Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the natural or un-paid ( organic or algorithmic) search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kind of search, including image search, local search. video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence.

As an internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding both increase its relevant to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks or inbound links is another SEO tactic.

SEO can refer to search engine optimizer, a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees Who performing SEO services in house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a standalone service or as a part of boarder marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML Source code of a site and content, SEO tactics may be incorporated to website development and Design.  The term "search engine friendly" used to describe website designs.

History of SEO

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid 1990s, as the first search engine was cataloging the early web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was submit the address of page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server , where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page.

Site owner started to recognize the value of having there sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to the industry annalist Danny Sullivan the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came in to use in 1997. The 1st documented use of the term Search Engine Optimization was Jone Audette and his company multimedia marketing group as documented by a web page the MMG site from August 1997.  The 1st registered USA copyright of website cottoning that by Bruce Clay effective march 1997

How To Choose Keywords

Fist of all you need to have an idea of what products or services your are going to sell. At this point I'll just assume you already know that.

Now you start by making a list of all keywords related to you main product or service by brainstorming. Just write down everything you can think of, here's a list to get your started.

    * Brand names
    * Who is using the product (dentist,webmaster, mothers etc)
    * Where is the product used (home, office, underwater, on website etc)
    * Related products (soap - shampoo, car - insurance, hosting - domain names)
    * Season (summer, Christmas, harvest etc)
    * Product features (low noise, easy to use, cheap, high availability, tasty, blue)

When you have a list of 50-200 keywords you are ready for the next step which is keyword tools.

Keywords tools helps you find synonyms and related keywords that you didn't think about. They also help you determine if a keyword is likely to bring in paying customers or just browsers. And finally they help you determine the level of SEO competition for a keyword.

The fist tool to use is the Google keyword tool which is free and uses the Google index to find relevant keywords. The Google keyword tool tells you exactly what people are searching for on Google, it lets you know what people are interested in and in great detail.

As en example I type in the keyword "add url" into the box I quickly find out that there is several types of "add url" searched for.

    * directory add url
    * search engine add url
    * seo add url

There is also some synonyms for add url

    * submit url
    * adding url
    * register url
    * add link

Keyword research

 

Keyword research, finding the right keywords for your website or product, is one of the fundamental activities in SEO.

The keywords you use to promote your website effectively selects what people will be visiting your website and you better make sure this is people interested in buying your products and services!

If you sell your own product the type of visitor will determine your conversion rate and visitor value. If you use AdSense on your website the type of visitor will determine your CPM. If you sell advertising directly the type of visitor will determine how long people are staying on your website which affects your page view statistics.

The keywords you use to promote your website directly determines the level of income you will have from your website.
 

Getting Index

 

He leading search Engines, such ad Google, Bing and Yahoo! , Use crawlers to find pages for their algorithemic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. some search engines,  notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database. but do not grantee specific ranking within the search results. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human edition review. Google offers Google Webmaster tools, for which an XML sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links

Search engine crawlers may look a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distant of pages from the root directory of a site factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Preventing crawling

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt files in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search Engine visit a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled.

As a search engine crawler keep a cached copy of the file, it on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages prevented from being crawled include login specific pages as shopping carts and user specific content as search results from internal searches.

Increasing prominence

There are more method can increase the prominence of webpage within search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide links to important pages improve its visibility.  Writing content that includes searched keyword relevant to a search quarries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content  to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to site.  Adding relevant key word to web pages metadata including a title tag and meta description tend to improve the traffic