Why SEO Should Matter to you
by Jacques Habra
SEO determines the most valuable commercial real estate in the world.
I’m often asked “why should SEO matter to me?” This question usually comes right after I explain SEO. And, the explanation always makes an impact. Before defining SEO and explaining why it should matter to you and, pretty much every person on planet earth, I’ll give some background from my early days in the Internet world.
The year was 1994 and it was my junior year at the University of Michigan. Michigan students had the fortune of being a part of a University truly on the cutting edge of all sorts of technology and science movements. It was to be expected that U of M had the largest computer lab in the world—known as the fish bowl because of the all glass perimeter walls and open interaction.
The fish bowl contains over 500 computer systems all in a wide open space. Students could be found in the fish bowl 24 hours a day preparing for exams, writing term papers, and for those really advanced students, using this new form of communication called electronic mail. Those of us that worked in the fish bowl studied something beyond the traditional subjects of calculus, biology, and English: we studied HTML—the language used to create Web pages. We worked with graphic designers to create Web sites and before we knew it, the Web development industry was born. When I launched my first company in 1996, selling people on the Internet and the importance of a Web site was ½ the battle. Why would businesses spend money on something so new, so unproven. Was it a necessary part of their marketing strategy? Would it really make or break their business?
As we know today, entire industries and sectors have been built around Web sites. The internet continues to break records today in sales and usage figures compared to any other commercial sector the world has ever known. Much like the lightning fast growth of Web sites, I expect similar growth in SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. We define SEO as the art and science of achieving the highest possible search result rankings. If you’ve read a newspaper or turned on the TV in the last 8 years, you have most likely heard of Google. Google, like Yahoo and MSN (Microsoft’s search engine), allows computer users to type in a “keyphrase” and get results from a database of billions of Web pages. The results appear on a search engine results page, or SERP, which
typically contains sponsored links and 10 organic results. What determines which Web sites appear on this page is the fundamental purpose of SEO. And, if you do the math, the most
valuable commercial space is not on State St. or Main St. or even Cabrillo Blvd (for my fellow
Santa Barbarans), it’s on these search results page.
Most people don’t really care how the search results are determined. Most people go on the internet to find something. As long as they find it, they could care less how it got there. But, it does matter. In the final analysis, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) decide which Web sites appear on the search results page and which Web site is in position #1, position #2, and so on. But, on what basis do the search engines make their decision; and more importantly, how does this affect you?
The search engines make their decision fundamentally based on 2 criteria:
- The relevance and volume of the content on the Web site;
- The quality and quantity of other Web sites that link to that Web site.
That’s it, well, as far as we know. The truth is that no one really knows. No single person at Google knows exactly what the algorithm is. Imagine if you knew the algorithm and could somehow manipulate a Web site to always come up first for any search phrase. That’s like knowing stock prices the day before trading or who’s going to win the election. It’s forecasting at its best. I’m always asked why Google’s stock price is so valuable. And, I just gave you the answer. Google practically predicts the future. Google knows what people are searching for all the time, and they can create predictive modeling based on the search phrases. So, they know if there’s a lot of research conducted on a particular stock and then can monitor if that stock moves up or down the next day. Consider the data they have just on stock research. And, we’re just scratching the surface.
In the last few years, I have made one of my personal and professional goals to decipher how the search engines determine how Web sites are ranked. After all, I use these sites to make very important decisions every day, sometimes several times a day. I imagine you go through the same process every time you logon to the Internet. Think about the last time you planned some travel, or researched a product you’re buying, or looked up tomorrow’s weather, or read up on a social issue, or reviewed a book, or even did some digging on a potential new hire, a friend, a lover, and so on and so forth. You trust that information. You make decisions based on this information. Dare I say that much of your life is based on the search results. That’s why you should care deeply how those results are organized?
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