“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…
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.
March 16, 2017 at 10:01 pm
Like you, I also had very little knowledge of what SEO was and how to maintain it. I found it so interesting and eye-opening in how to bring more attention to my website. I also had a similar problem as you where Google gave me pretty weird keywords that didn’t seem very relatable to my website. I guess we both need to work on using better keywords and trying to create more recognizable content!
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March 16, 2017 at 10:33 pm
It was really interesting to see what keywords the Google Ads Keyword Planner came up with for your site. I wonder why they did not pertain more to the theme of your blog? Also, I really like your writing style, keep up the good work!
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March 17, 2017 at 11:23 am
Great Job incorporating your brand into the post!
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