Overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For years, SEO has been proven effective and more and more companies are relying on it in generating higher sales in a practical way. Search Engine optimization is basically optimizing a website to get higher ranks from major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask and other vertical search engines. Good positioning in Search Engine Results Page (SERPS) is not what SEO is all about. It covers a wider range and components to make your websites, companies, products or services known and reach its target audience.

2 Kinds of Optimization

1. On-page optimization

Includes on-the-page factors influencing rankings such as proper insertion of keywords in the source code, correct placement of meta tags, using search engine friendly and readable scripts, alt tags optimization. Basically, this refers to the content management system used.

2. Off-page optimization

A way of optimizing websites using off-the-page strategy influencing search engine rankings and popularity online through inbound and outbound links. In short, it’s all about LINKS.

Components of On-Page Optimization

1. Keyword Analysis

   Keywords are considered as one of the vital elements in optimization. Choosing the proper and right keywords or key phrases is very important as it will bring targeted web traffic. It should be unique in every page, specific or country-specific and think of words that people will search on to find your business or businesses like yours. There are free software tools you can choose online or download to help you build specific keywords or key phrases.

   To gain a serious advantage in search engine rankings, it is best to place your major keyword in your domain name or URL. Consider placing a hyphen (-) [domain/two-words.html] or underscore (_) [domain/two_words.html] rather than writing them as one. Otherwise, search engines will understand it as a single word

2. Title Tag

   Your Title tag should be placed before all other tags to avoid search engines overlooking it and should be unique in each page.

   Avoid using too much stop words such as “and, on, a, and other auxiliary words” as search engines don’t take them into consideration. The lesser stop words, the better.

   Place your keywords in the Title tag at least once, but don’t make it look like you’re doing keyword stuffing by putting in long lists of keywords. Start with important keyword followed by support words and always use lower case letters as they are found first in the search engine result. Avoid using superlatives. Ideal Page Titles can be 60 characters long inclusive of separators, punctuations and spaces.

3. Meta Tags

   Meta tags are part of the HTML code: Title, Description, Keywords, Robots, copyright, author, etc.

   Meta description – The actual words placed within this tag are given some crucial weight with most major search engines today and can really help a page to rank higher in the search results for specific keywords and key phrases. Just as important, the words placed in the meta description tags appear under the title in a search engine’s list of results, giving searchers a much better idea of what that page is all about.

   Meta keywords – Used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. It is ideal to concentrate on 3 to 5 major keywords or key phrases rather than having bulk of keywords.

   Meta Robots – This attribute can specify what certain pages should not be indexed or followed by search engine robots.

4. Content (keyword emphasis, alts, headers)

   Web content are the text from the body area of your code and it is vital to have your web copy keyword-enriched.

   Headers – search engines consider text in the headings to be essential and having your keyword there will positively influence your website’s overall optimality.

   Bolds, Emphasis, Italics – The fact that you put a certain keyword or phrase in bold tells the search engine that you place an emphasis on it. Naturally it considers these words or phrases to be more important than those in regular font.

5. Image optimization

   Search engines cannot read images, only text. So putting an alt attribute will make it readable to search engines. This is also a good way to place keywords in alt tags to optimize images.

6. Include Pages to your site

   Include a separate “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages, and make room for News, Press Release, White Paper, Testimonial, Blog or Articles.

7. Create a Sitemap

   Sitemap helps user to navigate your internal pages easily. Submitting sitemaps to search engines will help in determining which page of your site has a higher priority in terms of indexing than the other. You can also track which pages from your site is not indexed or causes conflicts or problems as read by the search engines.

Components of Off-Page Optimization

1. Link Building

   There are three types of building links:

   • One Way Links ( Site A points to Site B)

     Also called as incoming links or inbound links, It is a very effective way of building links as it looks natural to search engines thus, telling how important and interesting the site is.

   • Reciprocal / Two Way Linking (Site A points to Site B and in return, Site B points back to Site A)

     It is a mutual link between two sites where both benefit web traffic.

   • Three Way Links (Site A points to Site B and Site B points to Site C and Site C points to Site A)

     It is a different type of exchanging links that will look more natural than reciprocal links.

2. Directory Submissions

   A good way of building backlinks, but make sure these directories are of good PR value.

3. Press Release Submissions

   Submit press release to PR sites so that readers will know stories, news or updates with what you are up to currently in the market. Make fresh content that is reader friendly giving them reasons to keep coming back to your site, bookmark your page, and they may even provide word-of-mouth advertising.

4. Blog

   Writing quality and interesting content will help attract visitors to your site. By posting them to blog sites, readers will have a chance of visiting your site, bookmark and talk about it on the net, a good way to boost web traffic.

5. Social Bookmarking and Networking

   Bookmarking and Networking sites are good sources of traffic. You will have the chance to share your site to others and have them list in their favorites and share with their friends. The more popular your site is, the better ranking you will get fro search engines.

6. Comments and Forum Posting

   Actively participate in forums using signature linking and comments.

Tips:

• Use keywords as your anchor text (known as context clues) rather than using your site’s URL because it helps in telling search engine robots what your site is all about and to gain weight in that particular key phrase. (ie, Online Marketing Concept rather than www.onlinemarketingconcept.com)
• Link only to sites with good Page Rank value, relevant sites or categories and sites with good traffic.
• Although frameset can now be optimized, avoid using them. It will be hard to optimize site using frames or framesets because search engines will not index pages containing frames, some browsers doesn’t support frames, visitors cannot bookmark pages from frames, it is hard to navigate through pages in frames and difficult to print content of all frames.
• Do not link to sites that uses “nofollow” or “noindex” attributes because it has no value at all as they are telling search engine robots not to visit links listed.

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