SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of driving traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which involves paying for traffic. The higher a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. This is pretty self explanatory.
There are 3 main factors that impact how high a site will rank in a search engine (thanks to Smaxor for the lesson):
1. Domain weight
a. Keywords in the domain – does your domain contain keywords that match the search query?
b. Age – how long has your domain been around? the longer the better.
c. Time in the search engine – how long has your domain been indexed in the search engine? the longer the better.
2. Link weight
a. Domain weight – if your friend links to your domain from his world of warcraft blog that gets like 2 visitors a year, it won’t mean much. If an article on CNN.com links to your domain, it will matter a lot.
b. Number of links – how many quality websites link to your domain?
3. Content – does your domain contain relevant and fresh content?
