SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing one’s website to improve the position in which it will appear within the search results obtained from a search engine based on specific keyword phrases. The exact formula for achieving this result is a much discussed and debated topic. However, there is at least a consensus on the basic approach to improving rankings and for anyone running an online business it is imperative to follow these basics to have any hope of appearing somewhere on the first or second page of Google, Yahoo! or Bing.
First and foremost is the basic design and structure of the website itself. A carefully planned, user-friendly, logical, and direct landing page or home page is essential. It is very useful to design the website layout on paper before any computer design work begins. Using a graphical flowchart also goes a long way in keeping things organized and makes the design much easier to understand for everyone who will eventually be involved in designing, coding, or implementing the final project. A flowchart is basically a simple graphical representation using directional lines, graphic symbols, and arrows that is used to represent the layout features of the menu flow, page order, and logical path of a website.
When designing the website, keep in mind that as much useful, high-quality, and informative data about the business or industry the website focuses on should be included throughout the site. A glossary of terms related to the industry the website specializes in would be a good place to start. Another very useful inclusion could be a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that describes in detail the most common questions related to the business area of the website, with descriptive answers. When it comes to SEO, you can never pack too much information into a website as long as it is completely original (unless properly referenced) unique content.
Original content means that copying data pages from Wikipedia or using content pages from other websites simply won’t work. This is one place where Google, in particular, is very good at detecting copied content and will not give any SEO feed for such material included on one’s website. If a business owner is unable to create original content themselves, it would be advisable to hire someone to write original content for the website, as original content is just as important, if not more, than any other aspect of achieving good results. SEO results.
Also, there are many so-called “article submission” websites that are available to host content-loaded articles written on almost any topic. In fact, you may very well be reading this article on an article submission site right now. The purpose, in SEO, for uploading and submitting articles to these types of websites is twofold: firstly, these websites have thousands of visitors every day, which is a huge potential market for readers of the submitted articles and secondly, as author is allowed one. to create a signature that can include a link that directs traffic back to the author’s chosen website.
This brings us to the subject of links, and more specifically to ‘backlinks’. The term backlink refers to a hypertext link, found on an external website that links to or points to the website itself. In addition to the link, there is also a phrase, known as a ‘keyword phrase’, that is associated with the link. When used in this way, the keyword phrase is called the “anchor text” of the link (more on this later).
In the early days of the internet, backlinking was the holy grail of SEO. One simply needed to acquire many, many links to one’s website in order to rank highly within a search engine’s result set. At that time, it was mainly the number of backlinks that determined the PR of a website and not the quality of the inbound links. Those days, I fear, are long, long ago. Search engines are much more “smart” today and the number of backlinks is not as important as the “quality” of the backlink in determining whether or not the backlink will provide an SEO benefit.
To prevent the misuse of link farming and other types of link manipulation, the use of the ‘do not track’ attribute has been implemented. When the use of the ‘do not follow’ attribute is applied to a link, it tells the search engine not to give any benefit to the destination site, no matter how high the referring site’s page rank is. This has been successful in helping to reduce the amount of spam and ‘spamdexing’.
Other methods that were once popular but are no longer effective include: keyword stuffing, hidden or invisible text, hidden unrelated content, and meta tag stuffing. If someone mentions any of these techniques as a means of improving your SEO, make sure you are NOT doing business with them! None of these methods work at all.
At this point it is necessary to talk about PR or PageRank. PageRank is the method of rating the ‘authority’ or importance of a website on the web and the process was primarily developed by researcher Larry Page (hence the name ‘Page’ Rank) at Stanford University as part of a investigation project. Page and another researcher named Brin later founded Google and took the technology with them and it remains the foundation of Google’s search engine and search tools to this day.
A website’s PageRank is a numerical weight ranging from 0 to 10 that is assigned to a website based on, among other things, the number and PageRank of external websites that link or inbound to the target site. . A website that has many inbound links from websites that have a high PageRank will also receive a high PageRank. According to Google’s website, PageRank is calculated “considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms.”
It goes without saying that trying to understand such a complex algorithm will never be possible, but there are still many things that can be done to boost a site’s PR and help improve its placement in search engine results.
We’ve discussed the importance of high-quality website design, the need for highly informative original content, article submission, backlinking, and PageRank. This would be a good time to start discussing the process of determining keywords and keyword phrases.
Selecting the right keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO efforts on can determine whether or not it will be possible to successfully achieve the desired result. It is very important to take the time to do some research on the competition and the popularity of the keywords. In general, the most common terms that describe a business would be the best place to start. For example, if you own a business that provides roofing contracting services, keywords you might consider focusing on could be ‘Roofing Contracting’ or ‘Roofing Contractor’.
Google provides a tool that shows the average number of searches for selected keyword phrases. You can find this tool by searching Google for ‘keyword tool’. After entering the keyword or keyword phrase and pressing the ‘search’ button, a results page will be displayed indicating the number of times the keyword(s) have been searched on average each month.
Many other similar phrases that more closely match the keywords that were searched for are also displayed. Take the time to scroll through this list and many good alternative phrases can be found this way. Choosing the phrase that has the most searches and is closest to the website’s line of business is a solid practical approach.