The process of choosing and implementing keywords and keyword phrases as they relate to your website or blog is called on search engine optimization or SEO, for short. What this involves is a combination of fine tuning your content, HTM, Naming images, your META tags and a internal link building process, so that when someone searches for specific phrases related to your site/blog, their search returns your site/blog on top (only on page seo concern). Since well known search engines, like Google, Yahoo and msn use complicated algorithms to determine how relevant your site/blog is in relation to any given set of search terms, understanding and implementing SEO techniques are very important because most searchers rarely search beyond the first page of any search results.
Getting listed on the first page of the popular search engines can provide you with a great deal of traffic and we all know, traffic is the lifeblood of any business (offline or online) and you need to understand there is a wealth of traffic to be gained from optimal search engine rankings.
Search engines use any number of factors to determine rank listings. The methods and algorithms they use are closely guarded secrets and differ widely between search engines. In fact, they differ so much so that a site/blog can rank on the first page of one search engine and rank poorly on another and it can take weeks for a site/blog to be indexed and ranked, although in my experience, it’s only taken a few days. The most common factors search engines use to rank sites/blogs, other than content and HTML are: keyword density, META tags and inbound/reciprocal links. Keyword density refers to how many times a particular keyword appears in the content of your site/blog. While this is an important factor in optimizing your site/blog, it is also worth noting that listing a keyword or keyword phrase listed more than three times can be considered spamming and can result in your site/blog being banned. So care should be taken to avoid excessive use of a particular keyword or keyword phrase. 3 times is considered the rule of thumb.
META tags are small pieces of HTML code that many search engines use to evaluate the rank of your site/blog. They are placed between the beginning head tag and the closing end head tag in the code of your site/blog. To see a live example, simply open any site/blog and using your browsers view tab, click on “Page Source” (Mozilla Firefox) or the page tab and click on “Source” (Internet Explorer). As you can see, there are a few different uses of META tags, ranging from description to keywords, as well as author. If you are going to add META tags yourself, make sure you have a backup of the code of your site/blog. I can tell you from personal experience that it is extremely easy to make a mistake when editing code and can quite possibly completely hose up your site/blog. Tip: Have a copy of your site’s/blog’s code sitting safely on your desktop. Believe me, you’ll thank me in the end.
Inbound and/or reciprocal links are also used by many search engines to determine relevance. Inbound links are hyperlinks from another site/blog to yours. This type of linking is considered by many to be one of the best ways to get ranked highly in search engines. Reciprocal links are hyperlinks from one site to another and back again. A kind of “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” relationship. Reciprocal links are not considered to be as good as inbound links in terms of SEO, but I believe, can go a long way in establishing relationships with other webmasters/blog owners, as well as your credibility online. Also, with either type of linking structure, it is important to research the page rank of the sites you are interested in linking to. The higher the page rank, the better the link.
Image optimization is also very important nows days to rank your website on search engine. I have written article in past about optimizing images take inside look and implement it.
Now if you really don’t want to do all that work, there are companies out there that will look at the plan for your site/blog, make recommendations to improve your search engine ranking and monitor your site to ensure you rank high in the search engines. Usually they work in tandem with your website designer to build an integrated plan for your site/blog. They also can assist with the content portion of your site/blog to ensure you have content that is valuable to both your visitors and the search engines.
