MAIN Business SEO

Search Engine Optimization Basics

Search engines are very good at finding exactly what you want when you type in a search word. People know this and trust the search engines to find the sites they want online.

Chances are that Google and several other search engines deliver a large percentage of the traffic to your site. You'd like to know how to optimize your site to get even better results.

Sites that are 'optimized' to come up first in a search are the ones that will get the traffic - and make the sales. While some search engines allow business to buy the top spots, others, such as Google, have always maintained a strong policy against paid placement. That should mean that the top listings in those results go to the sites that really give you what you are searching for...in theory.

What actually happens is that there are millions of sites fighting for those top positions in the search engines. To get a top rank in the search result listings, sites use search engine optimization techniques. Some of these professional methods are just common sense and good site design:

• making a site map;
• keeping your site updated;
• getting rid of broken links;
• easy navigation; good design and clean HTML code;
• using keywords in the title and the other 'meta tags' that tell the search engine what your page contains;
• using the keywords appropriately within the content on the page (pay attention to how many times 'search engine optimization' appears on this page)

These are some of the basic search engine optimization methods. They are also the basics of a good Web site.

Having good content - answering questions that your customers would ask if they were there in person - and adding links to sites that help with even more information makes your visitors happy. The happier people are at finding your site, the more they appreciate the search engine that brought them there - leading them to the information they need.

The search engines reward sites that are optimized to focus on customer satisfaction. These search engine optimization techniques are good for your site as well, after all, a satisfied customer is going to bookmark your site and come back again. They may even tell a friend or two about the great site they've discovered.

A whole industry has grown up around optimizing sites to get high placement in search engine results. Search engine optimization experts - or SEOs - are people who spend a lot of time working with search engines and trying out different techniques to see which ones get their customer's sites to the top of the pile. The good SEOs will help you make your site better so that it deserves a top rank in the search engine pile. d

What NOT to do to optimize your Web site

The not so helpful SEOs will use techniques to get your site to look like a good site to the spiders - computer programs that are designed to gather information on the Internet. Your site may be able to fool a computer program, but what happens then is that when someone clicks on the link and goes to your site they are not happy with their search results. A search engine that leads surfers places where they don't want to go... will not stay in business for very long. Search engines don't appreciate Webmasters that try to scam them.

The search engines, especially Google, spend a lot of energy identifying ways that sites try to scam. Whenever they discover a new tactic for bogus search engine optimization, they change the algorithm - the program they use to select sites in search results. All of a sudden, that site that was doing so well has been dropped. Traffic disappears and the poor site owner is left to wonder what happened. Sadly, whenever the search engines change the rules to block spam, they also create headaches for the good sites that have been following all the rules... so everyone suffers.

It's the business of search engines to weed out sites that will make the search results bad. If you use optimization techniques that make your site look good when it isn't, you will be discover sooner or later... most likely sooner! Scamming sites are usually dealt with by losing their page rank in Google or being dropped from the search engine index altogether. Give up any hope of getting a decent placement in Google... or any search engine.

If you are just throwing together a site to sell widgets for a few months and don't care about long term results, go ahead and use spamming optimization to get your results. No one can stop you. However, if you have worked hard on your site and expect it to remain online and profitable for quite a while... avoid any advice that tells you scamming the search engines is ok.

Everyone does it? No, most sites don't. Fine tuning your site with good optimization methods improves your site and in the long run improves your profit. Most webmasters and SEOs work hard at optimization using the latest knowledge and good optimization tactics - not scam!

Other Search Engine Optimization Articles:

The Best Traffic Generation Tool Is Free
Buying Links: A Good Business Investment?
The Buzz About Links
Writing for Good Google SERPs
Internet Marketing Requires Persistance
Quick & Easy Search Engine Formula
SEO Tips for Ecommerce
Search Engine Optimization and Ecommerce
Search Engines: How Did They Get Here?
Search Engine Positioning
Writing Search Engine Optimized Articles