Web Site Design and Technology Solutions
Search Engine Optimization, SEO – What is it and why should I care?
Search Engine Optimization, SEO – If you want your website to show up in the natural search results of a search engine then you need an understanding of Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Simply defined search engine optimization is the art of making your website and web pages important and relevant to the search engines like Google or Yahoo. In order to accomplish this there are a number of things you need to do within your website or at least understand so you can ensure your webmaster knows what he or she is doing.
Let’s start with how to impress a Spider. No, not the kind you scream at and stomp on. A search engine Spider. The first step in understanding search engine optimization is to understand “Spiders”. Search engines use programs called “Spiders” which they turn loose on the internet to crawl far and wide looking at all of the websites and pages it can find. Once it finds a page it will read through all of the content on that page and follow all of the links it can to other pages on the website to gather all of that information. Once it reads a websites information it will return that data to the search engine servers where another program takes over. This proprietary program created for and by each search engines, applies a very specific and very complex set of algorithms to determine how relevant and important this site is to the particular keywords for the site. The result is a ranking of importance to the search engine which will directly influence where the site will appear in the natural search results for a particular key phrase.For example, if I go to Google and type in the search phrase “Real Estate” in the search box the number one site returned (In the natural results) is Realtor.com. Probably not a surprise, but along with realtor.com there are 265 MILLION other results that Google felt were relevant to the key word phrase you searched on (“Real Estate”) the order in which the 2nd through 265 millionth appear is Google’s way of telling us which sites they feel are most important and relevant in descending order. (I am only referring to the natural search results not the pay per click advertising which appears as “Sponsored Links” which is a completely different discussion.)
So now that you know how a search engine works, let’s focus on what search engine optimization is. SEO deals with a number of properties in your website. In a nutshell it focuses on the following critical factors;
- Site design – Is your site search engine friendly. Are the pages built correctly, are all of the meta tags in place and in the right order, is the page named correctly.
- Keywords – Have the proper keywords and keyword phrases been chosen and are they integrated into the page HTML code correctly and integrated into the page content in the most optimal way.
- Content – Has the content of your website been written to capitalize on the search engine algorithms. Have the keywords and keyword phrases been placed correctly and in the optimal position, font and format with the correct tags.
- Site Navigation – Can the spiders crawl your site to get to the content that will increase your page rank.
- HTML Code – Has your site been written in code that will pass validation. Is your site exclusively Flash, or is there extensive use of JAVA script.
- Search Engine Submission – Has your site been submitted to all of the relevant search engines.
- Site Review and Comparison – has you site been reviewed and compared to the top ranking sites for your search term.
- Incoming Links – are other people linking to your site. Do you have an ongoing link exchange program, are you listed in directories, are you utilizing the latest advances in Web 2.0.
- Analysis – are you server logs being analyzed and evaluated to determine what or if progress is being made.
I’m sure by now your head is spinning and many of these things need additional explanation but what I have tried to do is get you thinking and understanding that there is a lot more to making your website show up in searches and rank well other than just buying a template program, putting your site on the web and hoping someone sees it.
Is it possible for your site to rank number one? Perhaps, but not without a lot of hard work and time. There is no way to guarantee you that your site will be number one or even in the top ten, there are too many variables and the search engines are changing and modifying algorithms all the time. I will caution you that if someone promises you will be number one in a week or two, run the other way. There are a number of people out there making such promises and the way they do this is by using unscrupulous practices that can and eventually will get your site banned from the search engines.
You can and will improve your rankings and by evaluating each of the areas above and implementing some changes to your site. Over time your website will start to improve in the search results and climb towards that coveted number one position!