Search Engine Optimization
What is Search Engine Optimization?

The position of a website listing in search engines is extremely important since it will determine if a website can be easily found… or not. This will directly influence the amount of traffic of the website. A #1 listing position is the most desirable, one of the first 10 listings comes in second and one of the first 30 listings comes in third. If the listing cannot be found in the first 30 listings of a search engine under a certain keyword or phrase, chances are that is will never be found under that keyword or phrase since people seldom search beyond the first 30 listings.

There are many different factors that affect a website ranking. The method that search engines use to calculate where a website listing is going to be placed in respect to other listings in the same search engine is a complex algorithm that takes into account many different aspects of a website. To make matters even more complex, different search engines use spider programs to “crawl” and analyze websites, each using a different algorithm and some of these search engines change their algorithms often. Algorithm directly affects the optimization of a website.

It may seem like an extremely difficult, if not impossible, to optimize a website because of the many fluctuating factors involved, however knowing which are the most important and which are the ones that are prone to fluctuation (usually not as important and will differ among search engines) will help you to successfully carry out the initial optimization and it‘s ongoing maintenance - just try thinking like a search engine’s owner and optimizing your site will be a lot easier. However, if you cannot afford to expend long hours learning, analyzing and implementing the following techniques, you should then leave it to the professional to do the job for you.

First -What’s involved in a search engine optimization? The following factors are involved in search engine optimization and are the most important ones:

Domain name - Selecting the most appropriate one from the ones that are still available shouldn’t be that difficult, however it should always be done thru keyword/key-phrase research, not by impulse or by “how nice it sounds”. Carefully choose one that describes as best as possible your future site in two, three or even four words, for example:

Title - Choosing the right keywords/key-phrases for the title is the second most important consideration. Limit it to just 7 words.

Description - Choosing the right keywords/key-phrases for your description is the third most important consideration. Don’t forget that people, which are the ones for which ultimately the web page was created for, not just the search engine crawlers, will be reading it. Make sure to prepare a well written description with the right keywords/key-phrases in it, however limit it to just 25 words.

Keywords/key-phrases - Choose the right keywords/key-phrases. Use an appropriate keyword density. Although different search engines differ in the amount of keyword density they have adopted as optimum, and they could change it anytime, a keyword density or percentage of between 10 to 15% of keywords in respect to words in the visible page should be ok. For example: If you are using a keyword density of just 10% in a 400 word page you should have 40 keywords - it’s that simple. However the real difficulty is in is in using those keywords in the visible part of the page and blending them in with the rest of the information contained there. Here is where art must be mixed well with science.

Visible page adjustments - You must place in the visible side of the page the same keywords/key-phrases that you placed in the html, otherwise your site could be considered to using spam and placed far down in the listings of search engines. The reasoning for this is that if the keywords are not in the visible part of the page, they have no business being in the keyword section either. This is probably the most time consuming part of the optimization process since you must mix art and science in order to get optimum results. You cannot just toss in the keywords, but strategically place them in a well written manner that sounds pleasant to your visitors.

Amount of words in the visible page - Between 400 and 500 words is the optimum amount, however don’t hesitate to write a little less or a little more if you have to. Quality content related to website subject in every page is essential.

Amount of pages - The more pages with good and unique content, the better.

0 Spamming of Search Engines - Non use of spamming in web pages in order to trick the search engines is essential since it can severely hurt the website rankings. You will do a lot better in the long run, resisting the temptation of trying to outsmart the search engines.

Image tags - Search engine spiders or crawlers can’t read images and when they encounter them you should let them know what ‘s in them using image tags.

Domain name longevity - Although not exactly a part of the optimization process itself, it is good (and important) to know that the longer a domain has remained active and the more years it has been paid for, the more serious and important it becomes in the eyes of search engines.

Fluctuating factors - There are different fluctuating factors to consider but these have to do mainly with the different search engines since they use different algorithms. Search engines change theirs also from time to time. Factors like keyword density, amount of words and repeated keywords in web pages, etc. can vary among engines and they can affect your site's ranking in them. If you want certain pages of your site to rank higher in specific search engines, you must carefully study sites that are ranking high in them in order to understand what factors are influencing it before you make adjustments in your site's optimization. However don't forget that there can be outside factors that have nothing to do with optimization that could be influencing the listing position of these sites.

Other considerations - There are many other considerations of lesser importance in the optimization process but since they add up, together they are still very important. Nevertheless there are still other considerations that should be taken into account in order to have your page seen by many prospects like increasing the amount of quality back links, inviting other webmasters to link to your site, e-mail advertising, inviting visitors to invite their friends to visit your website, online and off-line advertising, etc; however they are not part of the optimization process.