What is SEO?

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a method of increasing visibility to search engines by making the content of your page more relevant to a particular search phrase, and arranging the data on your website to be easier to identify by search engine bots when they crawl your site.  This includes the use of keywords or phrases, linking to related sites, and requesting reciprocal backlinks, among other things.

Backlinks can be very important.  When a search engine crawls your site, it will look at the links you include, and your own ranking can be affected by association with reciprocal links from other high ranked urls.  In a very real sense, links and backlinks form strands on the worldwide web, and the overall quality of your site will be considered according to the company of the other sites you link to, and vice versa.  Be sure to link often to PageRank sites, and request reciprocal links from the ones you link to as often as possible.

If your site was created to sell bicycle tires, it is important that crawler bots are able to detect that focus, and that people searching for your products are able to find it easily.  One method for doing this is to use SEO keyword densities.  What is SEO keyword density?  It is the use of specific words or phrases repeatedly throughout the page, which creates an association between that keyword and your site.  There are many opinions about the correct density to use, but most people agree that using a particular keyword more than once in every ten words is overkill, and could actually hurt your rankings.  So keep in mind that densities should always be at or below 10%.

And what is SEO in regards to the rest of your page?  The title of your page should contain the keywords that are vital to your page.  An optimum title is 8 words or less in length, which contains the keywords specific to the page.  NEVER use keywords in your title or META tags which do not appear in the document, as search engines are likely to reject the page as a possible spam location when you do.  Also, using those same keywords in headers and sub-headers within the body of the page is also a good idea.  Search engines, it is popularly believed, view these headings the same way you intended, as important clues to the contents of the section which follows.  When using these headers, alsways take the time to use HTML tags (H1, H2, H3, etc), rather than taking the easy way out and accomplishing the task with different CSS styles. Search engines do NOT parse a site, so if you have keywords embedded deep within CSS or javascript routines, those words are unlikely to receive search engine consideration.

The most important factor that defines what is SEO in a web page is to remember that the search engines are also on the lookout for those who would take the easy way out, and produce a web page designed not so much for human use as to increase search engine standing.  When a search engine detects a site which seems to fall into this category, it is summarily dropped from the listing, or otherwise penalized.  “Keyword stuffing” was a technique that worked well a few years ago, but was quickly recognized by the designers of search algorithms, and is rarely a benefit to page designers these days.

Article written by SEOnotepad.com