Search Engine Optimization Basics

What is a Search Engine?
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Methods not to be used in SEO
General Engines for Manual Submission
Why is SEO required?
Glossary of SEO Terms
SEO Basics

What is a Search Engine?

A tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web. Search engines use keywords entered by users to find Web sites which contain the information sought.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process, in which a web page or a web site is optimized for search engines. By optimization, a search engine such as Google finds the page, includes it in the index, and displays the page when someone is searching for information.

Methods not to be used in SEO

* Hidden text or links.
* Misleading keywords or keyword stuffing.
* Cloaked pages or sneaky or deceptive redirects
(keyword-stuffed landing pages that quickly redirect to the real page).
* Doorway pages made only for search engines.
* Duplicate sites or pages.
* Monthly submissions to search engines (a waste of time and money).
* Mainly Optimizing Meta keyword tags (a waste of time and money) but important for some directory listings.

General Engines for Manual Submission

1. Google
2. Yahoo Web
3. Alexa
4. Altavista (Now Through Yahoo!)
5. All The Web
6. Search MSN
7. Yahoo! Directory (non-profit listing)
8. DMOZ (The Open Directory Project)
9. Jayde B2B Directory

Why is SEO required?

Millions of web pages are included in search engine index. Each search engine process "keyword / phrase" queries more than million of times per day. When searching for any product or service, usually, people go no deeper than 3-4 pages. That's why its important that potential customer (or information seekers) visit your website. If your web page is embedded deep in the search results, it is unlikely that anyone visit your web page. Therefore, you need to improve the visibility of your web site (or web pages contained in your web site).

Glossary of SEO Terms

These are common knowledge terms and the definitions and/or explanations have been gathered from various places.

GoogleBot - The name of the spider used by Google.

Google Dance - used to describe the index update of Google. A time when fluctuations in ranking appear. Google's index update occurred on average once per month.

PR or Page Rank - the actual, real, page rank for each page as calculated by Google. This can range from 0.15 to billions.

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language - the (main) language used to write web pages.

HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol - the (main) protocol used to communicate between web servers and web browsers (clients).

Yahoo Slurp - The name of the spider used by Yahoo.

Scooter - The name of the AltaVista search engine's spider.

Title - The text contained between the start and end HTML <HEAD> tags of the source code. The title is usually at the top of the window when viewing the source code. The Title text forms the link to the URL page from the search engine results, and search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing any page in your web site.

CPC - Cost per Click

PPC - Pay per Click

CPM - Cost per thousand

Spider Food - a term used for a site map, or another page of a web site that contains all the links in a web, allowing the search engines spider to index all the pages in a web.

Inbound Link - A hypertext link to a particular page from elsewhere, bringing traffic to that page. Inbound links are counted to produce a measure of the page popularity. Searches for the inbound links to a page can be made on AltaVista, Google and HotBot.

Reciprocating Link - An exchange of links with a web site that is similar in services.

Dynamic Content - Information on web pages which is changed automatically, by database content or user information. Search engines will currently index dynamic content, although they will not usually index URLs which contain the ? character.

robots.txt - A text file stored in the top level directory of a web site to deny access by robots to certain pages or sub-directories of the site. Only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will read and obey the commands in this file. Robots will read this file on each visit, so that pages or areas of sites can be made public or private at any time by changing the content of robots.txt before resubmitting to the search engines.

SEO Copywriting - The writing of text especially for a search engine. Similar to the copywriting for any other types of publication, good Search engine optimization (SEO) copywriting has a tremendous impact on search engine positioning, so it forms a major part of optimization.

Spam - excessive use of any "trick" meant to improve positioning in Internet search engines.

Algorithm - Algorithms used by search engine companies are used to determine the relevancy of any given web page for any particular search term. This is often taken into account by SEO professionals when determining a web sites coding, design and text.

SEO Basics

1. Understanding Business.

# What is your business all about?
# How is it going to Operate?
# Target audience (Global/Local)
# Opportunity
# Compitetor study operating in same business.
# Core competence

2. Target Keywords.

# Getting a good list of keywords.
# This is something that will directly reflect your efforts
(targeting wrong keyword will get all your efforts in vain)

3. WEB Designing.

# Navigation
# Page Size
# Look & Feel
# Inter Linking
# HTML Code Validation*

4. Meta Tags & Content.

# Title
# Description
# Keywords
# Content

5. Directories.

Search engines need a starting point. That's why human edited directories are important to be listed in. There are 3 major web directories at this moment:

DMOZ - Free listings.
The Yahoo directory - Free listings for non-commercial sites.
Looksmart (Zeal directory) - Free listings for non-commercial sites

6. Link Building.

When setting up the linking architecture of your site keep in mind that links are of two kinds:

1. Internal links

2. External links

Internal links are the constituent elements of the way your web site is organized. They are the bridges by which one page of your site connects to the other & more importantly outlines, which page of your site will connect to which other page/s.

External links on the other hand are the community tools by which the online community votes for you by linking to you. The more popular you get is a function of more incoming links into your website. This in turn is interpreted by search engines as a measure of your online value creation.

To enjoy a good pagerank for the pages it is imperative to have proper linking amongst various pages within the website as well as having good quality external links coming into the page.

A factor to keep in mind while linking is that one should focus on quality links & not always quantity. Consider that, there is a huge difference from a link, to your page from another page with a good pagerank than a page from a low pagerank.

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