Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
Search engines are large databases that send out crawlers called spyders or robots. The spyders are software programs that spread through out the internet and index every web site they encounter. Then they send the information back to their parent database. Unless you tell them not to, they will follow all of the links on every page in the website and index those pages as well.
Why should you bother to optimize your website? Search engines provide free traffic to your web site. This kind of traffic is called organic traffic. Free traffic is always better than paid traffic if you can get it. Since a typical conversion rate is less that 10%, you will need a lot of traffic to make a living online. The more targeted the traffic, the higher your conversion rate will be.
Search engines use complex algorithms to decide if they should show your web page on their results page for a specific search term. Since Google is the most stringent, optimizing for Google will usually get you good ranking in the other search engines as well.
On Page Optimization
On page optimization refers to the things you can do to improve your search engine rankings using the content of the web page. Just remember no matter how much the spyders like your web page if it isn’t written for the visitor, you will not make sales.
Keywords – selecting the proper keywords or keyword phrase is essential. Also Google does not like a keyword density in your text over 5% but MSN and Yahoo will tolerate higher percentage before they consider it keyword spamming. Keyword spamming will reduce your page rank and could even get your website banned from the search engine.
Meta Tags – are designed for the spyders and the search engines. They are fields like Title, description, keywords, etc. that do not show up on the web page. Used properly, Meta tags can get your web site indexed more quickly on various search engines (It’s not really useful with Google, Yahoo and MSN nowadays but there are a lot of other smaller search engines that can still bring you traffic)
Page Formatting - Spyders do read the page content so make sure that the content surrounding a keyword makes sense in relation to the keyword because the search engines use it for context rating.
Header Tags – such as <h1>, <h2>, etc tell the spyders that this is important. Use header tags for all titles, sub titles and section headers. Also make sure to include secondary keywords in the header text.
Text Decoration – search engines consider decorated text to be of greater importance. Use decoration such as bold, italics, and underlining for keywords through out your text but don’t over do it or you take the risk to get penalized.
Alternate Text Tag – this is the text that pops up when you mouse over a picture. It also appears if images have been disabled or the device cannot show the image.
Image Optimization – All images need to be optimized for fast loading and for the images related to your article use alternative text with you primary keywords so they can be included in the image database of the search engine for image searches.
Off Page Optimization
Off page optimization are the things that you can do that are not a part of your web page that will generate organic traffic for your site.
Incoming Links – incoming links to your web site is one of the primary determinants of page rank. Links from authority sites and other websites that are relevant to your website carry more weight than links from non-related web sites. But that doesn’t mean that it is useless to have links from non-related websites – such links to your website increase your website’s power too.
Anchor Text – the text used in the actual link carries a lot of weight when determining the relevance of an incoming link. If you want to rank for a keyword phrase, use this keyword phrase and some variations as your anchor text as much as possible.
Page Title – the page title should contain the keyword phrase you are trying to rank for.
Outgoing Links – there should be fewer outgoing than incoming links on each page. It is important (and very often overlooked) to use rel=’nofollow’ in your outgoing links to pages you don’t want to send page rank power. For example if you have a link to your contact page think to add a rel=’nofollow’ attribute in your link tag. This will prevent sending power to this page and thus you will be able to send more power to the other pages you’re linking to.
Site Maps – site maps get your web site internal pages indexed more easily. Use a google xml site map because all of the search engines can and do read the google site map and will use it to crawl your web site internal pages.
Forum Posting – become an active member on a forum related to your web site. Select a forum that allows backlinks to your website to be included in your signature.
Press Releases – press releases can generate a burst of traffic to your website. Just make sure that the topic meets the requirements for a press release by being both news worthy and formatted according to the receiver’s guidelines.
Search Engine Submission – submit your web site to all of the search engines that allow submissions. Be sure to follow their guideline exactly. This is not needed anymore with the big search engines but for the smaller ones this step is still necessary.
Article Marketing – write articles related to your products and services and submit them to article directories. Make sure the directory allows a backlink in the author’s box. Don’t bother submitting the same article to several directories, instead submit a different article each time or your links won’t be counted by Google.
Blogging – a blog on your website will provide targeted traffic and a blog located elsewhere can provide backlinks to your site which will improve search engine rankings.
Social Bookmarking – use websites like Digg and Stumbleupon to bookmark your web pages to provide incoming links.
Web 2.0 Social Sites – use Facebook and twitter to create a loyal following where you can announce new products and promotions as well as generate backlinks to your web site.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization can be a lot of work initially but it can pay off with free traffic for many years to come and should be a part of every marketers long range marketing plan. By following a good search engine optimization tutorial you have more chances to get at the top of the search engines.
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