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What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Advice For Newbies

New to SEO? An excellent starting place is Google’s “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” This is a free PDF download that covers basic tips that Google provides to its own employees on how to get listed. You’ll find it here.

Another free guide worth checking out is SEOmoz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO,” which you’ll find here.

There are also a variety of print books you might consider. Here’s our review of some newer books: A Roundup Of Best SEO Books.

Advice At Search Engine Land

Here at Search Engine Land, we provide SEO advice and news in a variety of ways:

How To: SEO is our section that is devoted to practical tips and tactics about search engine optimization.

100% Organic Column is Search Engine Land’s column that covers different search engine optimization topics every week.

More Search Engine Land Columns – Beyond our 100% Organic column, Search Engine Land also has these columns that cover SEO topics:

In House
In The Trenches
Industrial Strength
Let’s Get Social
Link Week
Locals Only
Small Is Beautiful
Strictly Business
Video Search

SEO Library Archives is an area of Search Engine Land that provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of SEO. We also have subcategories, including:

SEO: Blocking Spiders
SEO: Blogs & Feeds
SEO: Cloaking & Doorway Pages
SEO: Domain Names & URLs
SEO: Duplicate Content
SEO: Flash
SEO: General
SEO: Image Search
SEO: Local
SEO: Mobile Search
SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites
SEO: Spamming
SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps
SEO: Tagging
SEO: Titles & Descriptions
SEO: Video Search
SEO: Writing & Body Copy

Also see our related Link Building category and these subareas:

Link Building: Link Bombs
Link Building: Linkbait
Link Building: Paid Links

Here are a few of our popular articles about SEO from the Search Engine Land library:

Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates
29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures: SEO Checklist, Part 1
SEO Checklist Part 2: Best Practices
36 SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To
36 More SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To
21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

In addition to covering SEO generally, Search Engine Land also has search engine optimization areas specifically for each of the major search engines:

Google SEO
Microsoft’s Bing SEO
Yahoo SEO

Facebook Friday Question Says: Most Do Both SEO & PPC, Then SEO Only

Next in catching up on answers to our past “Facebook Friday Questions,” it turns out most people do both SEO and PPC, followed by SEO only.

We asked those who follow our Search Engine Land Facebook page, “Do you SEO, PPC or do both?” Of the 254 who responded on May 6, doing both was the top choice:

PPC: 20 (7.9%)
SEO: 93 (36.6%
Both: 141 (55.5%)

While I’d define doing both as “SEM” (for Search Engine Marketing), many people today use SEM to mean PPC or paid search. My past article, Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?, explains more about this.

Also see our guide articles below, for more about each of these areas:

Multinational Search Local SEO & International SEO Have Lots In Common

In my last Multinational Search post, A Plea to Let International Users Decide What Language They Speak, I talked about the fact that international borders are arbitrary and that it is most important to target the person, centered on their universe, and not to present them with the world as you see it. Taking that one step further, it is a dream of mine to be able to deliver the kind of geotargeting which is increasingly becoming possible with pay per click—through SEO. For this reason, I’ve been studying the areas of convergence between local and international SEO. It turns out that, in principle at least, they have a lot in common.

The similarities: How local and international SEO compare

Keyword content is essential in local. Keyword patterns have long been used by Google and other crawler-based search engines to determine the locality of a search. I’m referring not just to the inclusion of a geographic term such as a town in the search query, such as “Maryville restaurants.” I’m also talking about the position of the term Maryville in the search query, which can affect both the results and the way they’re presented. This is why a query like “restaurants Maryville” can and frequently does give different results than “Maryville restaurants.”

In international SEO, geographic terms such as “Maryville” can both clarify and confuse the location of the search (by country), but the principle still remains true that the search query itself can carry useful indicators of both “local” location and “international location.” For instance, it used to be the case that UK search queries frequently had “UK” tagged on the end to help the search engines guess which English-speaking nation was involved. And then there are ambiguous queries where it’s difficult to pinpoint location—does “hotels Paris” refer to France or Texas, for instance?

Using IP addresses for location. An increasingly popular solution for both “local” and “international” SEO is for the search engines to use the geographic location of the IP address to give a relatively precise indicator of the location the searcher intended. In the early days of the internet, this was only useful for locating users on a country-level basis, but IP location today is becoming increasingly accurate. The advantage is that a query for “Hotels Paris” in Texas is probably going to give you some nice hotels in Paris, Texas. In local SEO, this works fine, but for international SEO projects, targeting potential visitors to France who live in Texas becomes more of a challenge.

In other words, while the use of IP addresses by search engines for targeting queries to a specific geographic location can be an advantage to local SEO folks, it can be a downright hindrance to international SEO efforts.

Mobile is growing in importance. The role of mobile very much varies by country. In some, such as Japan for instance, targeting mobile phone users is important for people working in both international and local SEO. In other countries, where mobile is key simply to reach people because the landline infrastructure is not as effective—as in parts of Africa, south east Asia and deepest Latin America—mobile is the mainstream channel for targeting people from an international perspective, and is much less useful on a local level.

Listing physical addresses. International SEOs often overlook the need to ensure that the correct country addresses denoted in the fashion the search engine prefer are listed abundantly on a website. You should also be listing all physical locations on Google maps via Google places—a tip which is just as relevant whether you’re doing international or local SEO.

Displaying correct prices. This is a major problem for many international e-commerce sites because they may need to show different pricing from country to country depending on tax rates, distribution costs or different contractual situations with local franchisees. International companies often try to solve this—and in the process screw up their whole international SEO strategy—by redirecting crawlers all over the world, except where they should be going. Local SEOs must ensure that search results displayed in their locality have the correct pricing too, though this is often more about seasonality and differential pricing than currency and exchange rates.

The differences: How local and international SEO contrast

International SEO uses language to identify a location. If you’ve been reading my posts in this column, you’ll not be surprised to hear me talk about language and culture as key differences between international and local SEO. For example, the culture is different between west and east coast America, but generally you can understand each other readily easily and may even watch the same football or baseball championships on TV.

The biggest difference between local and international SEO is the language and the impact it has on everything. Language affects culture, the way things are bought, how things are searched for, how people buy and why they think the way they do. It is such a complex sub-set of new things to do differently, that language alone can claim to be the distinguishing factor between international SEO and local SEO (because otherwise they look pretty similar, eh?).

International SEO uses domain references to target a location. The old story about local domains, sub-domains, folders and links always comes into the equation with international SEO since using links and hosting indicators—as well as Webmaster Central settings—can have a big influence on the success rate of international SEO rollout plans. Local SEO doesn’t face those challenges, right?

But overall, the most interesting thing about this comparison are the similarities, not the differences. Ultimately, what you want to do is to target locally internationally. Now you’re talking.

Multinational Search How Does Google Know Where You Are?

It is seven years ago this month that Chris Sherman first asked me to speak on a panel in London on the subject of multilingual or international search – with an emphasis on the SEO! I’m delighted once more to be presenting on “speaking in tongues” and even more pleased to be following SMX in London with an International Search Summit where we can dive deep into the the whole subject.

As always, I wanted to bring something new to the party and it occurred to me that we talk a great deal about geo-targeting our own sites, for instance on whether you should use local domains, sub-domains or folders and does local hosting matter — in fact this was the very first question I was asked in London all those years ago.

However, we don’t so often dig into how Google does it for the results themselves.
How Do The Filters Work?

Let me clarify what I mean. When you put a keyword into a Google search box, how does Google filter its results for you based on the country you’re searching from and the language you’re using?

If I polled a bunch of experienced SEOs in a room, bearing in mind that it would take at least four to change a lightbulb, I’d like to bet that the majority would say your IP address would be the most significant factor — but is it in fact?

With my team, I carried out some testing and discovered that it seems the IP address is not actually the most important factor.

Firstly, we need to understand what Google is trying to achieve. For every query, Google wants to try and deliver the most relevant result and is looking for every possible signal to help it predict what that result would be. The location of a user is a very significant clue to the purpose which is in the searcher’s mind.
Where You Search Plays A Key Role!

Take for example a search for a relatively vague term such as “Lufthansa”. If I’m on the USA’s west coast for instance, there’s a good chance I’m looking for a flight. If I’m in New York, Berlin or London I might be looking for a flight or financial news about the company.

If I’m in the USA or UK, I probably want my results presented in English, but from Germany, I’m more likely to want to see them in German. (Incidentally, I have no connection with Lufthansa other than flying with them from time to time.)

It also has to be said that as of today, I don’t have a definitive answer to all of the possible questions — I’d be delighted to receive thoughts and contributions from readers. But this is how I think it happens.
Domains Win Over IP Addresses?

Firstly, Google wants to define what country you’re in. Getting that wrong could be seriously detrimental to the company’s performance globally — so this has to be top of the list of priorities.

Fortunately, IP addresses on a country level are generally relatively accurate. Nonetheless, Google seems to rely more on the typed-in domain name than the IP address.

Billigflug compared in Google.com and Google.de



In the above graphic, we’re looking at the movements and differences which take place between the Google.com domain and that for Google.de. As you can see, there are some fluctuations which represent the typical shifts based on testing which took account of results coming from different datacenters.

Interestingly, the IP address for both sets of results is from the UK. We’ve deliberately used a keyword which is specifically German so the language effect is not playing too much of a part.

Billigflug compared in Google.at and Google.de



The above graphic is further proof of the pre-eminence of the domain. Circled are three Austrian websites with .at domain names. The search, however, was done from the same UK IP address used to compare the US and Germany above.

You might say, you’re confusing this by using a UK IP address — but in fact this is not the case. When a German IP address was used to compare German versus Austrian results the differences were in fact the same. The selected domain name is clearly a key factor.

Google does, of course, use IP addresses for more hyper-local results (San Francisco versus New York, for instance) but even for this purpose, they must clearly be using additional data as the accuracy achieved in the UK exceeds the potential of just IP addresses alone. They also redirect users to the relevant Google domain so to this extent IP addresses are important.

Lufthansa compared in Google.co.uk v Google.de



The above graphic shows a comparison for a search for “Lufthansa” carried out on Google.co.uk and Google.de where the results are utterly different. This didn’t change when moving IP addresses about either. What’s interesting here is that the pages presented in Google.co.uk are English-language pages from Lufthansa and from Google.de are in German.

Note that these are from the same IP and PC — so any language settings are being overriden by the knowledge that “Lufthansa” can sometimes be a German term and sometimes and English one.

Keywords have an invisible language tag



As the above illustrates, it’s our contention that you have to treat keywords as having a kind of invisible “language tag” which determines which results are presented. Our example is the keyword “casseroles” which happens to have a different meaning in French to English. The images displayed from Google images for Google.co.uk show meals, whereas the French images show the casseroles saucepan. So, Google domain and keyword language tag are the key components which determine how the web is filtered.

By the way, if you’re still wondering why it takes four SEOs to change a light bulb, you have to bear in mind you’d need one to check the compatiblity of the component, one to handle the re-directs for the new light juice (turn the switch on and off), one to hold the door closed for safety (don’t want Google’s crawlers to arrive at the wrong moment) and a web analyst to spot if it lights up!