SEO your way to world domination

The first thing that young adults do when they want to find out more about ANYTHING is Google it. How do I know? Google told me. Plus I've actually done primary research on the subject. According to subjects in my focus groups, Google is a great and easy way to visually rank website sources. What does this mean? It means, the higher the item in the results list, the better that website is for your search. Or, at least, young adults think so. My research also concluded that young adults view websites as the first and most important face of a company. So what does this mean? SEO is everything, if you're a company trying to catch the eye of the younger generation. And if you're a company, you should be trying to catch our eye. We're growing up quickly.

But, according to a blogger on a web design and development blog, SEO can fail businesses if they don't use the rest of their online resources effectively. Some of these other actions include:

• Blog commenting,
• Article writing,
• Forum involvement;
• Social media presence and;
• Backlink building.

The writer says that using these resources often helps to outrank bigger competition. It not only helps to spread keywords around and raise awareness, but people actually are more likely to trust the word of bloggers and forum writers than websites, necessarily.

A blogger on MyCheapTravelGuide.com points out the importance of SEO in guaranteeing traffic to a website (something that no other medium but the internet can guarantee), but also in targeting. People searching these keywords are interested. This is another benefit of social networks. Involvement on topic-based forums and blogs allow targeting according to specific interests, of people who are actively searching out more information on these topics. Facebook very cheaply allows advertisers to narrow their target down to even their favorite movie (I am always amused by all the ads I get "For Labyrinth Lovers"). This way companies can be in the space that their target is, without coming off as intrusive or interrupting the flow.

The gist of what I'm saying is, whether you're planning on taking over the world with your giant, billion-dollar evil corporation or just by your poor college-student lonesome, there are a lot of free options online for sneakily promoting yourself where people are most trusting. Woohoo, power to the people. And companies.