Search Optimization SEO

The Basics of SEO

SEO or search engine optimization is about causing websites to rank well in Google or other search engines for terms that you are targeting. The basics of SEO can be categorized according to the following:

 

1. Keyword analysis

2. On page SEO factors, and

3. Off page SEO, or essentially link building

 

Keyword Analysis

 

 

Keyword analysis involves determining the phrases (or keywords) that you wish to rank well for in the search engines. It is best not to rely on intuition when determining your primary keywords. Some factors to consider when picking keywords include, the search volume of the keyword, the competition involved in ranking well for the keyword, its relevance to the content of your site, and optionally, how well a keyword may convert to sales or achieve any other objective you may have with you traffic. There are a number of keyword analysis tools that aid in analysing keywords. These tools can be free or paid, and may be online or as their own desktop application. Such tools typically provide keyword suggestions based on your initial input and indicate factors such as search volume, advertiser competition, number of competing websites and potentially other factors. You may also have several levels of targeted keywords, with your most competitive keywords targeting your front page and less competitive keywords targeting inner pages.

 

 

On Page SEO

 

 

On page SEO is essentially what you can do to your own site to help it rank well for your chosen keywords. Factors here include the use of your keyword(s) in your page title as well as in you page headings. Also the keyword should be used with a degree of density in the content of the page. Some also argue that the use of the keyword in your content should be made bold as well. The key here is to find a balance between including the keyword on the page while still making the page useful and readable by your audience and not spamming the keyword on the page. Typically there should also be a reasonable amount of content on the page itself. Other on page SEO factors include issues such as ensuring key components of your site are readable by the search engine, such as the text and the links in your menu.

 

 

Off Page SEO

 

 

Most of the work involved in SEO involves off page factors which essentially involves building links from other sites pointing to your website. The inbound links to your site will be the key component that determines how well your site will rank in the search engines. Some key factors here include the anchor text of your inbound links. The anchor text of a link is the text of the link that the user sees when they see the link. Ideally you want the text on the link to be the keyword you are targeting. Care must be taken however that the inbound links to a given page have a variety of anchor texts as having all inbound links with a single anchor text will not appear natural to the search engines and may hinder your sites ranking. Other factors include the number of inbound links and the strength of those links and weather those links will be counted by the search engines. Not all links are equal for SEO purposes, some links will help your site rank by orders of magnitude more than others. We will elaborate on this further in another article in this section of the site.

 

 

So these are the basic factors involved in search engine optimization. Most work done for SEO will fall into one of these three topics, keyword analysis, on page SEO or off page SEO.