SEO for beginnersThere are literally thousands of websites that are lying there, hidden from visitors, both potential and casual surfers. This guide deals with optimization tips for those sites who would want to improve their site ranking without feeling pinch to their pockets.
There are various aspects to consider for Search Engine Optimization. A field of its own, which was revolutionized by Google. SEO, though looks complicated, is pretty simple. It is a perfect example of "there is no short cut to success" Improving your site rankings is done over a period of time with diligent efforts and patience.
SEO can be classified as follows.
1. Keyword Optimization
2. Meta Tags
3. Robots
4. Link Popularity
Let’s first look at what a search engine is and what it does.
While there are various definitions for this, we summarize it as "A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages, storing results and returning lists of pages which match particular queries. The indexes are normally generated using spiders. Some of major search engines are Altavista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, Northern Light and Webcrawler. Note that Yahoo is a directory, not a search engine. The term Search Engine is also often used to describe both directories and search engines."
So a search engine basically searches on world wide web and indexes sites according to keywords and relevance. Visitors on WWW do not have time or resources to browse through millions of sites just to see site they want to see. Search engines make it easier by indexing websites.
Let’s take a look at various aspects involved in SEO.
1. Keyword Optimization: As title is self explanatory, keyword optimization deals with optimizing your site based on keyword relevance. For example, if you have a site that deals with flower delivery, then keywords to be used would be flowers, delivery, free shipping, etc. Now obvious question that arises is "how do I know if my site is optimized?"
There are various resources on Internet which provide you with free optimization tools. One such example would be overture or wordtracker. When you enter a keyword, it gives you a list of most searched keywords in terms of %age. This will shed enough light into kind of competition you are heading into.
Search engines are smart. If you were thinking of just typing out word "flowers" a hundred times, to increase density of keywords, search engines would simply not index your site. Make sure that your keywords are repeated and most important at relevant. Also keep in mind keyword weight. By weight, I mean to say that your keyword prominence has to be atleast 9-10% in a single page. In order words, out of every 100 words on your page, ensure you have your keyword repeated atleast 9 times.
2. Meta Tags: Meta tags and descriptions that is read by robots which spider websites. These tags are not visible in webpage but only in coding of page. You will find meta tags enclosed within
section of your HTML coding. Meta tags can have following. Keywords, description, content, etc.When a search engine spiders your site, way it reads site is completly different. Consider this example: If you had a site dealing with flowers and had first visible text as "Welcome to ABC Florists" while meta tags have description as "Flowers for sale" visitor view "Welcome to ABC Florists" in browser, while a spider will see content as "flowers for sale"