SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s the art of making as many people as possible arrive at a particular site – preferably those who are interested in it.

Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? OK, let’s try a different definition: SEO is the name for a number of methods for improving the chances of someone searching for the subject of a site, and having that site appear in the top search results.

Better?

Basically, there are two kinds of SEO:

1. On-site: what you do in the site to make sure search engines index it optimally.
2. Off-site: having other sites link to yours.

Each of the above will be expanded in the next two parts of this series.

You can also divide SEO in two other kinds: “white hat” (“honest” techniques) and “black hat” (less honest techniques). I will only write about the former. The latter require more effort, are effective just for short periods of time, and will, in the end, harm a site in terms of SEO, since search engines try to fight (and punish) those kinds of techniques.

Some examples of those: splogs (spam blogs), spam comments in blogs, “keyword stuffing”, hidden text (for instance, text and background of the same color), different content presented to users and to search bots, etc.. Like I said, these methods are increasing less effective – if they’re effective at all, these days – and almost always end up doing more harm than good. My suggestion: forget about them.

In fact, it is because some self-styled “SEO specialists” believe that SEO is using those increasingly inefficient methods, that sometimes people say “SEO is dying”. It isn’t. It’s just that most dirty tricks don’t work anymore. The methods I’ll talk about in the next two parts still work perfectly.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to SEO #1: series introduction
2. Coming soon, a new series: "An Introduction to SEO"
3. Blogging tips #11: Making money from your blog – Introduction

This series’ goal, as the name suggests, is to be a primer to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a term I’ll talk about further in the second part. What will appear here isn’t “rocket science”, and won’t turn anyone into an “SEO guru”, although it can be a good start. There are many sites, blogs, forums and books (I, myself, have read some) out there about this subject, if you want to go further, and I’ll suggest a few of them at the end of the series. But, if you know little to nothing about SEO… you’ve come to the right place.

Why did I decide to write this series? One of the main reasons is the sorry state of SEO in Portugal, my home country, though I doubt it happens just locally. Around here, even the sites of “big” brands or companies are, quite often, designed and created by people who don’t even suspect that it’s possible to optimize sites to be better placed in search engines. The results are often comical: posts in personal blogs appear, in query results, before the companies or brands’ official sites. And I don’t mean ultra-mega-optimized blogs. Simply, because they use software like WordPress, or services like Blogger, their HTML is more valid than the companies’ sites (most Portuguese web designers use software like FrontPage, are completely unaware there’s such a thing as “valid HTML”, or that there are browsers other than Internet Explorer 6), and they have… titles. Yes, some people haven’t discovered the <title> tag yet.

By the way, the series is meant to be read in order. There’s a nice series index, which will be updated as each part is written.

Related posts:

1. Coming soon, a new series: "An Introduction to SEO"
2. Introduction to SEO #2: what is SEO?
3. Blogging tips #21: keeping first-time visitors on your blog: Introduction