SEO For Dummies, 6th Edition (2016)

Introduction

Welcome to SEO For Dummies, 6th Edition. What on earth would you want this book for? After all, can’t you just build a Web site and let your Web designer get the site into the search engines? Can’t you simply pay someone $25 to register the site with thousands of search engines? I’m sure you’ve seen advertising stating, “We guarantee top-ten placement in a gazillion search engines!” and “We’ll register you in 5,000 search engines today!”

Well, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. (Okay, fortunately for me, because if it were simple, Wiley wouldn’t pay me to write this book.) The fact is that search engine optimization is a little complicated. Not brain surgery complicated, but not as easy as “Give us 50 bucks, and we’ll handle it for you.”

The vast majority of Web sites don’t have a chance in the search engines. Why? Because of simple mistakes. Because the people creating the sites don’t have a clue what they should do to make the site easy for search engines to work with. Because they don’t understand the role of links pointing to their site, and because they’ve never thought about keywords. Because, because, because. This book helps you deal with those becauses and gets you not just one, but dozens, of steps ahead of the average Web-site Joe.

About This Book

This book demystifies the world of search engines. You find out what you need to do to give your site the best possible chance to rank well in the search engines.

In this book, I show you how to

· Make sure that you’re using the right keywords in your Web pages.

· Create pages that search engines can read and will index the way you want them to.

· Avoid techniques that search engines hate — things that can get your Web site penalized (knocked down low in search engine rankings).

· Build pages that give your site greater visibility in search engines.

· Get search engines and directories to include your site in their indexes and lists.

· Turn up the search engines’ Local search results (you know, on the little map that often appears).

· Get into the product and shopping indexes.

· Encourage other Web sites to link to yours.

· Make the most of social networking and video.

· Keep track of how your site is doing.

· And plenty more!

Foolish Assumptions

I don’t want to assume anything, but I have to believe that if you’re reading this book, you already know a few things about the Internet and search engines. I presume that you

· Have access to a computer that has access to the Internet.

· Know how to use a Web browser to get around the Internet.

· Know how to carry out searches at the Web’s major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!.

Of course, for a book like this, I have to assume a little. This is a book about how to get your Web site to rank well in the search engines. I have to assume that you know how to create and work with a site or at least know someone who can create and work with a site. In particular, you (or the other person) know how to

· Set up a Web site.

· Create Web pages.

· Load those pages onto your Web server.

· Understand a little (not a lot) HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the coding used to create Web pages.

There are many ways to create Web sites these days. You may be creating the site by hand, writing the HTML directly—but probably not. These days, you’re more likely to be using some kind of content management tool, a system that manages page creation for you, insulating you from the underlying HTML to a great degree; a tool such as WordPress or another "blogging" system, or Drupal, or an ecommerce system such as X-Cart, Volusion, or BigCommerce.

That’s fine. Most such systems these days take SEO into consideration and provide tools to help you optimize your site (though not all do!). Still, you need to know at least a little about HTML; when I refer to a <TITLE> tag or meta tags, or whatever, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I don’t go into a lot of complicated code in this book; this isn’t a primer on HTML. But to do search engine work, you (or someone on your team) need to know what a <TITLE> tag is, for instance, and how to insert it into a page, either directly or using the content-management system’s tools; how to recognize JavaScript (though not how to create or modify it); perhaps, depending on the tools you are using, how to open a Web page in a text editor and modify it; and so on. So a little basic HTML knowledge is handy to optimize a site for the search engines. If you need more information about HTML, take a look at Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 For Dummies, 5th Edition, by Ed Tittel and Chris Minnick (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

Icons Used in This Book

This book, like all For Dummies books, uses icons to highlight certain paragraphs and to alert you to particularly useful information. Here’s a rundown of what those icons mean:

A Tip icon means I’m giving you an extra snippet of information that may help you on your way or provide some additional insight into the concepts being discussed.

The Remember icon points out information that is worth committing to memory.

The Technical Stuff icon indicates geeky stuff that you can skip if you really want to, although you may want to read it if you’re the kind of person who likes to have the background info.

The Warning icon helps you stay out of trouble. It’s intended to grab your attention to help you avoid a pitfall that may harm your Web site or business.

Beyond the Book

Don’t forget to visit the Web sites associated with this book.

At www.SearchEngineBulletin.com, you find all the links in this book (so that you don’t have to type them!). You’ll also find additional useful information that didn’t make it into the book.

There’s a handy online Cheat Sheet with fingertip facts about search engine optimization. You can access it at

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/seo

For Parts II through V, there are online articles that provide more information about the world of search engine optimization. You’ll find them at

www.dummies.com/extras/seo

Occasionally, Wiley has updates to its technology books. If this book does have technical updates, they will be posted at

www.dummies.com/extras/seo