Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In
this article we shall discuss about Search engine optimization, its
importance and the various techniques used in the SEO process. In the
next article we shall discuss in detail about website submission to
search engines and directories.

Search Engine Optimization is the process to improve the visibility
of a website in the Search Engines via natural/organic search results
for specific keywords. The process involves on-page and off-page
optimization of the website.

Importance of SEO

More
and more people are using the web to search for information and
products and, this is an activity more popular second to email. How do
they search? People use keywords in major search engines and look for
related information. Search Engines identify the relevant contents for
the keywords and list them in the natural results. Visitors tend to
browse about 20 results and it is important that the website ranks high
for those keywords, thus increasing the chance of visitors coming to
your website.

For a higher ranking in the natural results nobody
can pay the search engine, as search engines crawl the website
initially to identify relevant contents and index its details and later
complex algorithms are used to check whether the website is useful and
more relevant to the search. Hence to rank high in the search results,
it is very important for the website to be optimized.

The most
widely used search engine is Google and here are some statistics about
the search engines. As of 2007, the global search engine market for
Google and Yahoo were 71.6% and 11.1% respectively, and the share in
the UK market were 80.2% for Google and 5.5% for Yahoo (Courtesy:
Enquisite’s Zwicky). This clearly indicates the dominance of Google
among the search engines.

Optimization Techniques

So
far we read about search engine optimization, its importance and
Google’s dominance, let’s now discuss about the various techniques used
to optimize a website and this can be classified as on-page and
off-page optimization.

On-page optimization

The techniques involved for on-page optimization are,

1. Tag optimization – The title tag and meta tags are the first SEO
   technique and what you place in the title tag is important. The
   keywords and description content of the website are to be added in meta
   tags.
2. Site map creation – Linking all pages of your website
   using a site map is essential. Both search engines and visitors use
   site map, hence the website requires to be user friendly.
3. Creation
   of Robots.Txt file - The most important aspect in creating a robots.txt
   is to make sure that it is done correctly. If the file contains
   incorrect rules then it can completely block all the spiders and
   prevent them from indexing your website.
4. Page size/Website
   Load time check – The smaller the size of the web page the easier and
   faster for the search engine to crawl your website. It is known that
   visitors will be annoyed if the websites take time to load forever and
   it’s been confirmed that 75% of the users will not return to the
   websites that take longer than four seconds.
5. HTML Validation
   - Validating a website is very important to ensure that the search
   engines index your web pages, load the web page faster, check for
   broken links and make the pages easily accessible by users.
6. Alt Text – For browsers that don’t show the images in the website alt
   text is an alternative which will show the visitor what it’s about. The
   important keywords are to be placed in the alt text but we must be very
   careful by not over doing it.

Off-page optimization

The off-page optimization techniques are building links and submitting websites to directories.

Buildings
links is the most important aspect of SEO. Search engines consider the
credibility of the links to the websites, they look for links that are
relevant, high ranking and have keywords in the link text. To keep it
simple, the search engine looks for quality, quantity and strength of
the links.

When you build links, simultaneously you have to
submit the website to directories. Directory submission is the best way
to get one way links, and when carried out effectively it could help
promote your website and bring success to your online business.

Good,
effective search engine marketing takes time and effort. The process is
accumulative, and the more time and effort that is put into it, the
more marketing power your website will have.

The online market
is increasingly becoming competitive, and those companies who perform
SEO for their websites will have more advantage in visitors and
customers and can remain top among their competitors.

At SamranWebDesign, we have a dedicated SEO team who can ensure that your
business is successful online through effective SEO techniques. For
more information contact us today!