I have been blessed with a 20 month old daughter. As a toddler sheloves playing hide-n-seek. Only problem is that she screams every timeI begin to look for her. Totally giving away her position. This totallyepitomises Search Engine Optimisation.
We must not take the Alienroute. You know, in cyberspace no one can hear you scream. We have toapproach this with as much screaming as possible. Just like mydaughter, we have to scream as loud and as hard and as often as we can.Just to get noticed, so that people who are looking for us can find us.We are not trying to hide from anyone, we are not trying to camouflageour web site. We want to be noticed.
So what is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation?
From Wiki: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or thehigher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO canalso target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.”
Sothe big thing about SEO is improving the quality and quantity oftraffic to your web site from search engines. This means that SE(search engines) must know you exist. They must also rank you highenough for a particular search word or phase in order to place you inthe top search results. After all people are unlikely to scroll throughpages and pages of information to find your site. At most they willprobably go to three pages deep, maybe two or three more if they arelooking for something specific. But this just means that their searchterm is not correct. What happens in most cases is that people oftenonly click and consider the links returned by the first and maybesecond pages of the search result.
SEO is not a once off thing,or some great magic wand that you wave. It’s a process. It’s a dailytask. Something that you have to continually do for months and months.And then when you achieve the desired ranking, you have to workcontinually to keep it there. Because remember, there are other nastypeople that are doing their utmost to knock you off your top rankingand to take your spot.
Search Engine Optimization-It's Not RocketScience. Sure, you can get really complicated and technical with SEO,just like any other subject. However, search engine optimization at itsheart is simple and clean. With a good strategy, and dedication. Onestep at a time. You can get your site ranked up there with the bigboys. But don’t be deluded into believing that it will happen overnight.
Think of yourself as a needle in a very very bighay-stack. Some one is looking for you with a magnet. You need tomagnetise yourself in such a way that the magnet will pull you out ofthe clutter. How would you do this, electron by electron, atom by atom.Its a slow process. But soon enough you will be magnetised and bong,the magnet pulls you out. The only difference is that this is noordinary magnet. It operates with a resonating frequency that you haveto tune into, so that only you get pulled out amongst all the otherneedles. Naturally the ones closest to the top of the pile stand abetter chance.
So where do I start?
1.Submit your site to the search engines.
Thiskinda seems obvious. But you need to let the major search engines knowyour alive. SE’s like Google, Yahoo, MSN all have pages where you cansubmit your site from.
2.Submit your site to directory services.
Itdoes not stop at SE. Most beginners forget that a large part of rankingis about how popular you are on the Internet. One way to increase yourpopularity is by having links on other sites (I will chat about this ina later blog) that point to your site. Inbound links. One way to dothat is to submit to directory services. Directories like DMOZallow you to submit your site for free. There are other Directoriesaround some are free some are not. Some are popular some are not. Butmost agree that DMOZ is the one to start out on.
3.Create a robots.txt file.
SE’suse what is called a robot to crawl the Internet and web sites so thatthey can gather information to be indexed and categorised. A robot is aprogram that automatically traverses the Web's hypertext structure byretrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents thatare referenced. Web robots are sometimes referred to as Web Wanderers,Web Crawlers, or Spiders. Web site owners use the robots.txt file togive instructions about their site to web robots. What they can crawland what not. How deep they can go in the site structure and where theyare not allowed to crawl. Check out The Web Robots Pages for more information.
4.Submit a Sitemap.
ASitemap is exactly what is says. It is a map of your site. Of everypage in your site. This is used by search engines to help them traverseyour site easily and to quickly index your pages. Otherwise they haveto follow hyperlinks. If your page navigation is not good enough orvery complicated with long URLs, then you're in trouble. In itssimplest terms, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your web site.
Creatingand submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that search engines likeGoogle know about all the pages on your site, including URLs that maynot be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process. In general,there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTMLpage listing the pages of your site - often by section - and is meantto help users find the information they need. Second, XML Sitemaps -usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S - are a way for you to giveGoogle information about your site.
For more information go to Google's help centre for Sitemaps.
5.Content is King.
Contentis what drives search engine rankings, content is what brings users toyour site, and content, when sprinkled appropriately with keywordphrases, will feed robots. Content is King. Users like good content,its what brings them back. SE’s like good content, its what helps toincrease your sites ranking for search phrases and keywords. If thiswas a broken record, it would be one worth listening too. Content iskey in search engine optimization. Content is key in search engineoptimization. Content is key in search engine optimization.
6.Simple Site design.
Sitesthat are successful in the search engine results have this incommon-they are all simply designed, with a minimum of bandwidthhogging graphics, slowly loading animations or other aestheticstructures that are pleasing to the human eye but SE unfriendly, likeFlash. SE’s do not like or care about cosmetics, yes, your site mightwin the Picasso award. But who cares if Google, ala no one, can findit.
They are also easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs arewhat search engine spiders and search engine users like, because itenables them to get to what they're looking for; which is what? Ofcourse, if you don’t know by now - content.
7.Well written Meta-Tags.
Metatags-keyword, description, and titles - are important, but they won'tmake or break your site. Meta tags are merely part of your overallsuccess strategy. They need to be well written with compelling, keywordphrase-heavy content that will entice the user click through from thesearch results page. Good choice of Keywords, page descriptions andtitles will go a long way towards increasing your page ranking.
There is a whole other world around keyword research. But that's for another time. These need to reflect your site and business, but also have a high search usage, but low competition. Getting the right balance can be a task.
Buildinggood keywords also takes time. Over time you will add more keywords,and subtract those that are not working for you. Keywords and phrasesthat are strategically placed and crafted into your web site and itscontent can significantly boost your ratings in search engine results.Lack of well-chosen keywords and phrases on your Web site is a very badmistake to make, as search engine spiders depend on these to find yoursite; as well as search engine users. If you have not targeted specificand precise keywords for your web site, then you will not be easilyfound.
8.Link Building.
Part ofachieving top search engine positions is through links from other Webpages. These links can come from people who like your site (naturallinks), reciprocal linking, directory submissions, one-way linking,multi-site linking and directory linking. Search engines rely a lot onhuman interaction and indirect rating of web pages. It stands to reasonthat if a lot of people like a particular site that SE’s will payattention to this. How do people show that they like your site. Bycreating links on their site to your site. These are also known asinbound links.
Each of these linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:
- Reciprocal Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A
- One-Way Linking = Site B links to Site A
- Multi-Site Linking = Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A.
- Directory Linking = Site Directory A links to Site A
Thatseems simple enough. But it takes time and effort to come up with asuccessful link strategy and to build up good quality links. Most website owners aren't willing to spend the time or don't have the time tospend on it.
9.Analytics.
Oneessential element of success which is mostly overlooked is to analysethe traffic that comes to your web site. By monitoring your web sitestatistics you can track visitor behaviour, popular keywords,frequented pages and other valuable information that can helpstrengthen weaknesses within your site.
Studying web sitestatistics should be a vital part in tracking your on-line marketingand search engine optimisation progress to ultimately help improve yoursite, converting more visitors to it. You need to know everything abouthow your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
Understandingwhat visitors do on your site is crucial and by fixing possible errors,you could increase your sales in a very short time span.
You can sign up to Google Analytics to have a wide range of tools at your disposal. All free.
10.Black Hat SEO – No No.
Whatis Black Hat SEO. Black Hat search engine optimization is normallydefined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in anunethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one ormore of the following characteristics:
- Breaks search engine rules and regulations .
- Creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site .
- Unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and searchengine users.
Things like:
- Keywordstuffing: Creating long lists of keywords and putting them onto yoursite with nothing else will get you penalized eventually by searchengines.
- Invisible text: This is putting lists of keywordswhere the text is the same colour as the background, thereforeinvisible to the human eye. Like white text on a white background. Thisis done in hopes of attracting more search engine spiders.
- DoorwayPages: A doorway page is basically a “fake” page that the user willnever see. It is put there fore the sole purpose of attracting searchengine spiders, and attempting to trick them into indexing the sitehigher. Thereby increasing their page rank.
This is by nomeans complete. We will delve into this in more depth as timeprogresses. Just like you I am also learning. So if you have any ideasor insights, please drop me a comment. Tell me what you think. Also letme know what else you would like to learn about. If you need to learnabout it, then chances are I do too. I help you, you help me.
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