Thursday, May 12, 2011

Search Engine Optimization - 5 Things You Need To Know

By Nicholas Lancaster


Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is used to improve the position of your website in search results. To ensure that your site is optimized, you need to take certain steps as there are many elements involved in SEO. This is because the search engines alter their algorithms regularly, partly to ensure that sites that use 'black hat' SEO methods are not rewarded for their efforts, and partly to ensure that they provide their users with relevant search results.

SEO is not an exact science but there are a number of ways to improve your search engine ranking since search engines keep their algorithms and methods of ranking websites carefully hidden.

SEO - why you should build one in your site To improve SEO, it's important that your site follows guidelines and these includes keywords, site maps, and meta tags. You may need some professional assistance to do this properly.

Content and why it's important Not only should your content be optimised for your keywords, it should also be relevant and informative. If your site is filled with keyword stuffed sentences that don't make sense, then it won't be favorable with the search engines.

Back links Helping to push your site up in the search engine results are back links but use them wisely. Any site that contains a link to your website is considered a back link, but links from credible websites with high page ranks are worth far more than links from link farms.

What is Keyword Research Your keywords should be able to strike a balance between the number of searches and the competition. It's difficult to rank for a keyword that has a lot of competition and it won't help to rank for a keyword that no one searches for. Keywords change over time too, so regular keyword research should be used to ensure that your site is optimised for the right keywords.

Measure and measure again Useful in optimizing your website is tracking your web traffic, the pages they land on, where that traffic came from, and the keywords they searched to find your site. Helping to keep your site optimized is regular monitoring and adjustment.

SEO is vital if you consider that most people click on the first three search results, and less than 40% of people will go to the second page of search results. All websites cannot rank on the first page, but with effective SEO, your site can rank for specific keywords.




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