FOR THOSE OF YOU NOT IN THE KNOW, WHAT IS SEO?

     Those of you writing your own blogs or running your own businesses may have seen the acronym for Search Engine Optimization before, otherwise known as S.E.O. Those of you may be become familiar with the acronym, like I did, while you looked for work because many companies see this as a skill set now. If you are skilled at helping their company to become more visible on any web browser, you can be a valuable member of any team. 

    Search Engine Optimization or S.E.O. is the process of getting traffic or "clicks" from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have these types of results, where web pages and other content like videos are shown, but they're ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to their users. There is no pay involved, but it does come down to using the right labels or keywords. The goal is optimizing your product on the major search engines. 
     
     A great way to compare S.E.O. to social media would be phrase "trending" on Twitter or Facebook. When something is trending on those sites, it means that everyone is talking about it and it's a hot topic. Now, because it's a hot topic, it might rank really high on the search engines because people are searching for that trending topic. Therefore, it will be search engine optimized because everyone and their mother wants to know more about it. So, it ranks really high and will be one of the first links on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Typically SEO is ranked based on 2 things. Content that is directly controlled by the publisher and content that is influenced by readers and site visitors. 

     As I said earlier, I actually learned more about this when I was out of work and trying to update my skill set for a better resume. I actually learned more about it via lynda.com last semester in school. Having skills in S.E.O. will definitely be beneficial as many of you look for work in the near future. For more about S.E.O. take a look at this quick video: