SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a huge component of how websites run now.  It is something that became prevalent after search engines started popping up on the internet and indexing sites.  Essentially, SEO-tuned websites will hypothetically show up higher on Google/Bing/Yahoo’s search results because they’ve made specific changes or additions in order to accommodate how search engines index sites.

I’ve actually not been blogging much this section because I’ve been doing a lot of independent research about SEO for a new site that I’ll be opening up soon.  This is a very relevant facet of the internet today, but isn’t widely talked about outside of web development circles.  People who just use WordPress.com or go on Facebook aren’t usually going to need a spot on Google’s first page of results. I knew of SEO and certain practices, but before I really started reading up on how to optimize websites I didn’t have an appreciation for what it could do. By changing the way your site displays information you get a better score when Google reviews your site. For analyzing, search engines use “spiders”, or scripts that crawl through your pages and gather information contained therein. There are many factors that can result in a better crawl, such as code hierarchy, page speed, caching, and a multitude of others.

It will be an interesting journey for me to see if I can properly utilize SEO to get more organic traffic from the search engine giants.  It’s definitely daunting and isn’t something where you can get results over night.  I’ll also have to anticipate and target certain keywords that I think people will be looking for. Maybe before the end of the class I’ll report on how it’s doing

– Paul

ps- One of the good things about using WordPress (.org, not .com) is that there are many SEO plugins that can help guide you and improve your site.  Currently the best all-in-one I’ve found would be the Yoast plugin. You can also poke around the site if you’re still interested in SEO   There’s a lot to learn about it.