What
is Search Engine Optimization?
What is Search Engine Optimization?
It is no secret that search engines are the number one traffic
generating method for driving visitors to the different web sites.
Search engines are very useful in helping people find the relevant
information they seek on the Internet. The major search engines
develop and maintain their own gigantic database of web sites that
can be searched by a user typing in a keyword or keyword phrase
in the search box.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of studying the
search engines in an effort to determine how to get your web site
to rank high on user searches. Depending on the statistical information
reviewed, search engines account for over 80% of the visitor traffic
to web sites.
Within the search engine category, Google accounts for most of
the search engine traffic. The other top search engines include
but are not limited to: Yahoo, AOL Search, Overture, AllTheWeb,
MSN Search, WiseNut, HotBot, Teoma, and Ask Jeeves. You can register
your web site with the various search engines but it is a demanding
process and takes time.
Visitor traffic from the search engines can be obtained through
organic (natural) or pay-per-click (PPC) search results. The non-paid
organic search results are the list of web sites (generally 10 per
page) returned when a user searches on a specific keyword or keyword
phrase. Keyword is the word or phrase that is typed into the search
engine's search box. The PPC items are the paid advertisements for
a specific keyword or keyword phrase and listed on the same page
as the organic search results.
You are telling the search engines what your web site is about
when you employ SEO tactics. Search engine optimization involves
the layout of your web page so that it is very easy to navigate
and read. In addition, you must skillfully place your keywords in
your web page in a manner that conveys the information that is being
searched for by your visitor. The keywords should be placed in the
Title tag, Meta Description tag and at the beginning of the Body
tag sections. Search engines look for relevant and original content
in your web page that is relative to the your site’s keyword
theme.
Search engines find out about your web site through your submission
to the search engine or through a link to your site from another
web site that has already been indexed. The search engine uses a
spider (i.e., a computer program) to index (i.e., classify and include
in the search engine database) your individual web site pages. The
spider is often referred to as a crawler. These spiders follow links
from one site to another site and create an index of information
for inclusion in the search engine database on each web page they
visit. The spider is more likely to index a static HTML web page
higher than one generated dynamically.
You can make your web page more search engine friendly by reducing
or eliminating any flash animation or graphics in your home page.
Design each page of your web site so that the keyword or keyword
phrase information being searched for by your visitors can be easily
found. You need to convey the central message or theme of your web
page to your visitors.
In addition, your web site should have a site map. A site map displays
a visual model of the pages within your web site. It enables your
visitors to navigate through your web site that has more than one
page. Each listing in your site map should be an active link to
enable your visitor to click on the link and move directly to that
specific section of your web site.
It will take a lot of concentrated work to achieve a top ranking
in any of the search engines. Rank is the position in the search
engine results page that a web site appears when someone searches
for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. The typical search engine
results page has 10 positions for web sites returned as the result
of the user's search.
Get my F.R.E.E multi-part series on generating targeted and quality
traffic to your web site. http://www.QuikSystems.com/WST/TrafficSeries.htm
Get my F.R.E.E newsletter on building your own targeted mailing
list: http://www.QuikSystems.com/EzineSub.htm
About the Author Copyright (C) 2004
– F. Terrence Markle has worked for over 20 years with public
and private companies. He has an MBA in marketing and finance. He
has been involved with Internet-related businesses for over 3 years.
His primary focus is the marketing of affiliate programs.
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