Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic") search results for keywords.

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - An Introduction

  • Most websites are set up by people anticipating hordes of visitors and enormous wealth - and the majority will be disappointed.
  • Only 1% of websites succeed and 99% fail to receive adequate visitors or create customers.

If you want new visitors to find your website, you need search engine optimization!

In SEO, the first objective is to define relevant niche keywords - keywords with acceptable amount of traffic for the website and with low quality and quantity competition.

Why Does Search Engine Position Matter?

Unless you are in the top  positions for a keyword search, you can expect virtually no traffic!

Most searchers will click on the first one or two web pages only.

Position % Click Through Rate v SERP Position
No.1 42
No.2 12
No.3 8
No.4 6
No.5 5
No.6 4
No.7 3.4
No.8 2.9
No.9 2.8
No.10 2.8
No.11 0.7
No.20 0.3
No.31 0.12
No.41 0.07

 

How does a search engine decide which web pages Will reach the top of their results pages?

  • It is like a competition for the best essay. It is the words that count and not the image or images.
  • Web designers may know the basics of SEO but usually no more.
  • The author has determined the top two factors in the Google Algorithm and provided a unique and essential program - Keyword SEO Pro

 

Obtaining Specialist Professional SEO Services

If possible, find an expert dynamic company with a reputation who has a proven record optimizing web pages preferably by recommendation.

Successful SEO requires

  • time
  • patience
  • skill
  • knowledge
  • attention to detail
  • persistence
  • knowledge of HTML
  • current information
  • an understanding of marketing
  • If you are considering handling your own SEO, that is only a good decision if;
    • you have the time to do the work and actually get it done and
    • you can get the results you need so you actually increase your traffic from top rankings.
  • then you can write the best possible text while using the keywords well, and it will also help you write compelling Title and Description tags.


OR – the willingness to invest in a professional firm to get those top rankings for you.

 

 

Search engine optimization - A more technical presentation for those considering undertaking SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the application of various strategies to increase the likelihood that your Web site will achieve top placement in the search results when someone searches on a keyword or phrase related to your product or service. In 2007, there were 754 billion searches on the internet.

Search engine optimization:

  • Is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
  • Is the practice of guiding the development or redevelopment of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top ranking on the major search engines for selected keyword phrases.
  • Is a combination of Art and Science, and is by no means easy.
  • Is critical not only to the success of your website, but also the success of your business.
  • Isn't an instant path to quick victory.
  • Is renowned for being one of the most cost effective marketing tools for creating a higher quantity of targeted sales.
  • Is an influential tool for on line marketing, and when used correctly, offers an excellent return on your assets.
  • Is essential for promotion of your website and web pages on the internet.
  • With successful SEO you can have your web pages indexed high on search engine results pages free of charge for advertising rather than paying for pay per click (ppc).
  • There is so much information about search engine optimization – it’s enough to make your head spin.
  • The search engines make it all very clear what you need to do to achieve top rankings. The success lies in the details and proper implementation.
  • There is no top secret, proprietary technique for getting top rankings.
  • Search engine algorithms are evolving and SEO techniques are necessarily changing to stay current on what the engines are looking for.
  • Many people want top rankings but they aren’t truly prepared to do what it takes to get those top rankings.

 

How can you obtain high ranking for your Web site?

  • You must consider on-page and off page optimization.
  • You should develop a strategy planning how you will promote your website.
  • There are many factors to consider.
  • The most fundamental factor is good quality content.

Understanding the search engines

Search engines provide a search facility for surfers. Somewhere on every search engine Web site are advertisements. It has been estimated that for every hundred searches conducted, one person will click on an advertisement and this is the source of search engine revenue. BILLIONS of searches are conducted monthly and income is enormous. Each search engine seeks to provide the best results for surfers. The greater the popularity of a search engine, the greater will be its income.

On-Page Search engine optimization

On-page optimization consists of improving the content and presentation of your pages including the tags that guide the web browsers as to how you want the page to be presented and the search engines as to what you consider to be the key content of the pages.

Keyword Research  

Keyword research is the key to successful search engine optimization and the success of your Web site.

Key Elements Of Your Web site For Your Search engine optimization

Some of the traditional SEO formula elements that are frequently taught is to include putting the keyword phrase:

  • in the domain name
  • in the page URL
  • in the Title tag
  • in the Meta description tag
  • in the Meta keyword tag
  • in the image alt attributes
  • in an H1 (or any H) tag
  • as the first words on the page
  • in bold and/or italics or a different colour
  • multiple times in the first paragraph or twice on the page
  • in the hyperlinks pointing to a page.

If you put the same keyword phrase in many of those spots, you run the risk of triggering a search engine spam filter. Apart from the search engines themselves, nobody knows which combinations of theses might trigger the filter. It is therefore advisable to do your SEO without any particular formula in mind. Every page should be unique.

The site should have:

  • Valuable content (text) on every page. If you are not a skilled author, you can have your content produced by a copywriter. They may be able to conduct keyword research for you. Many university and college students promote themselves as copywriters but just because they may be cheap, spend a little time finding one with proven success with whom you can work comfortably.
    • If you have good quality text, then this will be received positively by the search engines.
    • Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
    • Keywords: Think about the words users would type to find your pages (keywords), and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. You should aim to optimize each web page around one or perhaps two keywords and if more than one then they should be closely related.
    • Keyword density is the number of times the keyword is used as a percentage of the total number of words on the page. Use the keyword sparsely and search engines will mark you down. But if you use the keywords too frequently they regard it as spamming and again your page will suffer. A keyword density of 2-5% is probably safe.
    • Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. search engine robots do not recognize text contained in images.
    • Excellent coding. The quality of your coding, particularly HTML may influence ranking. Web authoring programs such as Expression Web2 and Dreamweaver perform well, but if Search engine optimization is critical, experience with coding is important.
    • To check the quality of your coding on a web page, it may be validated by entering the URL onto a validator - http://validator.w3.org/
    • Pages that are optimized for only one or two keywords.
      • The importance of KEYWORD RESEARCH cannot be overemphasised. There are no secrets involved.
    • Visually pleasing pages. First impressions are paramount. If your pages show that you are putting in effort, then surfers are more likely to be interested in your content. This improves "stickability" which is a major factor in achieving high rankings.
    • Multiple pages. The highest ranked websites, such as Wikipedia, have millions of pages. If your website has just one page it is unlikely to receive significant ranking. Make your page one on a multi-level site.
    • A navigation menu that is intuitive to use.
    • Links that function. Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links.Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
    • Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
    • Check for broken links and correct HTML. Some web authoring programs, such as Frontpage, provide these functions.

 

If you do not have this facility, I would recommend InSpyder

  • A site map that points to the important parts of your site. InSpyder is excellent. Submit your sitemap to Google.
  • A robots.txt file. Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines. This file tells crawlers which directories they can or cannot crawl. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the robots.
    • This file is placed on the root directory of your site. The following can be found at the top of Google.com's robot.txt file http://www.google.co.uk/robots.txt
    User-agent: *
Allow: /searchhistory/
Disallow: /news?output=xhtml&
Allow: /news?output=xhtml
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /groups
Disallow: /images
Disallow: /catalogs
Disallow: /catalogues
Disallow: /news
      User-agent: * indicates that the information is for all robots.

      Disallow: /news  tells the robots not to index any page in the /news directory.

    If you have 90,000 pages on your Web site then it is unlikely that a search engine will index them all. You may find that those that are critical are excluded in preference to insignificant pages.

  • Pages that download quickly. Use graphics but with care. One small picture may occupy more kilobytes than all the text on your page. If a page takes more than eight seconds to download, 80% of surfers will move on and miss their golden opportunity to view your masterpiece.

This may not be a problem if you are promoting your Web site in the USA where broadband uptake is already greater than 80%.

Extrapolated by Web Site Optimization, LLC from Nielsen//NetRatings data

Other countries, including many in Eastern Europe, have relatively poor broadband usage. If you are achieving high rankings in some countries but not in others, slow download times could be a factor.

(From Point-Topic.com)

  • An indication of geographical location : If you wish people to come to your site from anywhere around the globe this is not required. If you have a keword such as "food supplement" then the competition is vast and obtaining top ranking will be extremely difficult.

    • Search engines are blind. They cannot evaluate visual effects for themselves. In the early stages of search engine ranking, search engines have no idea whether your Web site is visually attractive or not. Only when your Web site starts to receive significant traffic from the search engine, can search engines learn whether your pages are attractive to surfers or not. Sites that are visually appealing will enhance their "stickability".

  • Graphics should have an alt- tag preferably including the keywords. Make sure that your ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
  • A theme that is clear to follow.
  • Each page should have a page title with the main keyword(s) for the page included. Make sure that your TITLE tags  are descriptive and accurate.
  • Include keywords in META-description and META-keywords tags.
    • META-keyword tags were initiated to provide webmasters with an opportunity to advise search engines as to the important content of the page. This tag has been abused by webmasters and it would seem that their value has diminished. Nevertheless, if you use them, do so wisely.
  • Have links within your Web site to the main pages.
  • Headings and their associated header tags should indicate the important sections of your page. Greatest significance should be given to  <h1> tags. Include your keywords in these tags.
  • The pages should be search engine robot friendly - a site with clean code that does not block the spiders from crawling it, and does not consist of fundamental elements that the engines have a problem with.
  • An indication of geographical location : If you wish people to come to your site from anywhere around the world, this is not required.
  • Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
  • Stickability. search engine ranking will improve if search engines observe that surfers enjoy your site. They can measure this by monitoring how long surfers stay with you. There are a number of features that increase stickability:
    • Interactivity preferably with feedback formsfor your visitors.
    • Provide a "site search" facility". Traditionally, this should be positioned at the top of your page(s) on the right side.
    • Consider introducing an RSS feed on your web pages. This will provide your surfers with the opportunity to see the latest information on the subject of their interest. RSS Feeds change, usually daily, and effectively provide rich new content for your pages. This appears to have a positive effect on page ranking.
    • A Guestbook
    • A Message Board
    • Chat Rooms

In most respects, once a surfer has clicked on a link on a search engine results page, the search engine is blind as to where the surfer goes next. Google seems to have found a way round this by offering a free Google Analytics program. Webmasters, using this program, place a code on each of the pages that they wish to analyse. From the webmaster point of view, Google is providing a phenomenally useful research tool. Of course, there must be a benefit from Google's point of view. With the code on your pages, Google can track where surfers go once they have left the search engine results page. How Google Analytics benefits Google must be a matter of conjecture. Remember, that they are trying to provide the best search option for surfers. It could be that if Google Analytics demonstrates that surfers referred to you are staying on your site are staying on your page or Web site, then this will positively effect your ranking. If, on the other hand, you are providing links to other sites and visitors leave your site and go to these, then Google would assume that your site is not in itself providing the required information and this could have a negative effect on your ranking.

  • If you are promoting a keyword for your page, ranking will depend on competition. There are 1.7 million searches for "music" on Overture.com each month and more than a BILLION web pages on the Google database for this keyword. There are millions to be made by selling commodities such as CDs and competition is fierce. Google is currently the most popular of the search engines. Yahoo, MSN and Ask also provide a lot of traffic.
  • search engines are, however, more than interested in the Web sites at the top of their rankings. Here they can assess “stickability”. If a surfer clicks on a Web site and returns rapidly to the search engine seeking another site then the search engine assumes that the first Web site did not have the required information, or functioned poorly perhaps due to slow download time. The search engine will record this negatively. On the other hand, if a surfer goes to a site and does not return, returns after a significant time delay or comes back and starts a totally new search, then the search engine assumes that the web site provided the required information and records this positively. In essence, top ranked sites rise or fall according to assessment by surfers.

What software is available to assist with my Search Engine Optimization

There are numerous affordable programs to assist with search engine optimisation.

Most of us employ authoring programs to assist us to develop our pages. Most modern authoring programs, including Dreamweaver and Expression Web, provide a utility to check on the quality of HTML coding. You can obtain page validation on the internet on http://validator.w3.org/ Many web pages, that appear nicely presented have many coding errors. From the search engine perspective, it is quality of content that is paramount. At one time, many top ranked pages were guilty of coding errors, but a recent check has shown that the top ranked pages have no errors or no more than a few.

Internet Business Promotor will assess many SEO parameters for any one of your pages and provides an invaluable comparison of your page and coding in comparison to the top ten performing pages on whichever search engine you choose. This software also provides a ranking facility enabling you to monitor the position of you pages as they progress on the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP). You will find a tutorial explaining every detail of the program.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, developed a new concept for a search engine positioning algorithm. His concept, which is known as PageRank, has been that the quality of a website and web pages can be partly determined by the recommendations from other websites. A high quality website my receive thousands of back links.

Many have tried to cheat the system by a variety of 'black hat' techniques. One example would be to create many websites and have them link to the website being promoted. The quality of links is also important. A pharmacy site linking to a medical clinic would be more relevant than a shoe shop. The value of the link is also related to the status of the referring page. A link from a page with a high PageRank is far greater than from a page with zero PageRank.

At one time, reciprocal linking became popular, but it is probable that the search engines have reduced their effectiveness.

Some engaged in link farms offering links at a price. Again, the search engines can see through such methods.

Links on social networking sites are becoming popular.

The title of your page and its description are likely to be presented on the search engine results page (SERP) and the importance of these tags cannot be overstated. Ensure that you include the main keywords of your page in these tags as well as in the URL. If your page is about music then label its filename as “music”.

Monitoring Your Search engine optimization Campaign

You will need to monitor your Search engine optimization campaign to determine changes in your search engine ranking. If you have several targeted keywords and/or you wish to monitor response in several search engines you will need a program. IBP9 is commendable.

If you have a site that is already popular then making changes needs to be undertaken with particular care. Improvement to coding, such as META keywords, can have no adverse effect. If your site downloads slowly because of the number and size of images then you could be concerned that removing these may detract from the experience enjoyed by your regular visitors. On the other hand, it is possible that those who are aware of your site refrain from visiting regularly because they become frustrated waiting for a page to download. There are web sites that will analyse your pages for you and include the download times. Examples are: Websiteoptimization.com.

Personalization, universal search, intent based search and geo-targeting the landscape is changing and different results will be displayed for different people.
That is all good news! It means you won’t get reliable ranking reports and you may even get less total traffic but the traffic you do get will be more targeted since your webpage coming up in the SERPs was matched to a query that was specific and relevant based on their location and search history.

Quality guidelines For Optimum Search engine optimization

These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behaviour, but the search engines may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known Web sites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, search engines approve of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

'White Hat' and 'Black Hat' SEO Techniques

'White Hat SEO Techniques' are those that are acceptable to the search engines. 'Black Hat SEO Techniques' are those considered by the search engines to be cheating and may lead to a website being banned.

Quality guidelines - basic principles:

  • Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
  • It is permissible to influence search engines by legitimate techniques but do not try to trick the search engines.
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a Web site that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
  • Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighbourhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
  • Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources. Google specifically states "that it does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
  • Do not copy work from other websites. Pages that are duplicated from other domains, may cause difficulty for you.
  • Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

  • Using white text on a white background
  • Including text behind an image
  • Using CSS to hide text
  • Setting the font size to 0

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from a search engine index, and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that's not easily viewable by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?

  • Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
    • Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from a search engine index.

    Some examples of cloaking include:

    • Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users.
    • Serving different content to search engines than to users.

    If your site contains elements that aren't crawlable by search engines (such as Flash, Javascript, or images), you shouldn't provide cloaked content to search engines. Rather, you should consider visitors to your site who are unable to view these elements as well. For instance:

    • Provide alt text that describes images for visitors with screen readers or images turned off in their browsers.
  • Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords. This is known as "stuffing" Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

  • Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

    • Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

    • Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
    • Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices

    However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.

  • Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
  • Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. Doorway pages are pages specifically made for search engines. They contain many links - often several hundred - that are of little to no use to the visitor, and do not contain valuable content.

Search engines aim is to give their users the most valuable and relevant search results. They frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines. Sites making use of these practices may be removed from the a search engine index.

The quality of the pages can be checked with your authoring program and the links can be checked with programs such as DeepTrawl.

Following these guidelines will help search engines find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the a search engine index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on a search engine or on any of it's partner sites.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science but it is science. There is much advice to be found on the Internet and in books. The author hopes you will find most of the information you require on this Web site. Be prepared to experiment but monitor the response to change by checking your search engine and Alexa ranking. The key to SEO is understanding the aspirations of surfers. In this respect, your Search engine optimization campaign will meet with the complete approval of the search engines.

Other sources for information on SEO.

There are many tutorials and training videos by on the internet and some good quality ones can be found on YouTube providing excellent tips.

Obtaining Specialist Professional SEO Services

If possible, find an expert dynamic company with a reputation who has a proven track-record optimizing web pages preferably by recommendation. If you cannot obtain a firm recommendation, you can find more than one directory on the internet. An SEO consultant is running an e-commerce business and you can assess for yourself their success by assessing their own websites. They are well paid by their clients and should be able to provide reports listing articles that have achieved high positioning. They should be able to provide a guaranteed positioning for your web pages.

Successful SEO requires

  • time
  • patience
  • skill
  • knowledge
  • persistence
  • attention to detail
  • knowledge of HTML
  • current information
  • an understanding of marketing
  • If you are considering handling your own SEO, that is only a good decision if;
    • you have the time to do the work and actually get it done and
    • you can get the results you need so you actually increase your traffic from top rankings.

    then you can write the best possible text while using the keywords well, and it will also help you write compelling Title and Description tags.


    OR – the willingness to invest in a professional firm to get those top rankings for you.

    SEO Summary:

    • You should fine tune your Web site to its optimum if it is to be successful.
    • A well managed Web site will be a pleasure for your visitor.
    • To get ranked you should have always been focused on creating high quality content, getting good links into your site and creating a useful, informative site that is focused on the user experience and ultimately on getting the sale.

What Google Wants:

Title:

83 characters (this is what displays, Google can index up to 125 characters)

Keyword in Title:

Important - especially at the beginning

Keyword Meta Tag:

Not supported

Redirect Meta Tag:

Seen as SPAM, penalized

What does Google index?:

Title, All visible text, <no frames> content, ALT text, Link Text (higher score), ASP files, PDF files. Limit is 102k in file size.

Case Sensitive Search:

No

Keyword in Domain?:

Yes, suggest to use third-level domains (i.e. http://keyword.domain.com/)

Link Popularity:

Yes, a major influence (i.e. PageRank).

Submission Notes

  • Google is not case sensitive.
  • Google doesn't use the Meta Description Tag for the page summary in the search results. It displays the text around the keyword from the document source and highlights the keyword. Google can also pull the description that was used in the Open Directory Project listing for your site.
  • Google caches your page content on their server and makes it available through the "Show Matches" link in the search results. This is done in case your server goes down, users can still access your content.

What Can Get Your Site Banned/Penalized

  • Hidden Text. Any text that is in hidden codes, very small text or text that is the same, or close to the same as the background color on the page.
  • Using two or more Title tags.
  • Over-repetition of keywords in Title or the body text.
  • Zero Link Popularity
  • Linking to Link Farms or other "bad neighbourhoods".
  • Mirrored Sites. The same content on multiple domains.
  • Promotion of software that Google has "banned" (i.e. Web Position Gold, OptiLink, TopDog, etc.).

How To Succeed With Google

  • Build a site with at least 50 pages of quality content.
  • Add 2-5 pages per week of quality content to the site.
  • Seek out at least 100 quality link exchanges.
  • Focus on Quality Content.
  • Track your progress through each Google Dance. The Google Dance occurs approximately every 4-5 weeks and is when Google does a complete update of their index.
  • Keywords in Anchor Text are given a boost.
  • Avoid Linking to "Bad neighbourhoods".
  • Track your competitors through the Google Toolbar.

First Website Design .com aims to help you build a high quality website that will receive large volumes of targeted traffic utilizing appropriate search engine optimization techniques with the assistance of keyword research tools. It will provide you with advice on the best internet marketing strategies that will assist you to sell products and ways to make money online.

First Website Design .com aims to help you build a high quality website that will receive large volumes of targeted traffic utilizing appropriate search engine optimization techniques with the assistance of keyword research tools. It will provide you with advice on the best internet marketing strategies that will assist you to sell products and ways to make money online.

David Viniker is a clinician (consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist - ObGyn at Whipps Cross University Hospital, London - borders of London and Essex). He has research and teaching interests. His website www.2womenshealth.com receives 1.5 million visitors annually and is the most popular personal women's health website on the internet. He believes that quality of content is a prerequisite to success. He has applied his clinical skills to researching SEO techniques.

We are based in Loughton, Essex and close to North and East London and Hertfordshire.