Search Engine Optimization

Increase Your Rankings with Search Engine Optimization Strategies

The process of improving the quantity and quality of traffic to a website from search engines is referred to as search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization techniques aim at improving the search engine ranking of a website so that the site appears in the top few search results on a search engine. Search engine optimizers target different kinds of searches that web users tend to perform. This includes image and video searches, text-based searches as well industry-specific searches. Search engine optimization is a niche area that includes keyword research, website traffic analysis and web content optimization involving the editing of web content, its HTML coding and building of links. Following is an outline of some of the search engine optimization techniques. Take a look.

Keyword Optimization: The search terms, which are used by web users to conduct online searches are known as keywords or key phrases. Keywords are used to describe the purpose and content of a website and enable the website to rank higher in the web search results. A good search engine ranking depends not only on the choice of keywords but also on their placement in web content as also their density. Keywords should best describe the topic and content in the web page and should generate relatively less number of search results after performing a search on Google. This means that they have less competition on the web and thus have higher chances of ranking higher in search engines. It is important to place the keywords in the title and the description in the web page. They should also be used throughout the page, especially in the introductory paragraphs and the closing lines of the content.

Link Building: A link is a navigation element that directs a user from one web document to another. Web pages should contain links from popular websites. The quality of incoming links is an important factor contributing to the page rank of a web page. Embedding relevant links within the web page content helps in fetching a higher search engine rank for a web page. The use of dead links, those which direct a user to an inaccessible page, should be strictly avoided. Google considers the outbound links from a website, as determinants of the quality of the website content. Internal links (links between the pages of the same website) make the search engines realize that the website is huge, thus making it a strong contender for a high search engine rank.

Website Design: Website design plays a major role in search engine ranking. It should be easy for the search engines to navigate web pages. According to experts, search engines prefer text to other graphic or multimedia formats. Websites using Flash or Javascript should make an HTML version of their website available for users. The contents of a left navigation bar are read before the main content by search engines. It is important for website developers to avoid placing excessive content on one page; instead, they should evenly distribute the content among well-structured and internally linked web pages. It is advisable to use topic pages containing articles that focus on that subject. It is believed that websites having more than 100 pages on the same topic have high chances of ranking better than their competitors. Also, it is important for a website URL to correspond with the page content. According to experts, it is essential for every website to have a site map. A site map is a page that has links to all the other pages of a website, thus helping these pages rank in prominent search engines.

Use of HTML Tags: Besides gathering user attention and improving web usability, HTML tags also play a vital role in search engine optimization. Title tags are used for displaying web page titles, which are the most significantly visible elements of web pages. Heading tags can be used for content intended for prominent display on a web page. Meta tags help the search engines in listing a website in their indices. They are inserted at the top of a web page following the title element. The meta description tags are used to influence the search engine crawlers, which support the tag. The meta keywords tags are used to reinforce certain important terms in the web page content.

Black Hat SEO: Attempts to improve search engine ranking in ways that are not approved by search engines are known as black hat SEO techniques. Using hidden text or hidden links in order to manipulate relevancy of web content is one of the commonly used unethical SEO strategies. An excessive use of links, or the embedding of unrelated links in web pages is another black hat SEO technique.

Search engine optimization strategies are central to online marketing and Internet advertising. SEO tips and techniques form some of the most effective Internet marketing tools. But one thing’s for sure; there should be no compromising for the quality of web content.