Search Engine Optimization - What is SEO

Search Engine Optimization is much more than putting a few keywords into your meta tags. Even though many of the major search engines converting to a pay to play model and the lag time involved in websites showing up organically for relevant topics, in the long term optimizing your website will pay off.

As your site grows in perceived value weighed by, site age + quality of links + depth of focused content related to keywords, a well optimized site will begin to rise organically in the rankings.

Optimizing your website is an ongoing endeavor and not a one shot deal. Search Engines are constantly changing their algorithms and your competition is adding relevant content, links and keywords so, to stay in the game persistency pays off in the organic placement game.

The following is basic optimization steps you should take to prepare your website for major search engines and directories:

• Researching your industry and locating the current top ten competing sites, then analyzing those sites for a number of items:
  a. Keyword density in the title, discriptions and content of their page(s).
  b. Keyword placement (order) in their meta tags.
• The frequency of searches done on major search engines daily for the major terms used in your industry.
• Keyword density on the face of you document compared to the keywords in your Meta tags.
• Research for less competitive keyword strings to maximize on a smaller playing field
• Word count and relevancy of on page text compared to keyword targets.
• Page structure and code for search engine robot readability and load speed
• Development of link structure both internal and external to maximize keywords

  Optimizating your website further involves:

• Creating your Meta tags, text and text location on your pages for top placement
• On page content editing, and code revisions for keyword placement and search engine robot reading ease
• Hand submitting your site to search engines and directories.
• A proactive link campaign to industry, content or complementary topic websites.
  

  Big No No's is search engine optimization - Over optimizing can hurt you

• Keyword stuffing in discription tags and page titles
• Placing hidden text in the page backgroud full of keyword phrases
• Over use of keywords in alt tags behind images
• Noncense sounding sentences constructed of repitive keywords
• Mirror or gateway sites with identical content to main website.
• Over submitting your pages for review to search engines

We hope that this article on the basic level of what search engine optimization is and the beginning tasks involved will help you understand some of the efforts that are involved, considerations and optimization tricks to avoid.