Search Engine Optimization
Let’s start by answering a very simple question:
Do you sell online? If you do then you probably have your own website. As for the website, I’m sure you’re implementing efforts to get it noticed. But how do you do it?
It’s a fact that all online entrepreneurs come up with various ways to get heir own websites noticed. While there are many ways to do that, most of them prefer to utilize the most common and proven way to draw attention to their sites. That’s where search engine optimization comes in.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
When an Internet user needs to find information through the Internet, the first step he or she does is by entering one or more keywords on the search engine. The search engine then returns a list of websites that closely matches the specific keyword entered. It means that whatever information the person is looking for, it can be found on those list of websites provided by the search engine.
Mainly, the entrepreneur or online marketer would do a number of actions in order to have his or her own website on the search engine whenever a certain keyword is entered by searchers. The goal here is to have their site on the first listing or at least be placed on the first page. The logic behind this is, the higher its listing on the search engine, the more chance it will be visited by people. This is called search engine optimization or simply SEO.
Search engine optimization is a basic method of getting websites visited by people. If you’re an online marketer, this would be your primary goal. You have to expose it out there where people can see because a website unnoticed is like leaving money on the table.
Since many online marketers are fighting for their piece on the search engines, competition is becoming fiercer. Having a listing on the search engines nowadays is tougher than before. Therefore, you need to implement several factors that are crucial to get you ahead of the competition and attain your spot on Google, the most famous search engine around.
Crucial On-page SEO Factors
Original Content
The first step to a Google’s first listing is by providing good original content. With the rise of easily accessible information on the Internet, duplicating has become inevitable. Fortunately, the search engines are keen when it comes to the quality of content. Low-quality content or those simply copied from various websites are penalized by Google by giving it a low page rank (more about that later) thus, decreasing its chance to appear on the first listing. So before everything else, make sure your content is good and original. The result will then be worthwhile.
Keywords
Arguably, this is the most important on-page SEO factor. Search engines ranks a website based on the keywords it optimizes for and there are specific rules that comes with it.
You’ll find many discussions on the Internet about keywords; where to place it, how to use it in moderation, etc, but to wrap it up, here are the proven elements in your site where your keyword should be found and how to use it to get the best results.
- Title Tag – The keyword you’re optimizing for should be included on the title tag. For example, if you are targeting the keyword ‘How to Save Marriage’, you could use a title ‘How to Save Marriage After Infidelity’. This shows how the keyword is highly relevant to your content and consequently, will earn you a high listing on the search engines.
- Keyword Density – Search engines do not approve of too little keywords nor does it approve “keyword stuffing” or too much keyword in your content. The only way to go about this is by using it sparingly. The most recommended keyword density is 1% or simply put, for every 100 words in your content, your keyword should only appear once. Anything beyond than that will call for a penalty. This is how search engines maintain their integrity and avoid spam websites.
- Anchor Links – anchor links or internal links are the highlighted texts within a website that allows user to click on it and be brought to another page of the site. Anchor links are very helpful in achieving a high ranking.
Very recently, Google has announced that they are adding anchor links to the search results. This brings an advantage to your site. Add your keywords to your anchor links as well. But still, as with the keyword density, it should also be used in moderation to avoid being regarded as a spam site.
So much for the on-site factors, now let’s move on to the next crucially important factor which is the Off-page SEO.
Crucial Off-page SEO Factors
Now you’ve done the necessary things within your site. But before we get to the outside part, you first need to educate yourself about Google’s Page Rank and why it’s significant to your ranking.
Page Rank
Page rank is Google’s way of indexing the websites that would appear in their search engine. They evaluate the importance of a website through the incoming links. The weighing of the incoming links are based on how much there is as well as its quality. Therefore higher quality and quantity of incoming links are important in contributing a higher search engine listing.
There are also important factors that come into play like your internal links in addition to the number of pages you have within your site but still most importantly, you need to focus on the quality and quantity of your backlinks.
How do you achieve a higher Page Rank for your site?
Here are two ways:
Build Lots of 1-way Links – Quantity plays an important role for incoming links to take an effect on a certain website. You should then build lots of them. There are many ways to do this. Article submissions, blog commenting and forum posting are some.
Get links from good and trustworthy sites – It’s not enough to just build lots and lots of backlinks. You should also be mindful of their quality. For example, having an article that’s linking back to your site posted on ezinearticles.com is better than having it posted on various unknown article directories with very low PR.
Remember that the quantity and quality needs to be balanced. Too much low PR sites linking back to your site won’t make any difference. The same goes when you only have one or two quality backlinks. So this should be you primary goal when working “outside” of your own website.
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To sum up, search engine optimization is effective in having a website visited and in turn gives the online marketer the chance of utilizing those visits to however he wants whether it’s to build a customer base or just simply have his insights read and possibly appreciated.
There are lots of factors to keep in mind in SEO and putting it into action will gain anyone the advantages as well as produce wonderful outcome to their sites and business in general.
