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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the science (some would say the art) of trying to get a webpage to show up high in the search engine results (ie Google, Yahoo, MSN) for keyword* searches related to the topic of the webpage.
*"keyword" is a phrase often used in the internet marketing world. Let me try to explain what it means with an example: If I have a website about cats then the most basic keyword for my site would be "cats" and this is the keyword I would want my site to show up for when it's searched for on Google. If I have a page on my website about "orange cats" then that would be the more specific keyword relating to that page.
It is vital to the success of any website to show up high in the search engine results for relevent keywords because this is the best way to get interested visitors to the website. For example if you have a website selling microphones and your site comes up #1 in the Google results for the search term "buy microphone" then this could lead to a lot of sales for your website. If your site comes up #100, or #1000 then the opposite is true.
I know for most of the people reading this, this is extremely basic information but I want this site to be friendly to beginners who haven't really thought in this way before.
Each search engine has their own system for figuring out how to rank sites and their exact methodology is not known. But we do have a pretty good idea of what's important to the search engines and the steps needed to rank highly in the results. The two basic steps are on-page SEO and off-page SEO. To put it simply on page SEO is exactly what it sounds like, it's the content of the webpage itself. This is becoming less and less important as time goes on. This is more important to MSN and Yahoo than to Google. Off page SEO is basically all about the links that are pointing to your site. Google (and to a somewhat lesser extent the other major engines) considers a link on another site pointing to your site to be a "vote" for your site, a vote saying that your site is important. This is as simple as it can be put, the details are much more complicated.
On page SEO is how well your page and site is optimized to rank well in the search engines. Among the important factors are :
1. Keyword Density - This is the % of the total words in your document that are the keyword you are aiming for. For example if in my site about cats there are 1000 words on the front page and 100 of them are the word "cat" then the keyword density for the word cat would be 10%. This is not simply a matter of more is better, in fact if your keyword density is too high than the search engines will read this as spammy nonsense and your site won't be ranked at all. One good trick to use is to study the search engine results for the keyword you are interested in. Search for "cats" in Yahoo (I say Yahoo because they care a lot more about this kind of stuff than Google does.) Study the pages that come up at the top of the results. What is the keyword density on those pages? From this you can tell where the sweet spot is, not too low and not too high. You know this is a good area because it's already working. In general this is the rule with SEO, find out what works (by checking out the current top dogs) and then do it yourself. Use the free AffiliateHow2.Com KeyWord Density Checker to compare the competition to your own site. It is recommended in order to save time and energy that you invest in keyword software such as this Keyword Research software. This software will automate a lot of these tasks that can be tedious.
2. Internal Linking Structure
Off page optimization is all about the links pointing to your site on other websites. Links are also important on page. By internal linking structure I mean how the site is sets up the links to subpages. In the cat website example how do we link from the main page to the page about orange cats and then back again, for example? A site which is easy to navigate is important for your visitors but it's also important to have solid internal linking to make sure you are passing your "Page Rank" within your site properly. *see more on Page Rank in the off page optimization section!* Also it is important that you use good keywords in the anchor text that you are using to link to your internal pages. Anchor text is the text used for the link. For example when I am linking to my page about orange cats I want to link to it using the term "orange cats" not just "click here" or something generic. You'll see more of why this is important in the off page optimization section.
3. Search Engines Can't Read Pictures
If you set up your entire site using pictures instead of text your site will not be search engine friendly. When using pictures be sure to use the alternate text so that the search engines can atleast see that. But for search engine purposes it's important that there be plenty of text on your site and not have it all be based on pictures.
4. Search Engines Can't Read Frames
Avoid using frames. Setting up pages using CSS is the standard now. They load up quicker and are easier to change. Frames are unreadable by search engines so any content you place within a frame is most likely wasted. There are some ways around this but unless you absolutely must use them for some reason, avoid them. Learn CSS.
5. Avoid Duplicate Content
Search engines are getting better and better at filtering out duplicate content. If you are running an affiliate site or an ECommerce site and you're taking a lot of your content from other places (this includes product descriptions) then you are in danger of having your pages filtered out. This is very important to consider because if your pages are filtered out all of your work goes for nothing. Use the free AffiliateHow2.com Page Simularity Checker to see compare your pages with any other page on the internet. Make sure your page is lower than 70% similar and this should save you from the duplicate content filter. You could rewrite the content you currently have along with adding new original content to help make your page more unique.
6. Meta Tags
Be sure to include meta tags for keywords and description in the header of your html files. This is not as important as it used to be but should still be done. The description is usually what is shown when the website listing is shown in the Search Engine results so keep this in mind.
Off page optimization is now more important than on page optimization especially in Google and since Google is the most important search engine this makes off page SEO probably the single most important factor in whether a website will be successful or not. Off page SEO is all about what links are pointing back to your site. It's not the amount of links so much as the quality of the links. 100 good links will be way more valuable than 1000 poor links. A good link is one that comes from a page with a high page rank* that is in a related catagory to the page it is linking to (your page!)
*page rank is a Google invention used to rate the importance of webpages on the internet. Pages can go from being not in the index (which is different than a 0) all the way up to a 10. Each number gets harder to get. For example it's quite easy to go from a 0 to a 1 but then harder to go from a 1 to a 2 and so on. There are very few 10 sites in the entire WWW. I recommend getting Firefox with the Google Toolbar. This will allow you to see the PageRank of every site you visit. Very helpful. If you don't already have Firefox you should anyways as it's many times better than IE.
1. Anchor Text - The anchor text is the text for the link. It's important that this anchor text be optimized because Google considers the text used in linking to a page a vote for that page for the that text. So if someone links to my cat site and they link to it with "cat" instead of something like "click here" then they are voting for my site as being important for the keyword "cat." A great example of this sort of anchor text voting is the Google search for "Miserable Failure." If you don't know what I mean, open Google in a new window and search for miserable failure. You'll see that George W. Bush's presidential biography comes up. Of course this keyword is not in this page anywhere. This page ranks so high for this keyword because of many people all over the internet linking to this biography using that keyword. You can see that Google even puts a disclaimer up there, they know that this is how it happened and they don't care. Using anchor text to vote for a page is a huge part of how Google ranks sites.
2. Looking Natural - As with all things SEO it's important to try and look natural. If all of the links pointing back to a certain page have the exact same text it's going to look unnatural and may set off a search engine spam filter. It's also a good idea to try and obtain links to your site gradually rather than 500 at once.
3. Ricipricol Linking - Be careful with recipricol linking. Google will ban your site for linking to the wrong place (link farms etc.) Be careful who you link to, if they have a 0 page rank you should probably avoid the trade. Ricipricol links are not as valuable as one way links as Google looks upon it as exactly what it is.
4. Link Value - The best links are one way links from a highly rated page with content relevent to yours. This leads me to the next subject.
1. Directories - The easiest way to get started with getting links is to submit your site to directories. Many will want a recipricol link or payment. Payment will probably be required for most really good links, but you can certainly get some love from free links as well. Try to get one way links whenever you can. Check out the free AffiliateHow2.com Directory Directory! This is a valuable resource to use to keep track of where you have submitted to. Remember don't submit too many all once because link gathering should appear to be natural. Start off slow with 5 or so per day.
2. Purchasing Links - Purchasing links is of course the easiest way to get links fast to your site. Buy Links - this system will help gain a lot of link popularity for your site in a short time.
3. Link Trading - Find sites in related to but not directly competitive with your site and email the webmaster for a link exchange. Use this software to manage your recipricol link campaign. If you save a lot of time by using software then it pays for itself. It's important not to waste all of your time doing remedial tasks.
4. Article Submissions - Writing original articles that contain links back to your sites is a great way to build up quality links back to your site. I like this technique so much I have a seperate page for it, read on: Article Submissions.
Recommended SEO Software - This is software to automate much of the SEO research and tasks that need to be done in order to rank highly and bring in many visitors to your site.
Recommended SEO WebHost - This webhosting company sets out to be the best webhost for SEO purposes.
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