Veesolutions.com

Search Engine Optimization

An Introduction to SEO

SEO, What is It?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving how a website ranks in the natural (or organic) search results of search engines. As a result, SEO can increase a website's volume and quality of traffic. It is believed that a website appearing on the first page of a search engine's search results will get more visitors (or clicks) compared to a website that is not ranked as high. There are two types of Search Engine Optimization. The first type of search engine optimization has to do with control over editing a site's content with HTML (through FTP) or a Content Management System (CMS). This method is called "onpage SEO". Wikipedia elaborates about onpage SEO by stating that "optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines." The other type of SEO is "offpage SEO". Ezinearticles.com explains that, "offpage SEO is all about the things you could do to get a high page rank (PR) for your website after it has already gone live. These are the things which you actually execute outside the pages of your website." For any website looking to get optimized for the search engines, both onpage and offpage SEO must be considered to have the full benefits of ranking well.

How do Search Engines Work?

Currently, the top search engines based on usage are Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing (aka MSN & live.com). The Big 3 use crawlers (called robots or spiders) based on algorithms to find pages on the web. Crawler-based search engines operate like automated software agents that find a website, read the site's meta tags, read the information (text) on the page and then they try to follow the links the page connects to. The results of a crawl then get returned to the search engine and are indexed.

The Almighty Algorithm

There are many factors that influence how search engines' run their algorithms. Take Google for example, nobody really knows the mathematical formula it uses to return search results for a user that has performed a search query. In fact, Google goes to great lengths to keep this a secret. A 2007 New York Times interview revealed that Google, "has been cautious about... speak(ing) with the news media about the magical, mathematical brew inside the millions of black boxes that power its search engine." The NYT interview spotlights Amit Singhal, a master engineer at Google, who discusses Google's “ranking algorithm”, the behind the scene formulas determining the webpages resulting from a user’s question. The New York Times interview continues to reveal;

Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years. “The data we have is pushing the state of the art,” Mr. Singhal says. “We see all the links going to a page, how the content is changing on the page over time.”

Google's rivals, Yahoo! and Bing, continue to fine tune their algorithms as well, but again this is all done behind closed doors. Interesting search projects are in development by the second and third most popular search engines, but is it enough to knock off Google, the king of the search? Here is what's happening in their search labs:

Yahoo! is now developing special search formulas for specific areas of knowledge, like health. Microsoft has bet on using a mathematical technique to rank pages known as neural networks that try to mimic the way human brains learn information.

However, Yahoo! and Bing continue to have their hands full. Nicholas Carr wrote an interesting article for the Atlantic (July/August 2008 issue) titled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" He conducted research on how the Internet is changing the way we read and process information. He also addresses how intense the testing is at Google and illustrates how difficult it has made it for the search industry. Carr learned that Google, "...carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it."

A Few Onpage SEO Tips - It's not Mental, Its Meta

1. Meta Title Tag

The title tag is commonly what appears on the search engine results pages. It is the title that you see at the very top of the browser window. Use a good description with the right keywords in the title and users scanning the search results will gravitate towards your site's listing. Keep titles brief because Google shows the first 70 characters on the search engine results. Each page of your site should have a unique title tag.

If you are not familiar with HTML or Meta Tags, reference this on HTML title tags.

2. Meta Description Tag

It is recommended that a unique description in the meta description tag be used. This should be done for each of your pages (with a different description). The description sometimes shows up on the search engine results pages.

If you are not familiar with HTML or Meta Tags, reference HTML Meta Elements.

3. Meta Keywords Tag

The meta keywords tag was heavily used by Google when it started as a search engine over 10 years ago. Currently, it is believed that Google ranks the keyword tag quite low on its algorithm, but the other search engines still utilize it. Try to use about 10 keywords per page inside of the keywords tag. Very important, all words used in the keywords tag must appear in the body text of the webpage. If not, Google may believe your page is irrelevant and impose a penalty.

If you are not familiar with HTML or Meta Tags, reference HTML Meta Elements.

Google considers illicit practices from site owners by removing them entirely from the Google index. Google's Webmaster Guidelines makes it very clear, "if a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites."

References