Doesn’t it sound like a breakfast cereal? New! Crispety-crunchy SeeOh’s, now with more see and rounder ohs!

In all seriousness, Search Engine Optimization seems to almost be a ritual dance shrouded in mystery and knowing winks, missing only some great food, firelight, and awesome drummers. And yet, SEO affects everything Web these days. If you want someone to read your blog, buy your product, know your brand, or find your videos, you must tie in to either an existing SEO framework via an established product like YouTube or become versed in dancing the SEO dance.

Having worked previously for the Texas A&M University System on projects that benefitted internal customers, knowledge of SEO was not needed. The web applications were all account-driven and protected, and internal marketing was good enough to get the job done.

Moving into the private sector, I am deeply impressed at the scope of the industry that surrounds how to find your website (and particular information ON your website). Tools, trainings, consultants, books… It is all overwhelming, not to mention terrifying for my checkbook!

From a very basic point-of-view, following SEO ranking methodologies such as complete image tags with alt text and titles specified suits several purposes including assisting web users having disabilities. I suppose the web crawlers would be considered the most simple-functioning, disabled readers you could possibly get on your site. If the crawler can successfully find information and navigate the site, there is a very high probability that any given real human can too.

Where I saw SEO methodologies breaking away from the good, common-sense, practical website coding was in (somewhat controversial) reference to duplication of content. This also makes sense: if I am searching for reviews on a new steam mop I saw, very little will aggravate me as much as seeing the SAME reviews over and over on different sites. I want to see different peoples’ opinions. There are many recommendations along these lines too.

I am just at the beginning stages of learning about optimizing content to be found. More detail will come later when I have had time to digest a little more.