SEO Explained

In Web Design and Developement, search engine optimization is the art of influencing search engines so they know/think that a website is important enough to rank high on a certain keyword.

Every website needs visitors to have a desired effect. This effect may be either to entertain people, inform them about something or sell a product. Whatever the goal, the more visitors the better.

A high ranking in search engines gets you the best type of visitors. These visitors are already interested in the keyword your website ranks high on. The higher your position the more people will click on the link to your website.

Search engine optimisation is the process of achieving top rankings in the search engines for a website's most relevant search terms. The most relevant search terms are the phrases that people are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for what the website has to offer. These are the search terms that it is essential to rank highly for, and these are the search terms that search engine optimization targets.

Some SEO basics:

Link structure within the website - Make sure that search engine spiders can actually find (crawl) all of the website's pages. If they can't find them, they won't get spidered and indexed, and no amount of search engine optimization on them will help.

Off-page elements - Link Text - This is one of the two most important elements for good rankings. The link text can be on web pages within the website or on other websites' pages. The target page's main search term should be included in the link text.

On-page elements :

» Title Tag - This is second of the two most important elements for good website rankings. The web page's search term is contained in this tag, and is placed as near to the front as is reasonable, whilst ensuring that it reads well. Each web page's Title tag should be different to the Title tags on the website's other pages.

» Description Tag - Some search engines, such as Google, don't display the Description like they used to do but, even so, it should still be included in each web page for those engines that do, and for the odd times when even Google displays it. Write an appealing description for the web page and incorporate the web page's search term into it at least once and, preferably, twice. Place one instance of it at the start or as near to the start as is reasonably possible.

» Keywords Tag - The words in the Keywords tag were never treated as keywords by the search engines; they were treated as text on the web page. The tag isn't as effective as it used to be but there is no reason to leave it out. So put plenty of relevant keywords into the tag and include the search term once at the front, and a second time further along the line.

» Heading Tag - Heading tags are given more weight than ordinary text and, the bigger the Heading size, the more weight it receives. So the target search term are in the Heading tags at least once on the page, and two or three times if possible. Also, the first Heading tag is placed as near to the top of the web page as possible.

Bold Text - Bold text is given more weight than ordinary text but not as much as Heading tags. The search terms are enclosed in bold tags when it appears on the web page.

» Text - Use the search term as often as you can on the web page whilst not detracting from the web page's readability. Make sure that you use the term once or twice very early in the web page's body text and as often as possible throughout. Reword small parts, and even add sentences, to make sure that the search term is well represented in the text.

» Alt Text - The search term is included in the alt text of all images on the web page. Keep in mind that some systems such as Braille readers and speach synthesisers use the alt text, so it is important to make them usable whilst including the search term.

Summary

1. Select the main search terms.

2. Allocate each search term to a suitable existing page. Split some pages if necessary. NOTE: smaller web pages are better than larger ones because it is easier to target a search term when there is less text on the page to dilute the focus.

3. Organize the internal linkages and link text to suit the target search terms and their pages.

4.Organize links from other sites to suit the target search terms and their pages.

5. Organize all the on-page elements to suit each web page's target search term.