“Beyond the fog lies clarity” – Anonymous

Ever heard of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization? Well I hadn’t until recently, and now I wish I learned it sooner. It is highly important when website making. SEO is a process of utilizing the world wide web to benefit your website or blog and to help it rank higher on search engines. Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) use what are called “spiders” to crawl through their archives and select all content that is relatable to the term that was searched. Through search engine optimization, we can take advantage of these spider by using keywords. Keywords are words that are portray your brand and that are linked to your website.

When I decided to use search engine on my own WordPress website, Google AdWords helped me out, and it made me realize a few things about my website. All I had to do was enter my URL, and it gave me a list of keywords Google detected that may trigger my ad to appear next to search results. This is when I started to realize that my website is in need of some major search engine optimization. Here is a screenshot of the results…

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Gagnon, E. (March 16, 2017). Keywords Screenshot [JPG]. Retrieved from https://adwords.google.com/um/GetStarted/Home?__u=2997523618&__c=1134452964&authser=o#oc
The keywords Google detected were primarily concerned with creating and designing a free website, rather than my website’s content. This must be because my website is made through the free version of WordPress. It begins to recognize the content by including grand canyon, wilderness, pr, and active. After all, I created this website to practice my major in Advertising and Public Relations (pr), and to post about being active, getting outdoors, and experiencing wilderness.

Search engines keep track of how many times keywords are searched. Using this data, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, can show ads that correlate with the search term. By the use of SEO and SEM, websites can promote their ads more effectively. The global monthly searches for the 5 keywords I chose to represent my website, and 5 of the keywords Google chose to represent my website are as follows:

Wilderness 110,000

Outdoors 823,000

“Advertising and Public Relations” 1,300

blog 1,500,000

lifestyle 550,000

website making 3,600

grand canyon 1,000,000

wordpress 3,350,000

pr 1,000,000

active 246,000

Now that I understand search engine optimization, I feel as if everything makes more sense. I have found the clarity that lies beyond the fog. What myself and all other websites should do is pay attention to the vocabulary and word choice used on our websites. Every post, especially titles, should be full of important context related to the brand so it can be easily detectable on search engines and draw more publicity.