14 Mar 2008 02:22:53 | John Benjamin
SEO for beginners
There are literally thousands of websites that are lying there,
hidden from the visitors, both potential and casual surfers.
This guide deals with the optimization tips for those sites who
would want to improve their site ranking without feeling the
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 the results and returning lists of
pages which match particular queries. The indexes are normally
generated using spiders. Some of the 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 the world wide web and
indexes sites according to the keywords and relevance. Visitors
on the WWW do not have the time or the resources to browse
through millions of sites just to see the site they want to see.
Search engines make it easier by indexing the websites.
Let’s take a look at the various aspects involved in SEO.
1. Keyword Optimization: As the title is self explanatory,
keyword optimization deals with optimizing your site based on
the keyword relevance. For example, if you have a site that
deals with flower delivery, then the keywords to be used would
be flowers, delivery, free shipping, etc. Now the obvious
question that arises is "how do I know if my site is optimized?"
There are various resources on the 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
the most searched keywords in terms of the %age. This will shed
enough light into the kind of competition you are heading into.
Search engines are smart. If you were thinking of just typing
out the word "flowers" a hundred times, to increase the 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 the 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 the
robots which spider the websites. These tags are not visible in
the webpage but only in the coding of the page. You will find
the meta tags enclosed within the section of your
HTML coding. Meta tags can have the following. Keywords,
description, content, etc.
When a search engine spiders your site, the way it reads the
site is completly different. Consider this example: If you had a
site dealing with flowers and had the first visible text as
"Welcome to ABC Florists" while the meta tags have the
description as "Flowers for sale" the visitor view the "Welcome
to ABC Florists" in the browser, while a spider will see the
content as "flowers for sale"
Most of you might have noticed that when you type in a keyword
or phrase in any of the search engines, you would see the URL
and a short description. This description is taken from the Meta
Tag's tag.
Instead of targeting a highly competitive keyword, try to
broaden your reach by targetting smaller keywords and phrases as
well. This way, although you might not rank good on one keyword,
chances of your site showing up for the other keywords related
to florists are pretty good.
3. Robots: Robots, or Bots as they are usually called are
scripts which are programmed to "crawl" websites and collect
information from the site's meta description tags. These bots
then store the information on their servers and index according
to the keywords. Consider this example: If you had a site
dealing with flower delivery, and your keywords were related to
just "roses" and "lillies" then chances of your site showing up
for roses or lillies are much higher than showing up for
keywords "florists" Keep in mind that you have different kinds
of people using the search engines. Some may type in the word
roses to research on that flower, showing up your site for this
keyword under this scenario might not be what you intended it to
be. The catch phrase here is to target your keywords
appropriately.
The bots are smart but not intelligent. You would not want your
contactus.html page to show up on the search engine. Or any
other private page which only you have access to. Or you would
not want a page which is under development to show up. By
setting up the robots.txt file you can specify what directories
within your root directory to be indexed. This way you can hide
your other pages from showing up on the search engine.
4. Link popularity: I came across this very cool definition of
Page Rank, or Link Polularity. Conside a community of people.
Let's say you have a person A who knows B. B introduces A to C
and it goes on upto Z. During this process what happens is that
the popularity of A increases giving A a higher link polularity
or a page rank.
Similarly, you need to link your site to other sites. What
happens is that a search engine will promote your site within
the listing if you have a higher page rank, or in other words,
higher popularity. While you might be thinking that you can get
this done by linking your site to every other site you come
across, keep in mind the fact that some search engines actually
give you a rank only from relevant sites. So if you are a
florist, then dont entertain the idea of linking to sites
dealing with medical or healthcare. It would be sensible if you
went a step further and linked to sites dealing with stationery,
gifts, chocolates, etc.
SEO is a field that is gaining recognition. Companies have been
built solely relying on SEO by offering its services. Instead of
spending money and let someone else do the work at which you
have absolutely no clue, it is always good to start it on your
own and then if the need arises call in for a professional. This
way you will exactly know the strategy and you would be in
control rather than being taken for a walk.
About Author :
John Benjamin is the CEO of ProMinds Inc an Internet marketing
agency having more than 2 years of experience.
