We hear a lot about Search Engine Optimization or SEO these days. Most people not directly connected with the Internet, especially on the online marketing solutions side, have only a vague idea of what SEO is.

Search Engine Optimization is an important marketing strategy by which the visitors on the Internet are directed to a particular website to buy products or services.

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves etc play important roles in helping a website to direct buyers to its site. The major search engines use a variety of information to index and rank web pages so they appear when keywords or keyword phrases are searched.

Search Engine Optimization is not an easy task. It is the culmination of several distinct and different steps like link building, building link popularity, improving web page ranking and using well written content etc in a website.

Several key factors dictate the success of SEO. They are Content, Link Popularity, URL structures, Meta Tags etc.

Content is very important. Well-written, eminently readable content goes a long way in increasing your web page popularity. Content determines the relevancy of a page and the right key words used in the content brings up the webpage among the top 10 ,during a search. The general theory is that the more valuable content is to your users, the more valuable the content will be to your search engines. The key to writing good content is to concentrate on including the right key words and phrases. The Content should read as natural, hence do not cram the content with key words and phrases. Do not copy or duplicate content.

Link popularity is very essential for effective SEO. Use hyperlinks in the content judiciously. Link Exchange, Bookmarking of web pages etc are good strategies to improve your web page ranking and thereby build SEO.

URL Structures are significant. A page’s URL is critical for search engine optimization. Include keywords in your URL strings, and place the most important keywords at the beginning of the URL.
Meta Tags are a must. One should provide page titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords for each web page and consistently use your keywords effectively. The page title is to be placed at the top of the web page. If the page is indexed, the page title will appear first for your listing in the search engine’s search results. The meta description should consist of 20-30 words that describes what the page is about, and is presented below the page title in search engines’ search results. This helps search engines know what keywords to associate with your page. Provide 3-5 keywords that are directly relevant to the page you are optimizing.

Images must be judiciously placed in the web page. Similarly every web page should not be too rich in content. This make the web page consume a lot of time to load, testing the patience of the visitor.

Search Engine Optimization is all about sensible webpage construction. If you have got the basics right, then SEO will come on automatically.

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Search Engine Optimization is a method used by webmasters to achieve a better ranking in the search engine’s listings for a particular website and its content pages. These methods are aimed particularly at benefiting from organic or crawler search engines. Organic searches are natural searches that don’t involve pay-per-click advertising. Crawler search engines follow the links on a page from one web page to another, taking note of all the connections.

Unfortunately, SEO (search engine optimization) methods are often misunderstood and misused (even abused) by many Internet marketers. As a result, various SEO methods have come to be classified as either “white hat” (meaning that they are proper and legitimate approaches within the eyes of the search engines) or “black hat” (meaning that they are either deceptive or unethical or frowned upon by the search engines).

There are two primary arenas for search engine optimization: on page SEO and off page SEO. On page SEO generally includes providing good content for visitors, and the proper use of page titles, meta tags, header tags, text bolding, alt tags, keyword emphasis, and outbound links. Off page SEO generally includes such tactics as anchor text, article directories, link exchanges, and back links from site submissions, forum comments, and blog comments.

Let’s take a quick look at some of these terms:

Page Titles: these are the words that appear in the upper left-hand corner of your browsers, in the blue bar at the top, that identify the website page you’re currently on.

Meta Tags: these are tags inserted in your HTML header code that describe the subject matter of your webpage. There are two common meta tags, one for your keywords and one for a short description of the page. While Google tends to ignore these tags, other search engines will often give them added attention and use them in their descriptions of your webpages.

Header Tags: these are used to emphasize the importance of specific text within your content. They are generally used to highlight your keywords much in the same fashion as a newspaper highlights an article with a bold headline.

Text Bolding: once or twice in your content, if you use bold texting around your keyword, it’s believed the search engines will give extra attention to those words.

Alt Tags: these are short descriptive words that are associated with an image on your page. For instance, if you have a web page about water skiing and there’s a picture of a little girl water skiing behind a boat, you’ll want to tag that photograph with a descriptive statement such as “Water Skiing Girl” that emphasizes your keyword “water skiing.”

Anchor Text: these are the words that are emphasized in linking back to your web page. For instance, you could link back to your water skiing page with anchor text that simply states the URL of the page (let’s say, http://yoursite.com/waterskiing.html) or you can push your keyword for that page and use “water skiing” as your anchor text.

All of these are legitimate approaches to search engine optimization, standard white hat approaches. At the end of the day, by using search engine optimization to help those visitors who come to your web page to quickly understand and interpret your content, you not only serve them better, you also make it easier for the search engines to send them your way. Relevance is the key to assuring the traffic that comes to your page is the right traffic that for that page.

Have you ever questioned why some highly relevant websites show very poor ranking in the search results? The answer might as well lie in bad keyword placement decisions. See, there are many places on your website where you can place your keywords – and they differ in the effectiveness with which they help you achieve higher ranking positions.

The major keyword placement locations usually are:

1. Title Tag

Search engines usually give the most weight to the page’s title, because it tells them what the web page is about. Therefore you should place your most important keywords between the tags. For best results, it is advised that you keep it within 5 – 10 keywords and to-the-point. If you make the title too long, you risk that part of the title will be cut out by some search engines and won’t get displayed. Also, since search engines return the title as the search results, your HTML title should be both descriptive and attractive because that’s what makes visitors click through your website.

For example, the following title describes well the web site, and therefore is a good choice:
Web Submission – search engine optimization SEO and submission software

2. Meta Tags

Meta tags are special HTML tags, usually within the … portion of the web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, Meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Meta tags allow you to control how search engines catalog your web site. Not all search engines make use of these tags, but using them will definitely improve your position in those that do. The most commonly used Meta tags are Description and Keywords tags.

Meta Description Tag:

The description tag lets you specify a short summary about your web site. Most search engines use the Description Tag for their summary description when they display your website in the search results. This is also very important from the visitor point of view as it tells the searcher whether your website is relevant to his search and worth the visit. Therefore this tag should clearly describe what one can find on your web site.

Here’s an example:



The actual size used is not as important as the message it conveys, but do not exceed the limit – the recommended summary size is between 200 – 250 characters maximum.

Meta keyword tag:

The keywords tag is used by search engines to help them in indexing your website. This is important because search engines use this information to determine what queries your website will come up under.

The basic HTML format of the Meta keyword tag is:

OR

Sample:



(Notice that it includes both words and phrases)

Note that inclusion of commas is not necessary so they can be removed if you are hovering around the limit. Including them however, makes the tag much more readable.

The common abuse of the Meta keyword tag was — and still is — the repetition of words in the tag, which is called spamming. Never insert the same word twice in a row in this tag, even if you’re using different variations. You can use the same word in different phrases, but avoid repeating keywords in this tag. The recommended length limit is between 10 to 20 keywords.

3. Body Text

When creating your keyword-rich web page copy keep in mind following 2 concepts: Keyword Prominence and Keyword Proximity.

Keyword Prominence:

Keyword prominence refers to how keywords are close to the “beginning” of the web page. The closer the keywords are the better. The reason behind this is that Google for example, usually picks up description from the first 2 paragraphs. If the first paragraph is keyword-rich, your web page has a good chance to rank well for these terms.

Keyword Proximity:

Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between your keywords on the page. In general, the closer the keywords are to each other, the better.

The following is a good sample of a well optimized phrase for the keyword London flower shop:

Red Rose Ltd is the leading London flower shop.

As oppose to:

Red Rose Ltd is the leading flower shop for the London area.

Note: Keyword Density

Keyword Density used to get (or may be still gets) lots of undeserved attention. It tells you many times a keyword is used on a web page in relation to the rest of words on the same page.

There should not be such a fuss around keyword density as it does not really help to optimize your web page. And that’s because is simply does not take in account both concepts above: it does not tell you where the keywords are located and what the distance is between them.

When creating your webpage copy writing don’t forget who you wish to impress – search engines or your potential customers? Keep in mind that it does not matter how well your web page is optimized or how well your website ranks. If you fail to impress your visitor, you lose the sale and you make no profit. And profit is what matters on the Net.
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The importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has increased a lot in the recent years. There is one obvious reason behind this importance of SEO. With the popularity of internet increasing manifolds, the number of websites being created is increasing at a furious pace and as a result it is becoming increasingly difficult for any site to be visible to net surfers.

Even if you sell quality products, you won’t be able to achieve much online if you don’t pay attention to SEO. After all who has the patience to check to the nth page of the search engine results to have a look at your site? You need to be in the top few pages of the search engine results.

Start with the correct domain name, a domain name that is relevant to your business. It would automatically improve your search engine rankings. Next you would need quality content rich in keywords. These keywords would help search engines find your website. Also pay attention to website design. A better customized website attracts more links to it. Keep in mind the importance of Meta Tags and other similar tags.

But always remember one thing. The most important factor would always be content. There are many who think keyword stuffing would do the trick but in the long run it actually hurts. You need to have quality content including keywords that must be useful to the readers. That would make them repeatedly visit your site giving you the opportunity to sell your products and services.

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Ever heard of search engine optimization or SEO? Basically what this means is; doing certain things on your website or on the World Wide Web to make your site visible on the search engines results pages – SERP.

Normally, when you have paid you web designer to do a site for you and you walk with them through the journey until they announce the news that you site is Live. Most people relax after hosting the site and they wait for web visitors to discover the site. Unfortunately, this does not happen. Here is why:

1. Age of your Website – It takes search engines 48 hours to 3 months to discover your site and be indexed on their servers for visibility to global users.

2. Competition – There are other players in your niche who came before you and their sites were discovered way ahead by Google and other search engines before you went Online. This makes them dominate the first pages of search results in common search keywords used within your niche.

3. Lack of Meta Tags – In every page of your website that you would like to be indexed by search engines. You should define three major tags namely:

Title – This is equivalent to a subject line in an email. It should be relevant to your niche and relate to the contents on that page. You should avoid titles like “Welcome to our website”. Description – As you have seen in search results. The search engines pick an excerpt of a site but not the whole site to be included in search results. This should be a short statement blended with common keywords used in your target market. Keywords – Separated by commas are the major keywords or key phrases that your target audience is likely to use on search engines to land to your webpage. Do not use so many or irrelevant ones, it will help narrow down to targeted visitors.

4. Content – You should make sure that you put relevant content on your site that is enriched with keywords or key phrases that you put on the Meta tags on that particular page. Unique content in relation to your competitors gives you a plus and preference on search engine eyes.

5. Sitemap – After you finish your site make sure there is a sitemap of all the public pages that you would like to be indexed by search engines. The more the pages indexed the more your visibility on search results will be raised.