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SEO - Who needs it?
By Woody Longacre

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of making a website "search engine-friendly" and is one
of the important aspects of website design. Search engine optimization means ensuring your web pages
are cooperative with search engines and relevant to users searching for your product or services. SEO
means designing web pages in a way that improves the likelihood that your content will be provided to
search users before that of your competition. There are millions upon millions of websites on the internet
all vying for top placement in search results. If your web pages are not optimized correctly, unfortunately,
your site will be buried at the bottom of a very long list. The result is your site becomes non-existent to
searchers. So who needs SEO? If you want your website to be successful, then you do.

There are two important aspects to SEO. The first aspect is called On-Page SEO. This is the act of
optimizing individual pages of a website for compatibility with search engines in conjunction with carefully
selected keyword or key phrases. The goal of On-Page SEO is to design a given page of a website with
the proper elements to get search engine spiders to find your site relevant and useful to your chosen
keywords. Doing this step properly almost assures you of at least a Page Rank of 2 for a brand new site
(pages of a site are ranked from 0 – 10). This is a good start but to improve the page rank beyond a 2
there is additional work that has to be done.

Before we go on to the second aspect of SEO there is an important fact that you should understand. SEO
is done on a page by page basis. Each page should have its own set of keywords or key phrase and be
SEO'd for those key words. There is a common misconception that SEO is done on the entire site with
one set of keywords. This is not true. You should focus on the primary pages of your site and SEO those
pages individually.

To achieve the best in website SEO the second aspect of SEO (OFF-Page SEO) must be implemented.
To further enhance your chances of making it to the first page of search engine results you need to apply
additional off page SEO factors. What this is all about is acquiring links to your site. You see search
engines place a high value on links pointing to your site. Each link that points to your site is a vote of
confidence and tells a search engine spider that your site is relevant and that others think highly of it. The
more links you have pointing to your site the better your PR becomes and the higher up the list your
search results are placed.

There are billions of web pages on the internet most of which never see the light of day. Many people
have the expectation that just the simple act of building a website will bring them success. This idea is sure
to fail. The competition for first page search engine placement is fierce. People are beginning to realize this
and are taking the SEO action necessary to succeed on the Internet. If you want front page exposure in
search engine placement then you need both aspects of SEO.