Without Search Engine Optimisation Your Website Could Be Lost

Building a great internet site is a wonderful achievement. But it could also be a complete waste of your time and money unless potential clients can find it. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one way to ensure your site is seen in the most crowded marketplace ever conceived.

SO WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)?

To understand Search Engine Optimisation you must first consider how people actually look for – and eventually find - products and services on the web.

Research shows that more than 80 per cent of the world’s 290 million internet users (10 million of them in Australia) use search engines to find what they’re after.

There are many search engines available to consumers – the better known include Google and Yahoo! – but in general they all work the same way. Typically a person will enter a keyword or phrase into the search engine and immediately receive a list of recommended web pages.

Internet users are impatient, which means they seldom scan though more than a page or two of search results, and generally only access sites listed at the top of the page. If you want to be seen, your site must not only appear on a list of search results, it must rank towards the very top.

Open a search engine and type in a word or phrase someone searching for your company might use – if you fail to appear in a prominent position, chances are your site has not been search engine optimised. Without optimisation, your site is about as effective as an advertisement floating in the middle of the ocean.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES RANK INTERNET SITES?

Search engines regularly dispatch ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ (aka bots) to collect information on websites. Using an algorithm – a set of complex formulas or rules – the search engine evaluates each website’s relevance and then ranks it accordingly.

These algorithms are unique to each search engine, they are highly secret and they change all the time. But in general they all obey a basic set of rules. That means it is possible improve your chances of a better ranking by ensuring your website has the most appropriate content, and that the content is structured in a search engine-friendly way – this process is known as Search Engine Optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation is not an exact science. It requires trial and error, and there is never a guarantee of success. But without Search Engine Optimisation your website is almost guaranteed of not being seen.

Of course there are other ways of reaching potential clients. You could, for example, spend money to advertise on a search engine, and only have your advertisement appear when people search for particular keywords. That is valid way to increase your chances of reaching customers. But studies have shown people using the internet tend to trust and visit the free listings more than paid listings.

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED ON SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION?

First you need to find out if your site is actually being indexed by a search engine.

Open a search engine and type your company name in the search box. If you appear in the results it means that spiders or robots have located your site. They will place the site into a memory bank, and visit it from time to time to update their information.

If your site it not listed you could consider submitting your site to search engines. This will not guarantee that they will list you, but it won’t hurt to try. A word of advice - do not submit your site multiple times as this will only annoy the search engine people, and you need to be on their good side.

Some search engines will not accept submissions – they prefer to find your site themselves. And some simply draw their information from other search engines (a disclaimer should alert you to this practice), which makes it pointless submitting your site to them.

Once you are confident your site is being indexed, you need to identify keywords – these are the terms a potential visitor might enter into a search engine when looking for your product, service or company.

Finding the right keywords is a pivotal component of Search Engine Optimisation. There are applications that allow you to test each word by showing how popular it is and how often it is used – the result might surprise you.

A good way to find keywords is to visit a competitor’s website and see what it has listed. To do this, open their site and click on ‘view source’ - a heap of what looks like gibberish will come up, but find a line which says ‘

About the Author:
Gerald Chait is GM, Marketing of SDG Technology, providing IT Solutions, such as Website Development and Application Development. Contact gerald.chait@sdgtechnology.com.au or visit www.sdgtechnology.com.au.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Link Exchange and Search Engine Optimization

Here’s an overview of how exchanging links can improve our search engine ranking.

I believe Exchanging Links is one of, if not “the” best way to market your site online! Read below to see why.

Some people believe that in order to be successful online they have to direct thousands of targeted visitors to their site. TRUE

They also believe that they have to spend all their time adjusting the scripts and contents of their pages, to make the search engines spider them and rank them well. FALSE!

They believe that if they do this it will improve their ranking and automatically drive targeted visitors to their site by the ship load. Partly TRUE, but after viewing some server logs belonging to a top ranking (first 1 – 5 sites on the first page, in his niche)

I saw that only a small number of visitors came from search engines!

And the major majority of clicks came from reciprocal links.

It’s true that there are some quick and easy scripts and txt files etc… that you can place in all your pages, and on your server, that will guide the spiders to keep coming back and also guide them to index your pages, this doesn’t take long to do and I believe it helps a little. But the search engines are smart and always changing there systems so someone could work for weeks, too tweak a site for SEO, only to find out that the rules have changed again and their site is no where to be found! So focusing purely on SEO can be risky!

Should we focus on getting high ranking as a priority? Or should high ranking be seen as the result of other marketing and promotional strategies that bring even more visitors that are even more targeted.

The result of having more visitors being that our ranking will increase.

Not by using strings and mirrors to “fool” the search engines into thinking we have a great site, when really, we don’t have many visitors which is why we’re trying to trick the search engines, and don’t have great content or services, because the visitor has come to our site looking for some that we tricked the search engine into thinking that we had! This is like putting the cart before the horse.

If we focus on building a network of “reciprocal links” (that’s a link from you to someone and a link from them to you) we add valuable content to our users and we have other businesses in our target market niche, sending highly targeted and motivated users to our site.

The search engines like this because there are more sites saying, this is a good site, and every time those sites get spidered the bots find our link and keep on coming back to our site!

So that helps with search engine ranking, and driving targeted traffic, and adding valuable content.

We want our prospects, users, and customers to “bookmark” or save our site in “favorites” they will do this if they are interested in our “Niche” and learn that they can get all the information they ever need from our site. Of course they are more likely to read our newsletters and take notice of our promotions etc, on the home page.

If someone goes to Google and does a search, that person will find that most of the top ranking sites have a “Link Directory” this is a directory of reciprocal links. Doesn’t that tell you something?

Here’s another reason to create a link directory, when you create a directory it is created around sites that are related to your business market niche, therefore, when your site gets crawled by the spiders, they see that you’ve done their job for them, they also like this.

So to summarize:

Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors.

Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO.

There are many other free strategies for promoting your online business; this is just an overview of two of them. Obviously another way to promote your business for free, is Article submissions, this is also one of the quickest and most effective free advertising strategies available online.

About the Author:
Bill Boyd; has a degree in business, and owns several new websites.
This one was ranked 5,950,000 two weeks ago, before he started LINKING! www.internetgoldenweb.com”>www.internetgoldenweb.com today, it’s 86,195: To get the tool he used go here: www.internetgoldenweb.com/zeus/index.html”>The Linking Tool
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

If You Don't SEO You'll Get Left In The Dust

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Every day, more and more sites are trying to optimize their sites in the SE's and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the dust filled abyss with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines will be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that people need to go to or the product they need to buy or information they need know.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, every day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let's just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site's existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to an endless amount of income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site's content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and reep the rewards of an Internet Marketer or sit on the fence and get left in the dust!! The choice is yours, for myself I choose to make my own destiny rather than wait for it to happen.

About the Author:
Brice Mattson is the Owner/Webmaster of the Best Internet Business website which features the best internet home businesses online today.
Submitted: 2006-10-28
Article Source: GoArticles

Seo Tips For Google®

Getting a high ranking on Google is a big achievement. There are many factors that go into pulling a high page rank. I have put together a small list of things that should not be overlooked when optimizing your site. Let’s start from the top:

META Tags- Sorry, but Google doesn’t read META tags. That includes the KEYWORD tag. Some search engines, however, still use them.

URL- Having a keyword or words in URL will help you somewhat. Having a key word in your URL is not by any means a guarantee, but it never hurts.

TITLE Tag- This is an important step, use this tag wisely. Place your top keywords here. Remember, your page is indexed starting from the top of the page. Make this one count.

Site content- The first paragraph of your site is a crucial part of your optimization. This will also be used as your site’s description. Be careful not to overdo it on the keywords. Make sure your content makes sense. Your keywords should make up a total of 6% to 8% of your page content. An average of three hundred words is a good rule of thumb.

Header Tags- Header tag should be considered important. Make headers uniform on your site. I like using them on the top of my page just before the first paragraph.

ALT Tags- These tags are great for adding keywords to images, so take advantage of them. I also use mouse over text with linked text.

Links- Any links you have on your site should have key terms in them. Never use “Click Here” or other unrelated words when creating links.

Bonus tip: When exchanging text links, use key phrases as the actual links. This will certainly help you out.

For Example:

Affordable Search Engine Optimization & Web Site Marketing
Mr. SEO is the leader in SEO. We handle targeted traffic, marketing and more. We also offer Web Site Marketing Articles to help you get more traffic to your site.

Links exchange- This will help boost your overall ranking. It’s actually better to be linked from another site (one way) than reciprocal (both sites linking to each other). Being linked one way is a huge bonus. However, the following should be kept in mind.

A: The site you are linking to needs to be related to your site.

B: Google’s page rank of the site should be higher than yours; the higher the better.

C: Avoid linking to sites that have too many links. A site that has forty or more links will only hurt you.

Bonus Tip: See where you rank on Google by using this free tool. http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

This Google ranking tool will show you under what keywords you are found on. Use this to help adjust the keywords you want to be found under. Be sure to check your ranking before you start any optimization. Then do it again 3 – 4 weeks after you have made your adjustments. See if your ranking has gone up.

About the Author:
Joe Balestrino is a published author and owns http://www.mr-seo.com and http://www.jnb-design.com . For more info on SEO or his services, visit his websites or email him at joe@jnb-design.com
Article Source: www.iSnare.com