Learning the basics of Search Engine Optimization can help you get more traffic to your site, get your web site higher rankings, and make your site more relevant. Search engine optimization is a pretty self explanatory term in the fact that it means just that – optimizing your site for the search engines; but what exactly does this mean? The words ‘search engine optimization’ (SEO for short) get tossed around a lot, and everyone seems to have an opinion on it. As well, many web development companies promise to use SEO to get you high rankings for your site, but again, what exactly is SEO?
Search engine optimization came about as a result of the way that websites are organized on the Internet. To put it into its most basic terms, websites on the Internet are organized like books in a library. This is true except for the fact that in a library, if you don’t know what you want, you can look through the stacks of books until you find it on your own. However, on the Internet, there are simply too many sites to look through manually, and so search engines were deemed the easiest way to find the information viewers would be looking for on the Internet. The logic here is simple. If you are looking for information on a home water filter, for example, you type in the keywords ‘home water filter’ and every web site that has something to do with ‘home water filter’ will pop up. As well, these sites will be ranked in the order of how many times ‘home water filter’ is mentioned in the content on the site. The web site that mentions ‘home water filter’ the most times will be ranked number one, because it would supposedly be the most helpful for the person who was looking for a home water filter. Of course, in a free market, you can see how immediately people would take advantage of this situation. If you wanted to be number one for water filters, you would simply mention it the most times on your web site and the search engines would rank you number one. Sites like this quickly became banned or penalized and now when web masters attempt tricks like this it is highly looked down upon. Now, what pleases the search engines most is called organic SEO, which means that you build your rankings naturally, by authentically becoming an authority on the products you sell or the information you distribute, and that is what we are going to cover here.
If you are reading this article, chances are you have published a web site and don’t have any idea why you are ranked number five-hundred-and-something, if you are even ranked at all. So now that you understand what SEO is, we can cover the basics of how it works to get your site higher and longer- lasting organic rankings.
- Content
The first thing you have to think about when it comes to SEO is content. Content is meaningful and relevant text that is posted on your web site and then linked to places outside of your web site on the Internet. The search engines do not recognize pictures, flash, and product descriptions as content, and so these elements will not get you any organic rankings whatsoever (generally speaking). What you need is keyword-rich content in order to get the rankings that you want on the internet. So the content you need to generate must be written around the keywords that are appropriate for the items that you are selling. This is because the only way that someone is going to find your web site when they do a search for your product is if the keywords for your product appear in content on your site. For example, if someone is looking for water filters and you sell them, then the keyword water filter is a keyword that needs to appear in the content on your web site. At this point, you can do one of two things with regards to content. You are going to need to have content on your web pages and other places on the Internet, so you can either turn your blogs into articles for your web site and article submission directories, or you can hire a professional writer to help you out. Either way, to get higher rankings, you are going to have to let the search engine know that you have content for them to look at. - Keyword Research
There are free web sites that you can go to find keywords that are relevant to your site and there are also services where you can pay someone to do the search for you. If you don’t know what you are doing, it is better to pay someone to help you, because they can explain the importance of keywords and the relevance to your rankings. For example, if you sell water filters, you may find that the keyword ‘water filter’ is a word that 3,000 different web sites are trying to get ranked for on the Internet. A keyword researcher will be able to talk to you about alternative keywords and other keywords that you can use in order to get ranked. In fact, they can come up with a whole strategy for the use of key words to get higher rankings if you are interested.Once you have keywords, you will also need a ranking report. A ranking report is a report that will show you where your web site ranks in the major search engines. If your cheap web hosting company doesn’t provide you with one, you will have to sign up for a service. Getting the right keywords and generating content won’t mean anything to you if you don’t look at your rankings report every day to chart your progress. - Code Your Website
Unfortunately, setting up your web pages and coding them correctly is a big part of SEO. Without it your site really won’t get any significant rankings. This is just something you are going to have to learn, pay someone else for, or get software like FrontPage to help you out. - Code Your Meta Tags
You see, it’s not just enough to have the content with keywords on your website. You have to organize it and let the search engines know that it is there. This is accomplished through Meta data. Meta data, chiefly Meta tags and Meta titles, are information put into HTML code on a web page that lets the search engine know what the page is about. Unfortunately, it is also the place where many people who are new to the Internet get lost when it comes to SEO and rankings. Simply put, without a Meta tag or a Meta title on your web pages, the search engines won’t classify your page and won’t bring it up in a search. The free site builder from your cheap web hosting company probably can’t help you out with this, so you are either going to have to learn HTML coding or get a web developer to help you. If you don’t understand HTML, you can always get FrontPage, where you can easily insert Meta Tags even if you don’t understand coding. - Ranking Reports
Now that you have keywords, and a ranking report, you need to generate some content using those keywords. Of course, the first thing you are going to think is, “There’s no way that I am a professional writer.” Relax. There are plenty of ways around this. The first thing that you can do to generate content requires no skill whatsoever. You can start a blog on your website. Most low cost web hosting company’s free site builders come with blogging capabilities; and search engines love the content generated on blogging sites. All you have to do is take the keywords that you researched and write a few paragraphs about each one every day. Presto! You have just created keyword rich content and posted it to your web site, and this is only the beginning. If you can get visitors to write about your key words, then you have an infinite amount of keyword-rich content generated for your site! Keyword rich content is text that is centered around your keyword so that the search engines know where to find it. Keyword density means how many times the keyword is mentioned as compared to the other amount of words in the text. A good keyword density is about one percent or a little less. Anymore that that becomes spam and your rankings will suffer. - Link Building
After your web pages have keyword rich content and are coded correctly, you should see a significant raise in your rankings on your ranking report. However, we aren’t finished yet. Your site can also get higher rankings though a process known as ‘linking.’ Finding and ranking your site through keywords isn’t the only way that search engines and others can find your web site. They can also do it by your links to other sites. This can be accomplished in several different ways. First, you can write articles and submit them to article submissions directories that will publish your article along with what is called a ‘back link’ to your web site. Back links, or inbound links are the best kind to get, because the search engines automatically assume that if other sites have linked to you that you are the authority for that keyword and they will give you a higher ranking over other web sites. The other kinds of links you can have are reciprocal links, where a web site with similar content will share a link with you to generate more traffic for both sites.
Those are the basics of SEO, which includes key words, content, Meta tags, and links in order to get higher rankings on the Internet. If you are serious about Search Engine Optimization, it will probably be best to get some help from a web developer, because Search Engine Optimization is a lot to learn if you are new to web hosting.
