SEO, stand for Search Engine Optimization. SEO, is part art and part science. Although it is multi-faceted, the process itself is quite simple. The simple elegance of the process belies its complexity.

The basic steps to the SEO process are:

• Analyze your current page. Figure out what works and what doesn’t work, then tweak it and make it better. Figure out where and who your competition is and what they are doing better than you are.
• Keyword analysis. We need to figure out what people are typing when they go to the search engines to find the information or product that you have.
• On page optimization. We optimize the features and content on your page to maximize the relevancy and the quality of your content. This is to ensure that people find what they came to look for on your page.
• Off page optimization. Arguably the most important factor in any optimization campaign. You want to make sure that you have relevant, on topic, and targeted links coming back to your page from authority sites. The landing pages that these links refer to, also have to be on topic in order to increase their relevance.
• Link building. Arguably, the second most important factor in an optimization project. Think of links as referrals to your website.
• Reporting and tracking. Keep track of where you started at, and then keep track of where you ended up at in the rankings.

Here’s a thought exercise that may help explain the entire SEO process to you.

Image via Wikipedia

This exercise will probably also highlight the importance of incoming links and off page optimization. Let’s say you’re in a new city and you wanted to find a good Mexican food restaurant. Would you just drive around and wander looking for a restaurant, or would you ask a couple of people for their opinion?

My bet, is that you would probably ask people for their opinion.

You’d probably ask one or two of your co-workers (if you’re there on business), or another guest at the hotel you are at, maybe the front desk person or even your taxi driver. Depending on your own personal settings, each of these people’s responses would have a different level of authority.

If they all agreed that one particular restaurant was better than another, what are the odds that you would go to the restaurant that they all graded as “the best”?

So, let’s take it another step.

• You go to the restaurant, and the food is scrumptious, and you are satisfied, would you report back that the place was good?
• Would you go to that restaurant again?
• What if the food was so/so?
• What if the place was actually a Chinese all you can eat buffet, that had a small section of Mexican food?

That’s what link building, on page and off page optimization is all about.

Off page, are all the people (other web sites) telling you the searcher where that thing you’re looking for is. Once you get to the site, or the place that has that thing that you’re looking for, there needs to be quality content there in order for you to return or to have a favorable impression. The last piece of the puzzle, is that people need to find what they are expecting to find, visitors need to find what they came looking for.

That’s the entire SEO process in a nutshell.