Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is essentially part art and part science. Let me give you my definition of it, and a brief description of how it’s done rather than regurgitating or simply posting someone else’s definition.
Before I go into my definition, I want to make sure that I mention what the search engine’s job is. The search engine’s job is to find the content that most closely matches and is most relevant to what the person sitting at the computer is searching is looking for.
How search engines work, is a topic for another day, but suffice it to say that people are more likely to use one that delivers relevant results over one that delivers that just delivers results. Make sense?
To me, in a nutshell, SEO is making sure that your website or web pages, match as closely as possible what the prospects in your industry/market/niche are searching for whenever your prospect goes to a search engine. The goal, is to have your website show up as high as possible in the search engine results pages, aka serps for your given term.
Who does this kind of work?
An online marketing agency will do this kind of work for you. Some agencies prefer to call themselves Search Engine Optimization firms, but it’s all essentially the same thing.
How is it done?
Step 1 is to perform something called “keyword research.” What keyword research is, is finding out what words people are typing in to search engines whenever they perform a given search.
Google, Bing, Yahoo! search engines among others all gather and release this keyword data in aggregate. We can’t tell what you typed in, but we call tell that the majority of people looking for X typed in Y keyword when performing their search.
The next step then, is to optimize your site for the keywords that people are typing in when they are looking for something related to what you do. This is called “on site optimization” because it’s performed on your site.
What else do you do with the keywords you find?
The next step your online marketing agency will do, is to go “off site” and optimize the links pointing back to your website. If there are no links pointing back to your site, the search engines are not likely to find you anytime soon. Additionally, the links pointing back to your site should also contain your keywords to help the search engines find you.
The currency of the web are things called “inbound links” or IBL. No, not irritable bowel syndrome, although getting proper inbound links has given indigestion to many an SEO specialist, but I digress.
The best links, come from “reputable” referring pages, with a lot of authority, from websites in “good neighborhoods” and contain your keyword in the link text. The worst kind of link, comes from a spammy website, hosted with a bunch of other spammy websites, with spammy links pointing back to your site.
How fast does it work?
Not very fast. Sometimes, you can significantly increase your rankings with some very minor tweaks in a short period of time. However, most sustainable results take time, specially if you’re in a crowded niche or if your site is new or if your site had been spamming before.
If you need traffic now, “pay per click” (PPC) advertising may be an option for you, but SEO principles will still govern over your PPC strategies.
Google search engine is by far the most popular search engine today. If you want to look for something online, your best resort is to use the services of a search. And the most convenient way to do online search is by checking out Google’s search results. Nevertheless, Google is not the only available for you, but it is the benchmark for search engine optimization or SEO, and the underlying reasons are obvious.
When you look for stuff via the Internet, say a used car, you only need to open Google search and there enter relevant keywords. Google will then provide you several pages of search results containing a list of websites on used car. You will then browse each website listed in the search results for the best deal. But typically, you would only pay attention to the first few pages, not to the succeeding pages of search results.
Studies show that 80 percent of online traffic comes from search engines. A large part of that prefers Google over others. Thus, if you are to catch a good percentage of the online market, your best bet is to study how Google ranks websites and lists in search results. It makes use of algorithms to determine how relevant a website is in relation to certain keywords. Search engines send robots to crawl or study each page of a website to determine its relevance.
Website relevance largely depends on content quality. Good quality content means no duplicate content, so beware of plagiarism. Text content is more readable by search engine robots, so always make good descriptions of videos, photos and graphics. Google search engine also looks at inbound links or back links (externally located links that point to the website). It is important that the link partners of the website are of high caliber and high rating.
It is not enough to post a lot of content and to make a lot of back links to the website. Improper website optimization is always tantamount to being penalized by Google and getting a poor online rating. Lower rating means lower chance of being included in search results, which leads to the website becoming less visible and less accessible to online users.
Now you might be wondering why your newly developed website is not ranking the way it should. That is how Google works – rating old domains higher than new ones. This is to prevent people from creating new websites that are only filled with hyperlinks. In the battle of Google search engine optimization, content is king, so continue on developing great content for your new site. It is just a matter of time for your ranking to go up.
Google hates black hat search engine optimization, so never sell links, do not hide texts, and avoid overloading content with keywords. If you want to drive your web ranking up, always follow the guidelines set by Google. Also, it helps to use Google webmaster facilities to ensure you are on the right track.
Online ranking is as dynamic as the world. Do not be confident with the ranking you achieve at one moment, for it can change any time. Always be on the lookout for the changes in Google’s rules on website optimization, so you are guided properly. Remember, when it comes to Google search engine, nothing is permanent, so do not rest on your laurels.
In today’s modern world having a website for any online business is the best means to reach out to millions of potential customers. It is due to this that the visibility of the website should always be very high so that viewers searching for some information can find the website at that particular moment. There are many things that need to be considered to make a site attractive to the visitors, but one should remember that optimizing the web pages for the search engine is crucial for the growth of the business. Search engine optimization is a process or technique that is used to gain a top ranking with all the major search engines and this in turn draws a lot of traffic to the site. Now the point is whether search engine is a continuous process or simply a state? Can we sit back comfortably once we have achieved a higher rank in the SERP? This piece of writing will discuss the point in details.
SEO a Process
The definition of SEO has changed over the past few years. Earlier obtaining a higher ranking only meant stuffing some chosen keywords in the content, adding page titles, Meta tags and then waiting to get the page indexed by Google. But today things have changed a lot and the competition among SEO experts have become stiff. These professionals are aware of the latest algorithms of the search engines and the white hat and black hat SEO techniques. For higher rankings, SEO professionals also started using unfair means and tried to cheat the search, but with time, the crawlers became advanced and the search engines discovered new techniques of uncovering patterns that are related to the structure, content and end user data.
Business owners who are willing to maintain their top position with the search engines must realize the fact that search engine is a continuous process and not a state that can be obtained once and left for ever. A business site that is performing high today may not give the same results six months later and it is here that SEO experts use their knowledge and expertise to look for more links, enhance the content of the web pages to make it fresh and even do some more research so that the site rankings remain stable and do not drop easily.
Why search engines have constantly updated the algorithms?
Search engines try their best to avert manipulation of the rankings and offer the visitors most qualified and informative results. Using proper SEO techniques to increase the visibility of the website requires some time. It is true that a website will not attain a higher ranking in the SERP within 24 hours; it needs a continuous effort from SEO professionals having thorough understanding of the changing algorithms of the search engines. There are webmasters who try to unveil the deep secrets of these algorithms and try to exploit the loopholes to obtain a higher ranking. They found foul methods of stuffing the web page with keywords that remained invisible in the eyes of the spiders. This approach has made the search engines tighten the security over the algorithms and the process that they apply to judge the relevancy of the website based on the key search terms. Google placed filters to check the repeated use of the chosen keywords or phrases and devalued the web page. SEO experts have to constantly update themselves and adhere to the strict guidelines of the search engines or their websites may be banned from the engines.
Websites that gained rankings by unfair means lost their position as soon as the algorithms were changed. Though they did not disappear completely but they failed to secure the top ranking for the key terms. Today most of the reputed SEO companies proffer customized solutions to their clients that are tailor made to cater to their unique business needs. It is vital to understand that every business is unique based on this point, webmasters should proceed with the optimization of the website. All the recent developments in the algorithms and the optimization techniques have enabled the visitors to view more accurate and informative results. Today, we can say that SEO is all about optimizing various file types, getting qualitative inbound links, publishing fresh and informative content, appropriate selection of keywords, thorough market analysis and above all use of white hat techniques while following the guidelines of the search engines.
This process of continuous development even in future will enable us to view reliable and relevant results and contribute to the growth of the entire SEO industry. Time ahead, the results will be based on geo locations, preferred search engines, search history and other approaches that will slowly change the SEO process and techniques used by the SEO experts today.