Listen up you entreprenerds! It’s time for a knowledge dump on your mind mattress. Let’s do a quick thought experiment for a second, let’s pretend that you’ve actually got a business, and you haven’t just been attending seminars for the free coffee and attractive trainers. Let’s call this business ‘TRUNK JUNK’ which is a product that helps you organise your trunk space using clever containers and shelves; Brilliant. In this experiment I would like to you imagine how you’re going to sell your JUNK to people, where are you going to sell it? Are you going to take out a loan and sell your JUNK in a store? Maybe, how about going cheaper and setting up a market stall? Sure that could work, how about that one, the big one? The world wide web by one? What about selling online? Most things now are sold online from doorknobs to breast-themed mousepads (those are real). But have you ever thought about how you go about searching online? what tools do you use? and how is that information stored, searched and collected on command? Whether you’re spending your business hours looking up products names, phone numbers or the chest-size of your favourite actress, the way that you search for all of these queries are all implemented in the same way, through SEARCH ENGINES. Understanding how a SEARCH ENGINE operates can help in getting what you’ve made (TRUNK JUNK) out there and seen by who you need it to be seen by (people that want no longer want JUNK in their TRUNK). 80%-90% of the time whenever someone wants to know something they turn to BING, I mean GOOGLE, no-one uses BING intentionally. The way that GOOGLE searches the internet is quite simple to explain. That results in a page that you’re exposed to after typing in your query is based on the relevancy of two key elements KEYWORDS and BACKLINKS. KEYWORDS are wording that just that KEYWORDS, the search engine will ‘search’ for websites or ‘sites’ that contain the KEYWORDS that were entered into the engine. Depending on how much of the keywords are present within these sites will be shown by how high they are on the results page. This is why when construction the language for your site, ensure that you use as many searchable KEYWORDS as possible, as this will benefit you when potential customers come-a- wandering the web. If a customer-to-be cannot find what they are looking for within the first 2-3 pages of the GOOGLE search results, they don’t keep looking, they change tact and use different KEYWORDS until they get the results they want or just give up. If your pages/sites aren’t coming up within those first few pages, you’ve lost that customer, so find the right words, lure in those customers like the KEYWORD equivalent of a deep-sea anglerfish. Moving on. BACKLINKS, the second and more complicated element of what is called SEO or SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION requires something much harder than just KEYWORDS, it requires trust. What do I mean by this? Well, BACKLINKS are the __ from pages that don’t need to belong to you that reference your sites and your KEYWORDS. Let’s use an example, with TRUNK JUNK if an aspiring article writer were to make a top 10 list of things to do to organise your car and they link to your products and site as part of that article, boom, there’s your BACKLINK. BACKLINKS are great for elevating your site and bringing up the PAGE RANK of your brand and business. PAGE RANKS, by the way, is the term used to describe how high your pages or your site stack amongst other related material within search results. Interesting stuff don’t you think? These are the basics of understanding how SEARCH ENGINES do their job and how if understood, can be used to great effect if you put the work in. You can of course just bypass a lot of this by paying companies like GOOGLE and BING (don’t waste your money) so that your sites and your products are higher in the PAGE RANK and become more likely be seen by those that search for KEYWORDS that are exactly or similar to what you’re selling. You well-off cheats. So, congratulations, you’ve just learned about SEO’s without having to take a £900 web seminar, now take that saved income and buy a bottle of whiskey or six and a takeout, you’ve earnt it. Happy searching.