Internet marketing is a dynamic marketing channel because of its accuracy and ease in tracking traffic. It also generates new opportunities for communication and marketing at breakneck speeds.

In the early days of the Internet, search engines evolved to bring the web to users who were looking for sites, products, and like-minded users. These days, savvy marketers know that showing up on search engine results pages is a fruitful way to reach potential new customers. But landing your business’s website in that precious spot high on the results pages is far from guaranteed. Search engine optimization (SEO) grew out of the need to persuade search engines that your site offers the best content for a particular topic.

Search engine optimization isn’t a difficult discipline, but it is complex because of its many different parts that you need to tweak and adjust so that they work in harmony. And as far as marketing disciplines go, SEO is a wildly moving target. This latter quality makes a book on search engine optimization a challenging undertaking, often requiring a focus on broad concepts rather than specifics. Many of those specifics change or even fade away so often that they can need to be replaced or updated a hundred times just while this book is being updated for the newest edition.

To keep pace with the unavoidably fluctuating nature of SEO recommendations and search engine guidelines, your business needs to avoid chasing search engine algorithms. Instead, your goal should be simply to present your pages as the most relevant for a given search query. Resist the urge to assume that one aspect of search engine optimization is more important than another. Keep in mind that to succeed, all the various aspects of your SEO endeavors need to work together.

About This Book

Throughout this book, we reference tools as well as experts (ourselves and others) in the field. Search engine marketing (SEM), as an industry, is very active and excels at knowledge sharing. Although we cover the basics here, we strongly urge you to take advantage of the community that has developed since search engine marketing began. Truly, without the SEM community, we couldn’t have written this book.

We hope that you keep this book near at hand, picking it up when you need to check for answers. For that reason, we attempt to make each minibook stand on its own. If something falls outside the scope of a particular minibook, or requires a mention in one but more detail in another, we refer you to the correct chapter or minibook for more information.

Search engine optimization has grown and changed over the years, along with the search engines themselves, and it continues to change at such a fast pace that sometimes the tools and features of the search engines become outdated even soon after this book’s publication. For example, over the course of writing this book, Google changed the name of its webmaster tools platform from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Search Console, and modified the layout of local search results pages multiple times. This changeability means that you may have to research the most current tools and features available to you at at any given moment.

This book uses the following conventions, as follows:

• Text appears in brackets when it represents a search query that an Internet user might type into a search engine’s search box, like this: [when is Mother’s Day].
• Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click or tap the web address to visit that website, like this: www.dummies.com.

Foolish Assumptions

We wrote this book for a particular sort of person. We assume that you, the one holding this book, are a small-business owner who’s pretty new to Internet marketing. You might have a website, or maybe you’re thinking about finally diving into this online thing; either way, we presume that you’ve already figured out how to turn on your computer and connect to the Internet.

We also assume that you’re either somewhat familiar with the technologies that power websites or that you have access to someone who is. HTML, JavaScript, Flash, and other technologies are broad topics on their own. We don’t expect you to know everything there is to know about JavaScript programming or Flash, but we also don’t spend time explaining them to you. If you don’t know how to program in these technologies, find a super-smart programmer to help you in your journey of developing your business’s online presence. For a primer, you may want to seek out the For Dummies titles devoted to these topics.

Icons Used in This Book

This icon calls out suggestions that help you work more effectively and save time.

Try to keep items marked with this icon in mind while you optimize your website. Sometimes we offer a random tidbit of information, but more often than not, we talk about something that you’ll run into repeatedly, so you should remember it.

SEO can get pretty technical pretty fast. If you’re not familiar with the terminology, it can start to sound like gibberish. We marked the sections where we get extra-nerdy with this icon so that you can be prepared. If these sections go over your head, don’t worry: You can move on without understanding every nuance.

If you see a Warning, take extra care. This icon denotes the times when getting something wrong can nuke your site, tank your rankings, and just generally devastate your online marketing campaign.

Beyond the Book

Because SEO and the Internet are always growing and changing, we encourage you to keep your knowledge of Internet marketing fresh through reading and research beyond these pages. We have written a lot of extra content that you won’t find in this book, and that we will update as strategies and tactics change. Go online to find the following:

• The Cheat Sheet at

  www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/searchengineoptimizationaio

  Bookmark this Cheat Sheet in your web browser so that you can easily access server status codes, advanced search operators, and an SEO checklist while you’re tuning up your website. The SEO checklist is a quick-hits guide to making sure that every element on a web page helps your page rank. Use the advanced search operators to search Google, Bing, and Yahoo like a power user, filtering results to just the websites or types of pages you’re looking for. And have the server status codes handy as you check that your web server is behaving.

• Online articles covering additional topics at

  www.dummies.com/extras/searchengineoptimizationaio

  In the online Web Extras, we expand on some of the tools and how-to steps that we mention in the book. You’ll find in-depth instructions on using the free Keyword Suggestion tool to capture new search traffic; how to use the SEO Multi-Page Information tool, another free tool created by Bruce Clay, Inc.; use a checklist for making sure that your website is optimized to be mobile friendly; find some tips for enlivening content that could otherwise be boring; how to use the Free Link Analysis Report tool; explore new options for top-level domains; and find out how to set goals in Google Analytics. And finally, if you’ve read about international SEO and business opportunities in Asia, Latin America, and Europe but need some more help deciding if it’s right for your business, you can get some help with that decision here.

• Updates to this book, if we have any, are at

  www.dummies.com/extras/searchengineoptimizationaio

Where to Go from Here

The best thing about this book is that you can go anywhere from here. Although we’ve written it like a regular instruction manual that you can read from beginning to end, we also want you to be able to use it as a reference or a go-to guide for tricky problems. So, start anywhere you want. Jump into mobile website design or take a crack at creating great content for blogs and social media.

If you’re brand new to SEO, we recommend that you start at the beginning. After that, it’s up to you. Good luck and have fun. Just because this is business doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the ride.