Just what is Search Engine Optimization and why is it a critical part of your online business? Search Engine Optimisation refers to a number of different methods used to improve a web pages placing in the search engine results pages.
The idea of SEO is to make your website more visible to people who use search engines to search for content (which is essentially anyone who uses the Internet at all).
The aim of SEO is to place your web page on the first or second page of search engine results page, based on the keywords or search terms that are input by the person doing the searching. If you look at your own surfing habits I bet you would rarely look at any sites placed other than those listed on the first one or two pages.
If your website is a personal page meant primarily for yourself and perhaps a small number of family members and friends, it may not be all that important to you to have a site which is optimized.
However, if your website is business oriented, it matters a great deal. Think of it this way: if a non web based business decided to stop being listed in the phone book, took the signs and awnings down and stopped advertising, how successful would it be at attracting new business? Be it online or offline a business needs to be accessible and in peoples faces to succeed. That is why advertising is a multi billion dollar industry.
It once was that if people couldn’t find you in the phone book, your business was in serious trouble. Now, of course the question is how easy it is for people to find your website.
In order to attract (and even retain) business, your web page needs to have a high profile where your prospective clients are likely to see you.
One of the things we should look at first here is what the search engines actually see when their crawlers come to your site. The search engines don’t know (or care) about your site’s design in terms of graphics, though they will read the alternate text for these images.
All the search engines see when they look at your site is text and nothing but text. For this reason, sites which are entirely Flash-based are not generally recommended from an SEO perspective (many visitors don’t like this either). What the search engine crawlers are looking at on your site is the actual text contained on your website as well as the information contained in what is known as the headers of your site’s HTML code, most notably your title tags.
These tell the search engine crawlers what your site is about – if you don’t include these (or use an entirely graphics or animation based site), the search engines really can’t tell what your site is supposed to be about.
This can be fatal to your site, as it basically assures that no one will be able to find you with a search engine query.
As for how the search engines determine page ranking, this is a much more complex question. The answer is based on the relevance of your website content in relation to the search terms that were input, but the relevance of any given website is calculated in a number of ways.
The exact nature of the algorithms used by each search engine is different and each is closely guarded proprietary information – to further complicate matters, these algorithms are constantly evolving.
However, there are certain things which the SEO experts have managed to figure out which are universally applicable. This is what enables an SEO consultant to look over a website and suggest changes to the site to increase its visibility in terms of the search engines.
A relevant portion of the whole equation as to how high your site is placed on the search engines result pages depends on how popular your site is. This is based on how often your site is searched for, how often it is visited, and how many other sites have linked themselves to yours.
An easy way to increase your sites page ranking is to create back links. I use a simple free automated system to distribute my articles (including this one) and in turn gain valuable backlinks to my web pages, which increases my sites page rank in the search engines. Have a look at Free Traffic System.
The alterations which can improve a site’s search engine rankings include fine tuning the copy on the site to make it tune with the site’s content, its meta tags or especially popular search terms which are relevant to the content.
There are other changes which will improve a site’s search engine ranking which are not visible to visitors to the site. These are changes which affect what the search engine crawlers see when they visit the site and help this to more accurately determine what the site is about. There are yet other SEO techniques which your site should avoid using.
What should you avoid?
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario. Suppose your kitchen wares business has a website which is doing well in the results for tea kettles, frying pans and the like.
However, you’d like to further increase traffic – how about trying to rank high in the search engine results for some other non-kitchen related search terms?
This may help to increase traffic to your site, but there are reasons why everyone doesn’t do this. If SEO really worked like that, every site on the net would optimize their content for whatever the most popular searches happened to be.
There are many websites which do this simply to get you to their site by any means. This is one of the several different SEO techniques which are considered “search engine spamming” and should be avoided.
If you’re considering working with a professional search engine optimization firm, you should avoid any company who uses this technique or any of the others which follow:
* Keyword stuffing. * Misleading redirects and link/URL cloaking. * Duplicating content between pages of a website. * Misspelling words and names commonly used as search terms. * The use of unrelated links (also known as link farming). * Or for that matter, any other technique aimed at fooling the search engines.
These “black hat” SEO methods can work as a means of generating traffic, but they only work for so long before the search engines (and the public) catch on. Once search engines figure out what you’re up to, they often respond by un-indexing your site, making it impossible for anyone to find you with that search engine.
Don’t think you won’t get caught either; the major search engines encourage users to report these deceptive tactics. You can get better and more lasting results with ethical SEO methods; and without having to worry about having your site blacklisted.
Is Your Site Doing Well Enough In Search Results?
Unless you’re already in the top couple of results in the major engines, chances are you’d like to do better regardless of where your site stands at present.
As any expert search engine optimization consultant will tell you, SEO is a process, not a single task. It’s something that you’ll likely have to continue working on as your site slowly but steadily makes its way up the rankings.
This organic SEO approach is the most effective and will get you to where you want to be sooner or later; the most important thing is to ensure that your business’ website is optimized for search engines.
Failing to implement good SEO practices is one nearly certain way to set yourself up for a fall. It is much like the unadvertised, unlisted and unmarked business we discussed earlier.
People who are ready and willing to do business with you will pass you by, unaware that your site even exists. Whether or not to use SEO as an integral part of your marketing strategy isn’t even a question anymore – the question is how you’ll go about it.
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