Tuesday 8 November 2011

The Basic things you need to know about Search Engine Optimization



You might have heard someone at one point or the other talk about SEO and you might be wondering what this SEO.The truth is that as a webmaster or a website owner who wants visibility/traffic to his site you can’t do away with SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) according to Wikipedia is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
However it is pertinent to keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading "Sponsored Links") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster tools and the official Webmaster central blog can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search.
SEO as an Internet marketing strategy considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML which primarily refers to the adding of Meta tags and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. The other has to with creating enough backlinks as well as inbound links for the site

Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.
If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.
However before you employ the services of any SEOs you need to be very careful because Google seriously frowns at SEOs that are unethical through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Surprisingly the truth no one will tell you is that No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
However I am going to be sharing with you the very basic ten SEOs every website owner should carry at the back of their fingers.
Monitor where you stand
You won't know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standings. HowEbook suggests that you keep an eye on your page rank with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.
It's also important to check your referrer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they're using to find your site.
Be mindful of your Keywords
You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think about your keywords as search terms -- how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it? The title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords.
BEWARE: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of "keyword-stuffing." Be strategic in your keyword use.
Link back to yourself
There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages. You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. HowEbook advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: "The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms."
As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking -- you don't want your visitors to get annoyed.
Create a sitemap
Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to the other entire major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
"The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better."
Search-friendly URL
Make your URLs more search-engine-friendly by naming them with clear keywords and also making them easy to understand.
Avoid Flash
Flash might look pretty, but it does nothing for your SEO. According to the Search Engine Journal, "Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page... Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results."
"If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold," the post continues
Image descriptions
Spiders can only search text, not text in your images -- which is why you need to make the words associated with your images as descriptive as possible.
Start with your image names: adding an "ALT" tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site.
The visible text around your images is valuable for SEO: HowEbook suggests adding captions to all your pictures and being descriptive with the text in immediate physical proximity to your images
Quality Content
Your content needs to be fresh -- updating regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic.
"The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are full of oft-updated, useful information about a given service, product, topic or discipline.
One way to ensure that your site gets new content on a frequent basis is to integrate a blog. An executive blog is an excellent way to reach out to your clients, create more opportunities for internal and external linking, while giving your site a more personal voice.
Social media distribution
Never joke with any of the social media. Make sure you add the facebook ,twitter,google plus and dig buttons to your page.
Link to others
An easy way to direct more traffic to your site is by developing relationships with other sites.
HowEbook suggests that you personally ask the webmasters of well-respected sites if they'll include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the favor -- then everyone wins.
In subsequent post I am going to be sharing with you exciting new things about SEO. In other not to lose out subscribe to our feeds by submitting your email address and also by liking our page. Comments are appreciated. We are here for you

3 comments:

  1. I don't even know how i ended up here, but i sure liked what i just read. This is yet another good write-up on the almighty seo. I currently run a scholarship/news website. I hope this tips work for me in time soon. Thanks for being there.

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  2. Its my pleasure reaching out to you

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  3. Hi Mart. Can u help me wt tips on how to increase one's daily unique visitors? my traffic is soooooooo low and its giving me sleepless nyts.

    ReplyDelete