|
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the procedure whereby the visibility of a specific website or page is optimised for the organic results of a keyword search on an internet search engine. These are the results that appear on the left hand side of the page and take up most of the page. The other way web pages can appear in a search is via paid results, i.e adwords. These are the results that appear on the right hand side of the page. Generally speaking, a website will receive more visitors the higher on the page it appears in the search results list, page one being the "Holy Grail" of Seo on Google. There are different ways SEO can optimise a site for web searches, including but not limited to local searches, image searches, video searches, industry-specific searches etc. If a website owner wishes to consider Seo on Google as a marketing strategy, they need to consider what people are searching for (keywords) and how search engines decide what websites will appear in which order in the organic (unpaid) listings. This is a science much more than it is an art, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Optimizing a website can involve, amongst other things) editing its page content so that the specific keywords targeted by the website are correctly index by the internet search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing (Microsoft). Another important SEO tactic that is highly relevant is the number of backlinks or one-way inbound links that point to a website, the more the better. The higher the Page Rank (pr) of the pages linking to the website, the more important the link is considered, as is the relevance of the pages pointing to the website, i.e are they in the same category. Age is also taken into consideration, though there is nothing a web developer can do about this. If all of this is done in an orderly and progressive fashion it is known as "White Hat SEO", the search engines approve of these methods and the website that is carefully modified by the appropriate SEO techniques should steadily progress upwards in the search results. Seo On Google use ONLY "White Hat SEO" techniques"! "Black Hat SEO" uses underhand methods that are often automated, such as link farming, article spinning, keyword stuffing, using "invisible text" (eg black text on a black background), using doorway pages (gateway pages a user will never see), amongst others to try and "rocket propel" a site to the top of the organic search results. Search engines frown on these techniques and are constantly on the lookout for sites that use these techniques in order to delist them from the indices. "Grey Hat SEO" falls somewhere between the two, using techniques that are considered legitimate but are subject to abuse, such as "cloaking (presenting certain information to visitors and other information to search engines), paid links (purchasing one way links to increase website popularity), and duplicate content (websites offering identical content, usually in affiliate programs). Used appropriately these techniques are all considered ethical, used inappropriately they can get your website banned. The distinction is somewhat blurred or "Grey" and these tactics should all be approached with caution. Search engines use bits of software ("spiders") to "crawl" (index) websites in order to ascertain the order in which website appear on the search page. Google for example, used to employ 40 000 people to do this job, but web indexing became so busy that they could not cope with the sheer volume of pages needing to be indexed and so the web spider was born. You can fool some of the spider some of the time but you can't fool all of the spiders all of the time! When you type a search string into a search engine, i.e. you are looking for a keyword on Google/Yahoo/Bing etc, thousands of matches come up. Let’s take an example – you are looking to improve your website ranking on Google, so you type in what you think will be the most relevant search term, let’s say for arguments sake that you type in “seo on google”. A bunch of terms come up, paid ads on the right hand side of the page, organic (unpaid) listings in the centre, dominating the page. You are interested in the organic listings because it’s “seo on google” that you typed in, so you concentrate on the ten listings in the centre. For this specific term there are 186 000 000 competing pages for this keyword term! Sorry folks, this is NOT a misprint! Think about that for a second - one hundred and eighty six million or roughly half the population of the USA if you can believe the results of the census! It’s insane and if you want to get on page one for this search term, you have to beat 185 999 990 other pages to get there. It’s a sad but very pertinent fact that very few people ever go past page one on a search result. Some statistics suggest that less than 10% of searchers ever go to page 2 or behond. So what this means is that to get noticed in the organic search listings on Google you neee to be found on page 1, preferably near the top, but page 1 in itself is a good target to aim for. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the best way to do this so that the search engines take note of the way your site is being optimised but not so that you alarm them by using underhand tactics. There are “white hat” seo tactics which are considered to be totally legitimate, “black hat” which are considered to be totally unethical and which will get you banned sooner or later (probably sooner), and “grey hat”, which as the name implies is a grey area and falls somewhere in between “Black Hat” and “white hat”. Firstly, you need to think how people will be trying to find your page. The words that a potential visitor to your site will type in to a search engine are your target keywords. The days of one keyword being enough are long gone – two or 3 keywords or even longer are better. We call these “long Tail” keywords and use them to target very specific searched words, the deeper you can get in to a potential client’s mindset the better. For example, instead of “fishing rod”, a buyer may type in “carbon fiber bass rod 7 foot”. This latter keyword is obviously much more specific and will have far fewer competitors. One word keywords will have many competitors, way too many for most niches. This is how you target the right niche. Keywords should also not be too long – they can be hard to optimize for. Do your research – you want to know that you can be competitive in your niche. If you are selling software and the top 10 positions on page 1 are all taken up by Microsoft whose founder is worth more than most third world countries, then you are in trouble because the likelihood of you shifting a company that big out of the way are so small as to be negligible. Definitely don’t bite off more than you can chew. Where you Position your most important keywords is an integral part of the seo on Google process. The keywords that you want to rank for should be placed in the HTML title tag of your page. This alone is perhaps the number one reason that many sites are rank poorly. Be sure not to go overboard, keep the title short and readable, try and you use a new, relevant one for each page. The title of the page should tell the reader at a glance what the page is about. Throwaway words like “A” and “The” in the title are unnecessary as they make it more difficult for visitors to file their bookmarks. Keywords should be placed high on the page, while attention should be paid to the layout. As well as the headline, insert target keywords in the first few paragraphs of the page. Keep it simple and the search engines will love you and more specifically your page. If Google loves you, you’re home and dry baby! Scatter keywords amongst the text in a way that reads grammatically correct and makes sense. Don’t overload the page with keywords, especially if the syntax is nonsensical, you can easily be penalised for this. Pictures are good but they can’t replace text as a means of keyword placement since the search engines can’t read pictures, they can only spider the “alt” text. This means that a graphic is a less effective means of representing content than text. Search engine spider are getting cleverer every day, just because you got away with “black hat” techniques for a short while and shot up the rankings doesn’t mean that it will last. You will be found out and your ranking will cease to exist - in the long run this kind of seo on google will get you banned. In a nutshell – keep it “white hat” Try and use different forms of the same keyword. This will ensure that the same page is indexed for a variety of different searches and increases the relevance of the page, too. This is a natural, legitimate way of keyword reinforcement and will ring true to the search engines and visitors alike. Two different people can type in very different search words even though they are looking for exactly the same thing. Sticking to these methods will enable you to get the most out of Seo on Google. If you want to be FIRST (remember, in seo second is last), then seo on google will get your website on to page 1 of Google, guaranteed!
Related Articles -
seo on google, search engine optimisation, seo, page one google,
|
