Over the next few months I’ll be expounding on the finer points of the search engine optimization process here at VIA. Stay tuned for discussions that promise to be both not boring and informative.

Also, I’ll be purring.

That said, lets start off slow and easy, so we don’t over-do it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Duh. So what does this mean?

SEO is actually part of a bigger group of services known as Web Optimization and my people tend to use the terms interchangeably. The truth is, you can spend a ton of time and money optimizing your site for search engines but if the human beings who visit don’t like what they see, you’ve wasted your time.

Never forget the number one rule to web success: delivering unique, valuable, and interesting content to your users is the most important thing.

SEO is a conundrum akin to tail chasing: are there any secrets that will automatically get your site to rank first in Google? Dream on. However, by following the best practices outlined by Google themselves, it is possible to make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your web content, and this will, in return give you much better chances of being found, assuming, of course, that people are looking for you in the first place.