Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines for targeted keywords. In other words, The process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine.

How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

There are basically two techniques for improving your site ranking:-
1. On-page optimization

2. Off-page optimization

On-page optimization

On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. On-page optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text. Many search engines now discount the weight given to on-page factors because they give too much scope for abuse by SEO experts.

Each page should target between two and four keywords directly related to the contents.
This should be the first tag in the Head section of the page. Many website designers spend a lot of time creating Keyword and Description meta tags.

Image alternate-text tags (ALT tags) are only indexed where the image is part of a hyperlink. However ALT tags are useful for non-graphical browsing and should be employed correctly.

On-Page SEO Checklist

Always start with keyword selection, research and testing
Title tags: The title of the page, it plays an important role for search engines
Meta tags
ALT tags
H1 tags
URL structure
Internal linking Keyword density

Do not make common on-page SEO mistakes

Duplicate content
Duplicate title tags

Off-page optimization

Off-page optimization is what can be done off the pages of a website to maximise its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the on-page content.

Off-Page SEO Checklist

Always start with keyword research, testing and selection Keywords in links
Links from high ranking publisher sites
One-way inbound links (Directory submissions)
Deep linking (from multiple pages to multiple pages)

Do not make common off-page SEO mistakes

Duplicate keywords in link-ads
Using on-page SEOs to do specialist off-page SEO

There are many activities in off page submissions which help your site to fly in web search engines. They are as follows:-

1. Article submissions
2. Directory Submissions
3. Blog Submissions
4. Press release submissions
5. Social Media Submissions (SMS)