hat is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web pages
more search engine friendly to promote them as the most
relevant solutions for the search engines' users.
The improvements can mean the difference between achieving
top rankings, which can result in thousands of monthly
visitors, and being lost in oblivion.
Why is search engine optimization important?
Search engine optimization is basically about following
search engine rules. If your Web page fits the criterias that
a search engine considers the most important factors in terms
of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking.
Search engine optimizers simply modify Web pages to fit
these criterias. This gives the Web pages a better chance of
being selected by the search engines as the most relevant page
for the search query.
The importance of keyword research
The Internet is basically a massive disorganized library.
Search engines are like librarians. They both try to organize
the content, so that people can find what they're looking for
without too much effort.
With books, librarians have the benefit of bibliographic
databases and the information on the book covers to help them
organize their library.
Search engines don't have such a luxury. There aren't
databases of every single Web page ever created. The Internet
is just too big. There's too much information to index.
The only way a search engine can try to organize the mass
of information available on the Internet is by the use of
keywords and
links.
It makes sense to think that if a Web page contains enough
keywords related to a certain topic, it should be relevant to
a search for information on that particular topic.
So part of the search engine optimization specialist's job
is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people
search for when looking for products, services or information
related to what the Web page offers.
The variety of keywords used to search for the same
product, service or information is quite staggering.
For example, here are the most popular keyword phrases used
by people searching for information on search engine
optimization:
- search engine optimization
- search engine ranking
- search engine optimisation
(notice the English - as opposed to American - spelling of
optimization?)
- search engine placement
- website optimisation
- search engine positioning
- web site optimization (notice
a space between "web site?")
- high search engine ranking
- web page optimisation
- search engine promotion
- top search engine ranking
- high search engine rankings
- search engine rankings
- better search engine
placement
- web site optimisation
- high search engine placement
- search engines optimization
- website optimization
- search engine optimizations
(notice the "s" at the end of optimization?)
- high search engine
positioning
- engine optimization resources
You notice how many different variations people use to
search for information on the same topic?
The fact is, unless a page contains all of the keywords in
a search query, then it will have very little of appearing at
the top of the rankings.
Before Web pages can be optimized, you must conduct
research to determine which keywords to target. This involves
finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity,
assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which
keywords to use in your Web pages. |
