SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving a web page's ranking in search engines. It is not the same as "search engine marketing", which is another term for advertising your business on sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others to drive traffic to your website.
How do you optimize a site?
There are several ways to improve your site's search engine rankings. The most important thing that you need to be aware of is that every search engine has its own set of algorithms that rank websites. These algorithms can change over time and sometimes dramatically affect how well a particular site ranks. There are many other factors such as the quality of content, links from outside sites, and the number of backlinks (inbound links) that affect your position in search results.
To get ahead of the game, it is best to understand what all these different parts mean so that you know where to focus your efforts. Here are some key components of optimizing a site in search engines:
1. Quality Content - This means making sure that your pages have good unique content that will appeal to users. You should write at least 100 words per page with no more than three of those words being duplicate titles. You also want to make sure that your content is written for human readers and not just for spiders.
2. Unique Content - Make sure that your pages contain unique content that is relevant to your keywords so that they appear higher in searches. If someone types in the word "dog training" into a search engine, you don't want your site to show up when someone searches for "dogs". However, if you have articles about dog training, then it might be worth having an article titled "Dog Training Tips and Advice for Your Pup" instead of "Dogs 101". By using unique terms you increase the likelihood that your content will be found by people searching for information related to your topic.
3. Good Links - One way to improve your search engine ranking is through the use of quality links. A link is defined as any text that directs people to your site. For example, if I were writing this sentence right now, a link would be the highlighted part of the text below. A link from one website to another is called an inbound link. Each link is counted separately in search engines. So, if there was a blog post on my website that had a link to yours, but there wasn't a link pointing away from yours, it wouldn't help you much. But if you have a link to mine pointing to yours, it helps both our positions. In fact, this is exactly why people pay for advertisements. They pay for ads because they are hoping that their inbound links will point to their site and thus give them a boost in their SEO position.
3. Backlinks - Backlinks are simply links that point to your site that come from other websites. Like inbound links, each backlink is treated individually in search engines. To get more backlinks, you could try guest posting, submitting articles to directories, joining forums, or participating in social media communities.
4. Meta Tags - Using meta tags correctly can really help to boost your site's rankings. Meta tags describe the contents of a page, including title, description, keywords, and author. Some search engines don't read meta tags, while others only use a few of them. You should follow the guidelines provided by the search engine when using meta tags.
5. Site Architecture - The structure of your site is very important. Pages within your site should load quickly, be easy to navigate, and have clear calls-to-action. When someone visits your site, they are looking for something specific, so your site should direct visitors to the pages that answer their questions. Also, avoid using Flash animation unless absolutely necessary.
6. Page Speed - The loading speed of your site plays an important role in determining your search engine rankings. Most search engines only take into account the first 10 seconds of a user's experience before deciding whether or not to display your site in search results.
7. URL Structure - While you may think that changing the name of your website from "abcdefg.com" to "123.456.789.012" could potentially improve your search engine rankings, this is usually not the case. Google considers the structure of your URLs before actually displaying your site in search results. Your URL should be simple and easy to remember.
8. Robots.txt - Robots.txt files are used to control how search engine spiders crawl your site. If you set up robots.txt properly, you can prevent spiders from crawling certain areas of your site. For instance, if you have a forum on your site, but you don't want search engines to index it, you could place a file named "robots.txt" inside of "forums/" (where "forums/" is the directory path). Then, you would create a line like this:
User-agent: * Disallow: /forums/
You would add similar lines to the main directory of your site to prevent search engines from accessing certain areas of your site.
9. Social Media - Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon are great places to promote your site. All of these sites allow you to submit your website to their social networking properties, and many of them track backlinks from these sites. You can also use social networks to gain new followers who will see your posts in their newsfeeds.
10. Landing Pages - Landing pages are landing pages that are optimized specifically for search engines. These sites typically have a lot of keywords throughout the copy, which makes them easier to find in search engines. You should keep your landing page short and sweet, however, as users won't be able to finish reading long pages in a search engine result.
12. Mobile Friendly Design - Since mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular, it is important to have a mobile version of your site. Many users access sites via their phones, and they expect to be able to view your site without a lot of scrolling. You can either build a separate mobile-friendly version of your site or modify your existing site to accommodate mobile users.
