Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the strategy of web site enhancement with an objective to increase the traffic from search engines. This is usually achieved by improving the site rankings in search engines upon specific keyword search, increasing site exposure by gaining linkages from high-ranking web sites etc. As people search and surf with a specific purpose, it is anticipated that the traffics attracted via search engines are more likely to be the target audiences. SEO is performed to maximize the site exposure to such pool.
The Introduction of Google PageRank
Web spiders and crawlers are well known terms describing the robots systems that index the web proactively, building a database of URL as the base of search engines. Since the introduction of Google PageRank algorithm (formerly known as BackRub), search engines indexing became a sophisticated art, resulting a much closer bond and relevance among neighbor or related pages. PageRank is working with a general idea that counts the number of pages linking to the web site, together with other factors that determines the overall site rankings in Google.
As the web audiences are getting more differentiated by purposes, publicizing on the Internet will require a more focused marketing strategy. In order for a web site to be appear outstanding over the others in search engines, researches should be done on:
- Search engines logic and algorithm in site rankings
- Keywords that your audience may search in order to reach you
- Competition with other similar web sites on each keyword
- Web 2.0 concept of collaboration, which can bring extra traffic
- Tools that help in analyzing traffic statistics and promotion.
1. Search Engine Logic
You should understand 1) how search engines view you page as being relevant to topic, and 2) how search engines assign the site rankings.
Being relevant to your business is of utmost importance to bring in high quality visitors. For this we can perform on-site optimization (enhancement that can be done on the coding level). Having high rankings will obviously increase your site exposure allowing it to be easily clicked on top of search results. For this we can perform off-site optimization (enhancement to be done outside the web site, like building links from other web sites.)
More on the strategies for both in later postings.
SEO techniques are also classified as white hat and black hat. White hat SEO generally means performing SEO is a healthy way, like building nice and relevant contents, inducing bonds and groups formation, gaining links by reputation and make the contents accessible to web crawlers etc., which is more user oriented. Black hat SEO are relatively 'dark arts' that attempt to achieve a high standings in search engines in an undesirable approach, like spamdexing. Usually black hat techniques may be able to boost the traffic in a short term before being penalized by the search engines.
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