The Seo Or Search Engine Optimization

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

SEO or Search Engine Optimization – In simplest terms, SEO is an attempt make the subject website more visible to search engines (like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) also referred to as spiders, crawlers, or robots. The search engines are trying to satisfy the internet user who is trying to find something. The search engines read your website’s code, index it, and store information. From your code, they determine where your website ranks in satisfying various searches or queries that internet users type in. For example, if someone is searching for "coffee beans", the search engine determines which website has the most and best information on coffee beans and places that website first in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). The order in which websites are listed on the SERPS is called search ranking and each of the search engines may rank your website a little differently.

The objective is not just the attempt to rank for specific keywords, but it is also extremely important to gain an authoritative position in a market or niche. It is important to understand that SEO takes time, research, patience, and careful attention to detail. It is also important to remember that SEO is a process the must be repeated each and every month, in a strategic and continuous fashion, for you to obtain and sustain visibility on the internet. Your competition is striving to have the most relevance every day… and they will not stop. The completion will absolutely overcome you and your search engine ranking in a matter of months, if not weeks or days… if your site does not contain the most relevant information, rich key word content and integral relationships with the rest of the world wide web.

The things to consider are:

Are you targeting the right types of keywords?

Do you have enough supporting relevant information on those topics within your website?

Is your website groomed to be the most informative and highest ranking among thousands of competitive sites?

Complete Web Site Analysis – A thorough review of your website will be done, checking all tags, content relevance, code, urls, internal link structure, external links (inbound & outbound), anchor text, header tag usage. If you have Google Analytics or use Google Adwords, information will be analyzed. Keyword analysis will also be done to determine the relevancy of your keywords and how competitive they are. We also determine new keyword opportunities and search for possible long-tailed keywords for future use. An analysis of your competition will also be done. This analysis is a very painstakingly careful and tedious process that may take some time. The time varies based on the size of your website and the level of competition.

Web Site Statistics – Any available statistics about your site will be reviewed, from your hosting site, Google analytics, Google Adwords and through a variety of SEO tools that we use. What pages are being visited, visit length, visit paths, etc.

HTML Site Map & XML Site Map - A site map, sometimes written "sitemap," is an overview of the pages within a website. Search engines look for a properly coded and configured site map as one of the primary elements utilized in ranking your website.

Site maps of smaller sites may include every page of the website, while site maps of larger sites often only include pages for major categories and subcategories of the website. While site maps can be organized in a variety of ways, most use an outline form, with pages arranged by topic. This gives visitors a good overall picture of how the site is organized and clearly defines all the resources the website has to offer.

While a properly designed website should allow visitors to navigate the entire site without using the site map, incorporating a site map gives users another means of locating pages. For this reason, each page listed in a site map is typically linked to the page it represents. This allows visitors to quickly jump to any section of a website listed in the site map.

Title Tags – HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

A title tag belongs in the <HEAD> section of a Web page, above the <BODY> section. Technically, it may be above or below the META tags, but it is common practice to place the very important title tag above the less important meta tags.

The information contained in a title tag appears at the top of the Web browser when viewing a Web page, and at the top of most search listings.

Writing descriptive title tags is an important part of optimizing a site to rank well with the search engines and get clicked by visitors. A well-crafted title tag can stand on its own without the benefit of the accompanying page content, as this is how it appears to Web searchers who know nothing about your site.

We include at least one targeted keyword or phrase, maybe more, instead of using all generic words that do not distinguish your page. If possible, keywords will be used early in the title to help search engines and visitors identify the main subject of the page, and also to avoid getting cut off by search engines that use relatively short titles. Search engines have limits as to how many characters are used from the title tag and typically display between 50 and 70 characters.

When you type in a key word or set of key words, the search engine takes the web site and shows it at the top of the display of your listing on the search results page. See the below example:

Coffee Bean Direct Coffee Roasters: Quality Coffee and Tea at the ...

www.coffeebeandirect.com/ - Cached

Roaster of coffee offers many varieties, in 1, 5 or 25-pound bags, as well as sampler packs, green beans, and bagged tea.

The search used here was "coffee beans". The blue title is this company’s title tag. If you don’t have a title tag, the search engine copies text content from your website page, which sometimes results in odd, useless, or even embarrassing text. A properly configured Title Tag will help a person searching for coffee beans find and select your website page.

Description Tags - In the same "coffee beans" example, the search engine place your description tag below your title. Again this tag should compel the user to select your site. If there is no description, the search engine will grab any text from your website page, sometimes with a useless and even ridiculous result. Only a certain number of characters will be used. Every page of your website should have its own description.

Keyword Tags – Keywords are words and phrases which an internet user will likely type in when looking for something on the web. The search engines read your website text and then determine how each of your pages satisfies the keywords used in a search. In the "coffee beans" example above, note the words in italic. In this website, "coffee beans" is one of their keywords. It is important to understand that each page of your website should have its own tags and go after a few keywords on each page. It is also important to understand, you don’t usually want your pages competing against each other and secondly, you can satisfy only a few keyword terms per page, especially if you have strong competition for those terms. Every page of your website should have its own keywords.

SEO Friendly Link Structure – Your internal link structure is the way your site moves the user from one page to another. What is important is how this is accomplished through the code. There are ways to do this which help to support your keywords and improve page ranking.

Inbound Link Building - Inbound link building is a cornerstone of search engine optimization. It is a useful technique to generate inbound links to a website to increase web traffic and internet popularity. It is a most effective approach to build high Page Rank in search engine and gain popularity over competitors. This is accomplished in multiple ways; Press Releases, Link Exchanges with link partners, Forum Participation, Blog Participation, Article Writing & Submission, and Directory Listings…even Classified Ads.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. Anchor text is used to tell search engines and visitors what the page is about. The words contained in anchor text can determine the ranking that page will receive by search engines. When used wisely anchor text boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google and provides your visitors with useful information about the content of the page you’re linking to.

Search engines are designed to provide highly relevant search results and this is where properly selected anchor text comes into play. Anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page.

Anchor text can be used in:

Links on your home or main page – (important spot)

External links – links from other sites

Internal links – links on your pages

Navigation maps

Internal Anchor Text – Internal anchor text is the code that is used in your internal linking. Search engines use this code to help determine the subject matter of the linked to document.

External Link Structure – External link structure is the outbound links you have going to other sites and links that other sites make to your site. Your external link structure is important in the same ways as your internal link structure, through the use of proper anchor text, but there’s more. The search engines look at these links. Many people think that if you have all kinds of links to your site coming from other locations on the web, your site will be perceived as important and relevant. This is only true if those links come from authority sites and have relevant information in their text and used in the link. Example: The NY Times does an article on "coffee beans" and has a link to your site. (From a powerful site with info on coffee beans linking to a site about coffee beans.) This holds a lot of weight with the search engines.

Advanced Key Word Research – This practice will help us understand the web site visitor and their intentions relative to your business. Our objective is to determine which words your customer is most likely to use in trying to find your product or service. We can then enrich the text on your website to increase the likelihood of your business being discovered by those in search of your offering.

Robots.txt files – Robots text files are used to give information to search engines. When a robot is making a visit to one of your website pages, for example, you may disallow it from doing so through the use of a robots.txt file. It is not intended to use to hide information but to ask a search engine not to crawl your page while it is under reconstruction or for some other reason. Or you may use it to attempt to block "bad" robots such as those used by spammers to scan for email addresses. It is not enforced, but Google, for one, respects your wishes if asked not to crawl and index that particular page.

Header Tag Optimization – We’re talking about the headings and sub-headings in your website. Do all the headings and the sub-headings within the page content support each other, have relevant content under them and support keywords. Appropriate use of heading tags can make a difference with SEO. To site our "coffee bean" example:

h1 Heading: Coffee Beans

h2 Sub- heading 1: Green Coffee Beans

h3 Sub-sub heading 1: Locally Grown Green Coffee Beans

h3 Sub-sub heading 2: Imported Green Coffee Beans

h2 Sub-heading 2: Roasted Coffee Beans

Etc.

Footer Navigation - If your website’s main navigation is done in javascript, flash, or images, this information is inaccessible to search engines. In this case, footer navigation is very important. It’s also important for websites with long pages so that visitors do not have to scroll all the way back to the top to navigate around your site. Making it easy to navigate your site is an important consideration whenever you are marketing online. Large websites often have primary navigation in their main menu with secondary and even tertiary pages listed within them in drop down menus (so you can’t see it when looking at the main menu). The footer navigation provides a place for the most frequently viewed pages of the website or even relevant links, recent news, signup form links, or anything that is vital to the functionality of your website.

Footers are the location where web users are accustomed to looking for things such as copyright, terms and conditions, site-maps, privacy policies, home page, and contact page info. Many expect to find company contact information there as well. Footer navigation provides more keyword content as well.

Naming Images - Image Titles and Alt Tags – Image titles are used to name images in the code of your website. Alt tags are added to each image in the code. Search engines can’t see your images but they can read the tags. The alt tag describes what is in your image in readable text. If for some reason your image does not show on a screen, the alt tag text will be displayed where the image should have been, getting your message across to search engines and the internet user. Alt tags provide an important opportunity to reinforce your keywords to the search engines.

Blog Creation - A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Copywriting - It is most often necessary to write copy that will improve the website content for search engine purposes. This sometimes entails re-writing some or all of your existing content and adding additional relevant content. Of course, all written content is subject to website owner approval.

On occasion, a website will have little content at all, rendering it un-important in the SERPS. A company may truly have the best product, pricing, customer service, and the most beautiful images on the most attractive website you could imagine. If the page content is not there to show relevance to keywords, the search engines have no information with which to rank your page.

Facebook Account - A Facebook Account can help you expand your presence on the web and make your business more accessible and relevant to current and potential customers. We will help you set up your Facebook account and teach you how to use social media to connect and share with other Facebook users.

301 Redirects - 301 redirects are essential as they're search engine friendly and the ultimate way to pass on credit from an old page to a new one. As you website is changed, updated, reorganized and perfected… the locations of pages and information may change as well. 301 redirects simply inform search engines of these changes so relevant information on you site can be found. Even if a page on your website is deleted a 301 redirect to can forward the user to your home page, or the parent page it was under, so that any old hyperlinks out there won't point to a 404 - Not Found page. Don't worry about redirections - once we've added the 301 redirect statement for any changes, search engines will do the rest!

Strategic Building of Quality Links to Web Directories - A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. Most web directory entries are also not found by web crawlers but by humans. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

Sitemap Submission – Sitemaps, typically created as XML files, define your website's structure. They list all of the contents of your site, in a "tree" directory. The purpose of this file is to let search engines know your site's hierarchy. The intentions is to help search engines understand exactly what your site is about, so that it can properly rank your site, especially if your site is new and has few or no links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for them to discover a particular page.)