A Guide to SEO For Newbies
Search engines like Google and others similar, are critical to helping people connect with the web businesses they are searching for. There are companies out there that claim to get your page rankings so high that you’ll gladly pay high prices to make it happen. Not every website can or wants to go that route however.
The best way is to try to get free organic website traffic, meaning when someone searches for a term or phrase in the search engine, those pages that come up are “organic” type listings. Being on page one is highly desirable as few people search beyond the first one or two pages listed. This is different than the paid ads you see on the right hand side of the page, other wise known as “pay per click” ads. Trying to get listed at a high page rank is known as search engine optimization or SEO and boils down to:
1. Content is King. You need real content on your web site; this is content that has real meaning to real people, not just keyword stuffing. Search engines send out programs called web crawlers or web spiders that index web sites. The number one thing those web crawlers are looking for is content. They determine if a web site has content by tracking keyword phrases. This is why search engine optimization usually starts by picking keywords and writing content around them; a lot of web site marketing gurus advocate keyword stuffing well past the point of sanity and effectiveness. Anything more than about 2-4% of the words in an article and the web sites will filter it out it’s too obviously “gaming the system”.
2. Link exchanges are another valuable tool to get your site ranked higher. It’s important to find websites that are willing to put your link on their website that leads back to your site. It’s best to find websites that are related in content or topic of your site. Methods vary for finding these, but some common ways are link exchanges, article writing, social networking, posting on blogs and forums are some popular choices.
3. Updated, and expanding content. You can’t just put a page up and expect to keep the same page ranks. Your site needs to have new material, this is important not just for web spiders, but for human visitors as well. If they can expect to see something new and interesting at least three times a week, they’ll keep coming back and it takes an average of seven visits before someone decides to either post in a forum or buy something in a shopping cart.
4. Web layouts that make sense. Your web site should have clean navigational links, your front page should have links to everything else on your site.
5. Text means everything. The search engine spiders ignore Javascript and graphics and until recently couldn’t read text in Flash animations. If the spiders can’t read these items, it doesn’t help your page rankings at all. So you need plenty of real content on your site.
The real secret of long term success in search optimization is to make your web site as usable as you can. Make it easy to navigate for real people, who want to read about your niche, and with content that makes them come back.