It’s one thing to read about SEO, that is to say “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s quite another thing, however, to actually understand the practical theory behind how the whole thing works. While we can throw terms at you such as SEO, SEM, SMO and the whole alphabet soup along with a massive amount of history, most of us have trouble grasping how it all works. So, in order to understand it, let’s go back to high school.

It’s Just like High School

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So what does high school have to do with SEO? In essence, SEO is exactly the same thing as high school and the popularity contest that goes on there. SEO is, in essence, a popularity contest where Google is the head cheerleader and all the boys want to go out with her. Here’s how it works in practical terms:

How You Dress and How You Look

How you dressed in high school mattered a great deal in deciding how popular you were. If you dressed like a geek, then you weren’t exactly considered to be the most popular person in school. However, if you dressed in cool clothes and took the time to keep in shape, then you were more likely to be popular in high school.

How You Dress Your Website

One aspect of SEO, known as “on page SEO,” is pretty much the same thing. Basically, it’s a matter of how you set up your website – if you include useful keywords on the page , then Google is more likely to notice you because you have something they want.

Keeping Your Website in Shape

Similarly, just like keeping yourself in shape, keeping your website lean so that it loads quickly is also likely to grab the attention of Google because Google likes to see sites that load quickly and are well organized.

In essence, if you think of these two aspects of SEO as being equivalent to the two aspects of being popular in high school, then you will have created a website that Google wants to see. However, just like in high school, doing things to yourself only got you so far. You also need to become popular with others so that the head cheerleader will be interested in you.

Being Friends with Popular Kids

The second aspect of SEO is what is commonly known as “off page SEO.” This basically means creating a presence outside of your website where other popular websites link back to your website. Let’s go back to our high school analogy again to understand this:

In high school, if you wanted to become popular, the surest way to do so was to become friends with the popular kids. If the captain of the football team was good friends with you, then you were more likely to be considered popular by association. If you were friends with the entire team, then that made you even more popular in high school.

Similarly, with off page SEO, getting popular websites to link back to your website is like having those popular friends be seen hanging out with you in school. The more popular the sites are that link to you, the more likely you are to be noticed by Google and to move to the top of the Google search results page.

Link Building and High School

Again using our high school analogy, if you wanted to get the popular kids to notice you, you could became popular with everyone in school .

Or, you would try a shortcut by finding a way to get one or two of the most popular kids to be friends with you. That’s what off page SEO is all about – you try to get links back to your site from the more popular sites and that leap frogs you over the competition who have to work harder by building lots of links with everyone else.

Bottom Line

Okay, so SEO is not exactly like going back to high school. You don’t have to sit in class all day long and pass notes that the teacher doesn’t see. However, it is enough like the popularity contest that we all experienced in high school that it should be pretty easy to follow how it works by thinking about it in those terms.

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