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Search_Engine_Optimization_ _A_Complete_Idiots_Guide
| Search Engine Optimization - A Complete Idiots Guide
Most of us know by now that having a website doesn't mean much
if nobody knows about it. There are many ways to market your
website online, including pay-per-click advertising and banner
ads on other websites. But by far the most effective and
comparatively speaking cheapest way of getting your website "out
there" is to optimize the content so that search engines enjoy
"crawling" your website and therefore rank your website highly
compared to your competitors.
A very quick crash-course in search engines: Search engines like
to show their users the most relevant content for a specific
keyword. They make use of so-called "spiders" to automatically
visit your website to see what your site is about. Only in rare
circumstances will a human user from a search engine company
actually visit your website. You can imagine that for human
users it would be impossible to physically go through millions
and millions of websites on a regular basis to check what
they're about.
Therefore, the search engine spider will see which words are
repeated frequently throughout the content of your website. If
your website is about vacuum cleaners, but you often refer to
the term "lawnmowers" in your website's content (more than
"vacuum cleaners"), the spider will incorrectly assume that your
website is about lawnmowers.
But wait, there's much more to it than just that. It's also
about how you use the keyword. If you use the keyword "vacuum
cleaner" six times on your page, but you are using "lawnmower"
in a header to a page or in italics or bold text, the search
engine might still think that your site is about lawnmowers
instead. The proper use of keywords in the title of your
website, as alternative text on images (that pops up when you
move your mouse over it), the distribution of your keyword
throughout your page (top, middle and bottom), the use of your
keyword in text-links to other pages on your website as well as
the use of your keyword in headers, are all important factors
that search engines look for.
No, that's not it, yet! This covers probably only around ten
percent of search engine optimization. The next item would be
keyword popularity. By keyword popularity I mean to say you
should investigate how popular your targeted keyword is among
search engine users. For example, I might be very impressed with
myself for optimizing a site for the term "blue socks" so that
my site shows up as number one in each and every search engine
when you type in the term "blue socks" and hit Search. But if on
average only two people worldwide searches monthly for the term
"blue socks", will I get the necessary traffic from search
engines? The answer is a very clear "NO". If I instead see that
2500 people worldwide are searching for the term "sock
suppliers" monthly, I would be much better off optimizing my
site for this term, right? Correct, but also bear in mind that
more popular search phrases normally brings with them more
competition. In other words, it might take more of a constant
effort to optimize a website for the term "property" than for
the term "cape town property", because you are competing with
others who are also trying to be number one for that keyword.
What we've learned so far: We need to make a website more than
just user-friendly, but also search engine-friendly by using
keywords properly throughout our site, and thorough keyword
research is very important.
And now for the most important bit, namely link popularity. A
search engine such as Google (the biggest and therefore most
important search engine in the world) places an incredible
amount of importance on how many sites link to yours (reciprocal
linking), the quality of those sites as well as the way in which
they link to your site. In other words, it is very important to
exchange links with other sites with similar content to yours.
That is, you put a clickable link to their site on your site,
and they do the same for you. It is also important that they
link to your site with the correct phrase in the link text (the
text that you click on to follow the link). If you want to
optimize your site for the keyword "clothes hangers" but others
link to you with the keyword "baby diapers" in the link text,
the search engines will once again incorrectly assume that your
site is about baby diapers instead. As far as the quality of the
other sites linking to yours (your link partners) is concerned,
this is a vast and complicated topic that we'll have to cover on
its own.
There are actually many other factors that also determine your
website's rankings in search engines, but these are the basic
ones. I hope this helps you somewhat (yes, I know it's
complicated and daunting), but if I only succeeded in confusing
you more, then don't worry - there are many search engine
optimization specialists out there. And yes, you'll find that
the best ones are normally at the top of the search engine
results pages! And if they are worth the money you pay them, you
should see an exponential return on investment within the first
year. It might also be advisable to have them monitor your web
site's search engine rankings on an ongoing basis so that the
goose doesn't suddenly for some reason stop laying those golden
eggs!
* This article was originally published on h
ttp://www.ajcconsulting.co.za/content/search_engine.asp
About the author:
Chris van der Walt is a freelance writer of self-help articles
for all kinds of subjects. He has a passion for Jesus Christ,
beach volleyball (savolley.com), computers and
the internet. He is also owner of AJC Consulting - Affordable Website
Design.
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