Search Engine Optimisation In Brief
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation is the new buzz word on the internet. In reality SEO has been around as long as there have been search engines.
What Is SEO?
Well, in layman’s terms SEO is;
- The process of making a web page palatable to a search engine ‘Spider, Crawler or Robot’.
- A plain and simple popularity contest.
‘Spiders’ are the names given to programs, generally from search engines such as Google, which trawl the internet evaluating websites. These evaluations are then used to form a list of relevant sites for particular search terms or keywords. In other words, when you type a search term into a search engine, a list will be returned in order of relevance according to the search engine spider.
The way each spider determines relevance is a closely guarded secret. Each search engine will use an algorithm to determine the relevance of a web page for particular search terms. This determines your search engine ranking for particular search terms.
There are quite a few SEO companies that ‘Claim’ to have knowledge of exactly how these algorithms work. In reality, this is simply not true, so be wary on anyone claiming such knowledge.
Also be wary of any SEO company that guarantees a No.1 position on search engines for your particular keywords. They may very well achieve No.1 positions for you, but no-one can guarantee it. Some keywords are more competitive than others. The more competitive the keyword, the stiffer the competition.
Some companies will also employ ‘Black Hat’ techniques on the pages they optimise. These techniques generally only give short term advantages and are more likely to result in long term disadvantages, such as having your site banned from a particular search engine. As with most things in life, to achieve good long term results, do the job properly to start with and stay within the guide lines.
Two Parts To The Cake
Let’s go back to the two points mentioned earlier and explain them in a little more depth.
On Page Optimisation
1. The process of making a web page palatable to a search engine ‘Spider, Crawler or Robot’.
Basically this entails writing each page in a way that the spider finds easy to navigate and extract information from the page. The correct use of META tags is essential. As is having content on your page that is relevant to your keywords.
Off Page Optimisation
- A plain and simple popularity contest.
In-bound links to your page are a big boost to your page’s importance in the eyes of search engines. The more in-bound links you have the more important your page is deemed to be. Each in-bound link acts as a vote for you page. The more votes, the higher the popularity of your page and the higher the chances of being ranked well for your particular search terms.
Well, that is it in a nutshell. Get the ‘on page optimisation’ and the ‘off page optimisation’ correct and wait to see the results come in.
More in-depth details about each of these processes are due to follow, so watch this space.
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