What is SEO, and Who Cares?

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Unless you don’t have a blog or a website of your own, chances are,  you have heard about the term SEO (search engine optimization) before. SEO is the process of improving a sites online visibility on search engines results. That really is the simple and short version of what SEO is all about (here’s a longer version of SEO).

As for the “who cares” part, it is no surprise that all who are serious about building an online presence cares about it. Yeah, SEO is far from dead, otherwise, what’s the point of Google and Bing, coming out with a lot of new stuff just to help webmasters improve their sites visibility?

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s new (or relatively recent) and suggested SEO resources:

Google SEO

Webmaster Academy – Webmaster Academy provides practical and easy-to-understand lessons for webmasters to help you improve your site with topics like getting your site indexed, providing search engines with helpful information about your video and image content, and understanding Webmaster Tools features.

SEO for startups in under 10 minutes (June 2012) – Maile Ohye from Google advises your startup as if she had only 10 minutes as your SEO consultant.

Bing SEO

Webmaster Tools – The new webmaster tools of Bing is, guess what, mainly all about SEO. If you have not tried it yet or have forgot all about it, I am sure that you will find the “new” version much more interesting than before. From fixing on-page SEO problems, to their disavowing links, Bing has features for everyone interested in search engine optimization.

Here on iBlogzone

Yeah, I got my own SEO resource page, that I regularly update. It has “tons” of articles, videos, and guides, that are targeted for the DIY SEOers. If you are new to SEO or want to learn a bit more, start there. I am sure that there is something that you will find useful.

SEO Industry

As mentioned above, you can easily come to the conclusion, that both Google and Bing’s webmaster tools are mainly geared towards search engine optimization. Hopefully, that will answer the question about whether or not, SEO is something that you, as an aspiring problogger or small business owner, should care about. Just remember the balance (YIn-Yang), provide quality content for users and optimized them for SEO. After all, you do want your quality content to be found, right? On the other hand, what would you SEO, if you don’t have content?

Anyway, if you are still are not convinced that SEO is something that interest a lot of people, maybe this study, presented in the form of an infographic, would shed a bit of light. This infographic, courtesy of BlueCaribu, shows just how big the SEO industry is. Some interesting facts, include India, being the largest community searching for related SEO topics, and Thursday being the most popular day for looking up on SEO.

SEO search industry

What about you? Do you care about SEO?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

14 thoughts on “What is SEO, and Who Cares?”

  • Hi Francisco,

    I just had a conversation this week with a colleague about SEO and the importance of it. It’s almost come back into vogue. Not that it ever went out of fashion but marketers are talking about it more than they used to in a few years.

    I really liked the infographic – I’ll repost on my pinterest page.

    Thanks for sharing on bizsugar.com.

    Take care,
    Denise

  • Hi DieTesco!

    Nice to see the infographic view of SEO industries popularity indeed many professional SEO’s was quite from the challenging updates of Google’s.

  • Hi DiTesco,

    Using proper SEO saves you months if not years of wheel spinning. Why not market to people who want your services? That reason is enough for me, thank you. Super smart points here.

    Good note: use SEO and write for your audience. Content not written for a human audience sounds clunky, and no matter where your keywords are placed, or how super your SEO game is, you will struggle to make money from your content…because in the end, people buy your products or join your networking marketing or gifting team, and if people find your content bland, you fail online.

    Write for people. Allow your content to flow naturally. Then you can add proper SEO to your content, and of course, re-read to see if your content sounds right. Feel free to publish and share across appropriate channels.

    Thanks DiTesco!

    Ryan

  • You’ve great points here Ditesco. I like especially the Infographic. However, I’m no longer trying to please Google, not after their weird updates. I’d rather please my readers and prospects. Isn’t it worthwhile?

    • Hi Michael. I agree with you that pleasing your readers is first and foremost. But that should be really a given … With that in mind and doing a bit of SEO, I still think that it is worthwhile. Why not have the best of both worlds?

      • Sure Ditesco, Having a mix of both is good. I still attract a handful of traffic from Google. Fortunately, my webpages have been showing on Google, even though I’m not concerned about ranking.

        65% of my blog readers come from referral sites like (iblogzone). Referral traffic is much more focused – don’t you think so?

        The bottom line is simple: Focus on your readers and really make their lives better. They’d definitely promote your blog across major social portals. IMHO, that’s what Google truly wants.

  • Hello DiTesco,

    Interesting Infograph you share here.
    SEO is by no means dead.

    However many small business owners find SEO daunting. One common challenge they share with me is that they are so busy running their business they have little time to learn online marketing techniques.

    I usually just encourage them to write for their audience as you have suggested above.

    When the content is helpful and interesting, the people will keep coming back. Only when they are more “settled” into online blogging and marketing do I tell them more about how to optimize with SEO in mind.

    These tips will come in handy. Thanks for sharing!

    Louisa Chan

  • I try to keep up with the latest seo news and trends. It seems like something is constantly changing. I don’t dwell on it or spend too much time focusing on it. I do work on it in my spare time, but sometimes I just get burned out on it and would rather be doing other things. I take a break, but eventually come back to it and do more.

    • Hi Ray. I hear you. SEO can be overwhelming and it is depressing that when you work on something, you then find out that it no longer works. In any event, I think that ignoring it completely is not a wise move, and working on it once in a while, like you do, is definitely better than doing nothing 🙂

  • Awesome infographic!
    Today I came to know that INDIA is #1 in SEO interest.

    Thanks ditesco.

  • I agree with everything you said, you certainly hit the nail on the head. For small businesses that have only been just been told about SEO it is a confusing ball game. There are many good and bad ways to do SEO, ethical and unethical. I believe one needs to research as much as possible before doing steps of Seo.

  • Hi DiTesco,

    Thanks to the excellent info-graphic you’ve shared at the end of the post its undeniable that SEO and Digital Marketing are two of the online factors your website and business can’t afford to be without. Having a good content, products and or service is no longer enough. You need exposure in order to have traffic driven through your sales funnel and or channels.

  • Very informative article. I agree with Anton; with so much of our interaction today through visual means it is imperative to use things like SEO and digital marketing. Using them helps get people’s attention and also keep it.

  • The infographics you have shared is very interesting. The recent updates about SEO sound useful. Building an online presence is essential to run a business today! Doing proper research on SEO marketing can save a lot of time.
    Failing online, will put your business into the bin. So having the proper online marketing techniques will surely enhance the business.

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