SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which the quality and volume of traffic can be improved on a search engine on the Internet. Normally when we search for a particular piece of information or data on any top search engine ranking the results we get, are presented in a serial order by the particular search engine. This presentation of the results is derived from what is called the ‘Algorithmic’ basis and the results that figure at the top of the order are the ones that would be visited more often.
A number of times the process of SEO could focus on searches that broadly range from ‘vertical search’ to ‘horizontal search’ or could be a very specific search. The process of SEO depends to a great extent on how the search engine has been designed to respond to specific searches. A search engine may have a particular set of search words or ‘Keywords’ that has been used by a very large number of visitors to a particular site on this search engine. In this case the designers of the search engine would invariably give a very high priority to this particular set of keywords that would display the website in a privileged position in the top three or top five results on the search engine.
Now, although certain search engines do have somewhat different algorithms that are liable to change sometimes, it has been found that all engines more or less similarly appreciate the information that searchers look for, such as:
Simple, clean and implicit search engine friendly web site design.
Carefully prepared, perceptive direction.
Descriptive and well-written text.
Tag content that that optimizes identification of relevant keywords.
Accurate links that extend the scope of the search.
It is true that good content that provides relevant information to the visitor to the site utilizing keyword phrases should be the objective of all contents that makes its way to the World Wide Web. Therefore a professional content writer and not SEO, is what is vital for that aspect of the job. In fact most people would rather be presented with information they require in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they are visiting.
Normally a decent search engine strategy takes up to a year to work although it might also work with minimal effort for a long time although it might not perform well in the beginning. If the site does not provide the visitors with what they want then it might never perform at all. Therefore while designing a site, it is important to remember that for the site to be up on the World Wide Web it will first be read by search engines that are machines. On the other hand, any content designed specifically for machine-readability could turn off a real visitor who is not interested in how the pages appear to a machine. Hence SEO is basically a question of balance.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Relevance Of Website Structure From An SEO Point Of View
It is now established that search engine optimization depends as much on the quality of the content, as it is on the structure that virtually holds the website together. With the World Wide Web becoming the single most important source of information the critical importance of structure has been on the rise. Today most information providing sites would agree without batting an eyelid that any attempt to sidestep the vital place of structure in the sites growth is doomed to fail.
Structure evolved gradually with the growth of the Internet and its use. A more elementary definition of structure would be what we knew as ‘internal linking’ but structure as it is viewed today, has a much larger dimension and scope. Today, a website defines its vision and objectives through its structure of which internal links are just a part.
Internal linking is the easiest SEO process that a website can undertake as it is based on the most essential aspect of the site which is to link its pages meaningfully. A structure is how the various pages relate to each other and the structure of links between these pages.
Any structure has to be designed in a way that the search engines can easily read the information held by the structure and visitors are able to easily navigate around the portal or website. For instance many e-commerce websites use a structure where the home page links to all the different categories that further link to their related sub-categories. The ranking of the pages reflected on the home page reduces as one goes further down through the pages in the sub-categories. However smaller websites link each web page to the other and this way the page rank flows more evenly throughout the site as it is smaller and easy to manage. There are other websites that use a mixture of the above two methods to spread the page rank around the site as evenly as possible.
From the perspective of a search engine, an important part of internal navigation is the anchor text that is used to link the pages together. In order to ensure that the link text is relevant to the information on the page the website must use keywords within the internal links as much as possible. This ensures the dual purpose of helping visitors understand what the site is all about while also informing the search engines about the structure of the website.
Structure evolved gradually with the growth of the Internet and its use. A more elementary definition of structure would be what we knew as ‘internal linking’ but structure as it is viewed today, has a much larger dimension and scope. Today, a website defines its vision and objectives through its structure of which internal links are just a part.
Internal linking is the easiest SEO process that a website can undertake as it is based on the most essential aspect of the site which is to link its pages meaningfully. A structure is how the various pages relate to each other and the structure of links between these pages.
Any structure has to be designed in a way that the search engines can easily read the information held by the structure and visitors are able to easily navigate around the portal or website. For instance many e-commerce websites use a structure where the home page links to all the different categories that further link to their related sub-categories. The ranking of the pages reflected on the home page reduces as one goes further down through the pages in the sub-categories. However smaller websites link each web page to the other and this way the page rank flows more evenly throughout the site as it is smaller and easy to manage. There are other websites that use a mixture of the above two methods to spread the page rank around the site as evenly as possible.
From the perspective of a search engine, an important part of internal navigation is the anchor text that is used to link the pages together. In order to ensure that the link text is relevant to the information on the page the website must use keywords within the internal links as much as possible. This ensures the dual purpose of helping visitors understand what the site is all about while also informing the search engines about the structure of the website.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Easy ways to increase your search engine ranking
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to some people, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your websites for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is all about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your webpages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a fewsimple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the titlebars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that containquality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top ofthe window. For example, a meta tag would read: metaname="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is afactor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your websites for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is all about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your webpages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a fewsimple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the titlebars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that containquality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top ofthe window. For example, a meta tag would read: metaname="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is afactor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
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