt=\"SEO is like table of contents\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1748\" srcset=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents.png 2296w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents-300x260.png 300w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents-768x665.png 768w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents-1024x887.png 1024w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/SEO-is-like-table-of-contents-624x540.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2296px) 100vw, 2296px\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><i>I&#8217;m not sure why I put the table of contents in the middle of the book.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><strong>The way we add &#8220;chapter titles&#8221; to a website is by filling out the title tag for every web page on our site<\/strong>. The title tag is a snippet of HTML code that goes in the head of every webpage. A lot of websites will duplicate the title tag or not even fill them out!<\/p>\n<p>To really illustrate what I&#8217;m talking about here:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"3468\" height=\"2136\" src=\"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy.png\" alt=\"title tag table of contents analogy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1753\" srcset=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy.png 3468w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy-768x473.png 768w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy-1024x631.png 1024w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/title-tag-table-of-contents-analogy-624x384.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3468px) 100vw, 3468px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>What does a title tag look like in the search engines?<\/h2>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what Yanni&#8217;s home page title tag looks like:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"894\" height=\"205\" src=\"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-listing-for-home-page.png\" alt=\"example search engine result listing for a home page\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1758\" srcset=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-listing-for-home-page.png 894w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-listing-for-home-page-300x69.png 300w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-listing-for-home-page-768x176.png 768w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-listing-for-home-page-624x143.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 894px) 100vw, 894px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As you can see any human that can read will understand what that listing is about. Google will also have a good idea that YannisYummi.com is an ice cream shop in North Pole, Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>But to be sure &#8211; you might want to add the word &#8220;shop&#8221; to that title tag! It probably couldn&#8217;t hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the search engine result for Yanni&#8217;s about page:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1202\" height=\"257\" src=\"http:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result.png\" alt=\"example search engine result\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1756\" srcset=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result.png 1202w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-300x64.png 300w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-768x164.png 768w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-1024x219.png 1024w, https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/example-search-engine-result-624x133.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now you&#8217;re probably understanding why labeling your title tags carefully for each web page on your website is a really important task that every business owner should tackle.<\/p>\n<h2>The words you use in your title tag can determine the number of people that find your listing!<\/h2>\n<p>This is an important point.<\/p>\n<p>Certain words are more searched for than others. One thing my firm does is to make sure that we choose language that attracts a sweet spot of traffic for each of your web pages. We don&#8217;t want to aim for overly competitive terms and we also want to make sure the language properly matches the searchers&#8217; intention to the content you offer. It&#8217;s definitely an art (that I&#8217;ve personally been doing since 1999).<\/p>\n<h2>And then there is advanced SEO<\/h2>\n<p>If you watch the video above I talk about the two stages of SEO that I see. <\/p>\n<p>The first thing to do is to knock out all the basic SEO tasks. This entails getting a website properly set up to be indexed and understood by the search engines (in addition to a few other tricks) as well as being easily understood in the search engines by human searchers.<\/p>\n<p>The advanced SEO step is all about driving as much traffic to a website as budget permits. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve personally grown a blog to 1 million readers a month, so I know how it&#8217;s done.<\/p>\n<p>And&#8230;it takes a ton of work. There are few different strategies depending on what the site is about, but at the end of the day, it requires a serious marketing effort. And the owners of the website have to be 100% on board. Often times, they will need to do things on their end to help market the website. But I consult website owners and businesses on the steps required to do this as well as doing a lot of the heavy lifting required to achieve traffic goals.<\/p>\n<h2>If you&#8217;d like my help at either stage of SEO growth, please schedule a call with me below.<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!-- Calendly inline widget begin --><\/p>\n<div class=\"calendly-inline-widget\" data-url=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/seanwork\" style=\"min-width:300px;height:500px;margin-top:-24px;\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.calendly.com\/assets\/external\/widget.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Calendly inline widget end --><\/p>\n<b><i>Share This Content:<\/i><\/b><br><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" 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Share This Content:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Layman&#039;s Explanation of Search Engine Optimization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In less than 3 minutes you&#039;ll learn how search engine optimization works.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/a-laymans-explanation-of-search-engine-optimization\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Layman&#039;s Explanation of Search Engine Optimization\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In less than 3 minutes you&#039;ll learn how search engine optimization works.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/seanvwork.com\/blog\/a-laymans-explanation-of-search-engine-optimization\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sean V. 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