Search Engine Optimisation; Frequently Asked Questions
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Why is search engine traffic so important?
What are spiders / crawlers / robots?
Is optimisation a difficult task?
How do I go about optimising my website?
What are the typical optimisation techniques?
How long will it take before I start ranking better?
What is unethical SEO?
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a way of building, writing, coding, and scripting an entire website to improve the chances of a web site appearing at the top of search engine results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, when a searcher types in selected query or keywords that are related to your website's products, services or information etc.
Why is search engine traffic so important?
A large number of Internet users searching for information on the Internet find what they need by using search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN etc. Based on the fact that a majority of users will just browse through 20 to 30 search results to find what they need, it is crucial that a web site is ranked high in the search results, otherwise there is the risk of loosing a vast amount of visitor traffic. .
What are spiders / crawlers / robots?
A computer program, which is designed to browse websites and download information, is known as "spider", "crawler" and a "robot". The information that is usually downloaded is normally the HTML code. The search engines store this source code in a large database to be analysed.
Is optimisation a difficult task?
No it's not too difficult, but it needs a good amount of work and perseverance and patience. As far as the work is concerned, it entails changing the various elements of the website including the HTML code manually, which can take a while. After that it is a waiting game to monitor the results of the optimisation exercise in search engines, which can take a good few months.
How do I go about optimising my website?
Before you start, you need to ensure that you have the correct tools available. These can include server header checkers, keywords density analysers, spider simulators, Meta tag analysers, etc. These are widely available on the web.
The next step is to decide the exact keywords for which you wish to optimise your website. It is normally hard to optimise a web site for more than 5 or 6 good keywords. You will need to do in depth research using some keyword suggestion tools to determine which search terms both currently bring you the most traffic, and which ones are most used by web surfers.
For the latest tips on search engine optimisation have a look at web sites like search engine watch . The actual optimisation procedures vary for different engines and the change over time. Once you learn the actual changes that you need to make, implement those changes immediately to your website and HTML code.
What are the typical optimisation techniques?
Using page titles (titles visible at the top of the web browser window).
Using Heading Tags (these are part of the HTML code of the website), which add headings at the top of the web pages containing keywords that you are targeting to be ranked high.
Site content weight is seen as a key area of the SEO process, hence the expression "content is king". The content of your website needs to be written in a way that captures the visitor's attention, while using the targeted keywords and phrases that you have chosen within the content.
Using Alt Tags - This is the small piece of text that you see in yellow (in Internet Explorer) when you move your mouse cursor over an image. This area needs to be used to describe images as the search engines index them .
Using META tags, which is part of the HTML code of a web page, to provide information such as site description, keywords and title etc. to the spider or the crawler or other robots that are looking for alternate information. Some search engines no longer use these tags but some still do.
You should make sure that you phone around a few Search Engine Optimisation to talk to a real person that you feel comfortable with, because you will be working closely with him/ her for quite a while.
How long does it take before I start ranking better?
Generally speaking the search engines update once a month. However, because of the recent changes in Google, getting a fresh website ranked in Google can take up to a good few months.
This is when search engine optimisers, or the optimisation of a website is done by spamming or tricks in order to falsely increase search rankings. For instance, the use of invisible or hidden text or doorway pages would be considered unethical search engine optimisation.
