Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic") search results for keywords.
What is a search engine?
- A website is an internet book of web pages.
- A search engine provides a search facility that will list the relevant web pages in order of merit for a given search request.
- Each search engine has a program that determines the order of merit according to its own criteria.
- The majority in the UK use the Google search engine.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - An Introduction For those considering the Potential benefits
- Your website may be like a book that does little more than decorate a bookshelf in your home.
- A good web designer can produce the book so that it is stunningly beautiful.
- - Top quality leather.
- - Gold leaf lettering and of course your name on it.
- You can tell your family, friends and current clients about it and, if they are interested, they can take a look for themselves.
- Most people, however, set up a website anticipating hordes of visitors and enormous wealth - and the majority will be disappointed.
- 99% of websites fail - Fail to receive adequate visitors or create customers.
How Do I achieve top positioning on search engine results pages for all my web pages?
For the majority of websites, top page positioning can only be achieved for only a few highly optimized pages.
The most popular search engine, Google, uses PageRank as a major determinant for positioning.
The trick is to compete for relevant niche keywords and your SEO advisor will be best placed to find these for you.
In SEO, one of the first objectives is to define relevant niche keywords - keywords with acceptable amount of traffic for the website and with low quality and quantity competition.
This does not mean that you should restrict all your web pages to be focused on niche keywords. You can have as many pages as you like for your visitors to enjoy when they have found you. From an SEO point of view, however, efforts at optimizing pages should be focused on those pages that can achieve high ranking. These are the pages that will attract new visitors and potential clientele to your website.
If you want new visitors to find your website, you need search engine optimization!
How does a web page attract New visitors?
- A search engine results page is a gallery of advertisements to be seen by people who are actually looking for what you have on offer.
- Search engine results are presented as pages each with 10 advertisements - each one is a search engine results page.
- Few searchers look beyond the first or second page.
Three Golden Rules of SEO for e-commerce (business) sites
- Target keywords with sufficient traffic for your needs.
- Target keywords with commercial value.
- Target keywords with low quantity and quality competition. Many keywords are so competitive that you will never realistically rank for them.
Why Does Search Engine Position Matter?
The following graphs shows that most searchers will click on the first few web pages only. If you are not in the top positions for a keyword search, you can expect virtually no traffic! (http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/)
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How does a search engine decide which web pages Will reach the top of their results pages?
- It is like a competition for the best essay. It is the words that matter not the image or images.
- It is not only the words on the page that count but the words in the underlying coding - words in the page heading would be just one example.
- Google is an enormous computer. It is blind. It has no idea that your page looks stunning.
- Webdesigners know the basics of search engine optimization but usually no more.
Web Designers and SEO
Two web designers have developed their own sites and they received
no visitors and they came to me.
Beautiful sites may be, but it needed an
SEO expert to assist them to optimize at least some of their web pages so
that searchers could potentially find them.
Web designers may be compared to car manufacturers. One may produce a BMWs Or Mercedes and another a "people's car" (VolksWagen). One may have the ambience of luxury but they serve the same essential function.
SEO is the fuel that gets websites moving. Without fuel, a luxury car or a "VW" will just sit in your garage going nowhere and nobody will see it.
How Can We Get My Website to the top of the search engine results pages?
It is not the website that gets to the top of the search engine results pages! It is individual pages.
Each page of your website should be themed around one keyword or keyword phrase and the success of a webpage is almost entirely independent of the other pages on your website.
The Good News and The Bad News - The Bad News first.
You may have many pages on your website but it is highly unlikely that more than a few can be successful.
The bad news is that the competition for the most popular keywords is likely to be so great in quantity and quality that it cannot be done.
Let us take an example of "financial advisor". In March 2009, 550,000 people searched for "financial advisor" on Google.
- But, there are 72 million competing web pages and these includes the all the big banks, mortgage lenders, tax advisors, Wall Street Companies, City of London Companies etc. We cannot get anywhere near the top of the search engine results page for this keyword phrase.
Now the good news.
We do not want all 550,000 people who look for "financial advisor" on the internet. Almost certainly we only want people looking for "financial advisor" in our locality. The number of searches may be smaller but these are the people we are seeking to attract to our website.
Local Searches Are Now 12% of All Searches,
In 2008, the practice of using online search tools to find local businesses, products or services grew by 58%, reaching a total of 15.7 billion searches for the year.
While total online searches for the year reached 137 billion, the growth rate there was only 21% on a year-over-year basis. Local searches make up 12% of core searches on the top 5 online portals, comScore reports.
"According to this study done by the and ComScore, local searches online are growing at a faster pace than regular Web searches. Year over year, local search volume grew by 58% (vs. 21% for regular search) for a total of 15.7 billion searches. This represents 12% of all searches at the top 5 search portals."
What can a search engine optimizer do for my Current website?
- Firstly, find out from the website owner his/her purpose and aspirations for the website.
- Check that the technical aspects of the website and individual web pages have been correctly coded and advise on required improvements from an SEO point of view.
- Assess the current status of the website on the search engines.
- Work as a team with the website owner.
- Research for one or perhaps two keyword phrases that are not too competitive to preclude success but have the potential to bring a reasonable number of searches to the website - we call these "niche keywords".
- Research for one or perhaps two keyword phrases that are not too competitive to preclude success but have the potential to bring a reasonable number of searchers to the website - we call these "niche keywords". There are many factors that influence the chance of success. PageRank is one example.
- Agree with the website owner that he/she is happy with the recommended niche keywords.
- If possible, refine current web pages using accepted SEO techniques.
- Usually, new web pages will be required to correctly optimize for the chosen niche keywords.
How long does Search Engine Optimization Take?
1. About two hours to take an overview of the website.
2. One hour to find one or more appropriate niche keywords.
3. Two hours to produce one optimized page.
You could consider asking a search engine optimizer to just undertake '1' in the first instance and progress to '2' and '3' later.
For many businesses, it is all a question of return on investment (ROI). For most businesses, the cost of professional optimization of one page, will be paid for by one or two additional clients.
Beware of sites that make extraordinary claims - many of the authors claim to be SEO "Gurus". Most of them turn out to be cowboys masquerading as indians.
Examples:
Get Your Website Listed for FREE on the 1st Page of Google with my Easy Step-by-Step System -
How quickly will SEO improve my web page positioning?
'Tweaking' a web page may begin to show improvement in positioning within a few weeks.
A new page web page particularly for a new website may take a few months to show up.
Page positioning depends on PageRank. When web pages gain PageRank, there should be further improvement.
SEO4us .com aims to help you build a search engine friendly website with search engine optimized pages that will receive large volumes of targeted traffic.For information on website design, please visit our specialist site - firstwebsitedesign .com
David Viniker, the author and webmaster of FirstWebsitedesign.com, believes that quality of content is a prerequisite to success. He is a clinician (consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist - ObGyn at Whipps Cross University Hospital, London - borders of London and Essex). He has research and teaching interests. His website www.2womenshealth.com receives 1.5 million visitors annually and is the most popular personal women's health website on the internet. He has applied his clinical skills to researching SEO techniques.
We are based in Loughton, Essex and close to North and East London and Hertfordshire.