What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engines made their way into the internet technology in the middle of 1990s. Once a search query is typed in the search box of the browser, search engines swiftly crawl through the websites in their database and index them instantly based on the keywords in their content to be displayed in the search results. The more the number of keywords in the content of sites, the higher were their rankings in the search results. At some point, someone discovered that some changes carried out in the pages will get them ranked high. SEO refers to the set of techniques implemented aiming at increasing the page rankings in the search engine results.
While there are several SEO techniques, some appear to be legitimate while some are not. In fact, some SEO techniques are considered ‘blackhat’ techniques that are not liked by the search engines. Such techniques while employed can have adverse effects on the site. Therefore, you must weigh the real worth of a particular SEO strategy and use it judicially to get the desired results.
Who needs SEO techniques?
Internet businesses are the ones that really need Search Engine Optimization. Truly speaking others do not really need this process. SEO must be understood as one of the many channels available to promote your product or service among the customers. To this extent, SEO techniques can help you promote your offerings. However, while there are other channels, some of them in fact better to promote your business, there is no point in getting obsessed with SEO that might not actually yield what you are looking for or can possibly expect.
Can I do SEO myself or hire a professional to do it?
Once learnt, SEO is not a tough job. If you can have the patience and time to sit with the process, it is worth doing yourself as you can hope to save a few bugs spent on hiring a professional. In addition, when you do the process, you have the full control over the job and you know what is best for your site. Therefore, you can be assured of the outcome. No SEO professional can guarantee you the results and therefore, unless there is a dire need and if you are not prepared to do it yourself, there is no point in hiring someone to do the job.
How do Search Engines work?
Search engines have three main components namely crawler or spider, indexer and ranker. The crawler does a robotic job of downloading the pages of websites and crawling through them for links. The crawler makes the visits periodically depending on the website’s quality and how frequently its content is updated. Depending on the changes in the content, the crawler modifies the ranking. This process might happen from many times in a day to once in a month depending on the site.
Indexer receives all the websites the crawler sends and stores them in a huge database known as index. This index does not remain static, rather it is updated with the finding of a new page or when the crawler re-indexes a page. The huge volume of the database makes it time consuming to incorporate all the changes in the index at once. Therefore, there might be some websites that have been crawled, but not indexed till a given point of time.
The role of the ranker commences once the website is indexed with all its content. The ranker interacts with the user and receives search query. In response to the query, it sifts millions of indexed pages and sorts them out in relevance to the query. The results are then displayed.
What is the role of keyword density in page ranking?
The role of key word density in page ranking is often overestimated. Truly speaking, key word density is useless beyond a certain percentage. Search engines have evolved so much. No more they count the number of key words as this can be easily manipulated and going by this factor can be thoroughly misleading to judge the quality and relevance of a given content. In ranking the pages, search engines implement thousands of strategies. Search engines always like pages written in a natural language. Therefore, always it is good to write for human beings and not for search engines. Therefore, the truth remains that key word density is a useless factor for page ranking.
What are the factors that work against page ranking?
Keyword stuffing is not recommended for page ranking. Google search engine for instance is against key word stuffing and when overdone, it can trigger spam filter leading to loss of positions. Writing naturally and optimizing the keywords to the extent needed is the only way to raise the page ranking. The other factors that might hinder page rankings include hidden texts and invisible links, doorway pages, splogs, cloacking, duplicate content, flash and Javascript and frames. It is advisable therefore that you make use of these categories in your website judicially to the extent you will really need.
What are the characteristics of the content ideally liked by a Search Engine?
Search engines like quality content and give priority to high quality content in rankings. Therefore, it is important that your content targets humans and not search engines. Search engines can easily sense the content that is useful to the visitors and therefore your content should suggest something valuable, interesting and useful to your visitors. While describing a product, state how useful it is for the visitors. You may enhance your website by sharing your views, opinions and reviews. Interesting sites are linked by clients to their own. Always confine to one theme in a page. These days search engines are sensitive to themes than keywords. One theme per page strategy will best suit alluring search engines as well as your viewers. Evolving easy and plain text navigation is helpful for search engines. The other useful factors that would increase the worth of the content include navigation and internal linking, and avoiding Java script and flash links.