What is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ?
Search engine optimization is often considered the more technical part of the web marketing. It can be defined as the activity of optimizing web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine friendly, thus getting higher positions in search engines.
SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer."
Normally, when we want to search on any topic on internet, we directly go in the search engine and type the word or a list of words that has to be found on the whole. The search engine then searches from the server and displays a list of websites and the details on which then we can click and get the details as and when required. There are lists of links and the details are displayed when we click on those hyperlinks. And many such are displayed on 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on pages of the search engines.
A Search Engine is a piece of software that uses algorithms to find and collect information about web pages. Information collected is usually KEYWORDS or PHRASES that are possible indicators of what is contained on a web page as a whole, the URL of the page, the code that makes up the page and links and out the page. That information is then indexed and stored in the database.
Thus a search engine is user friendly and we get the required details just in few seconds.
These websites are been created by some one and they are displayed in front of us.
As a user, we go through the first 2 or 3 pages of the listed ones, and read the details in them. Hence to make our website. To manage the created website to appear on the first few pages is called as optimizing the website accordingly.
Hence this is in short called as Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is not a easy task as it requires a hell lot of hard works as there are many websites which display the same content but in the different manner. Always a website is to be user friendly.
When you study the minds of prospective clients, you improve your ability to deliver what they want.
Just imagine your own cupboard for instance. There are many books and magazines that you have arranged in different categories. When you want a particular book you go to that particular category and then search and get it in few minutes, if you have properly arranged the things. The same is the case with the SEARCH ENGINES.
Also for example, when you visit a library, say you want a book named “Romeo and Juliet”, you just go to the English Literature section and find the book and get it. The same way is the case with the files and websites that are arranged by the server in the world of Internet and the Search Engine.
The whole process of finding files on the Internet was a difficult procedure and time consuming exercise, but that was before 1990. In 1990, Alan Emtage created the first search tool used on the internet. His work, an index of files on the internet was called as ARCHIE.
The Origin of Search Engines:
Archie, Gopher, Veronica and Wandex are the early search engines .
- Archie: It was not a search engine , but it allowed users to download a list of files and upload them anonymous on the web.
- Veronica: It served the same purpose as Archie but it worked on text files.
- Gopher: It was a program that indexed the plain text documents that later became the first web sites on public Internet.
- Wandex: The first Search Engine was designed to track the growth of the Internet. Initially, it only counted web servers, but later also started capturing URLs. Wandex was the first Search Engine to crawl the web and later became basis for all search engines.
Important : The process of collecting information about the web pages is performed by an agent called a “CRAWLER”, i.e SPIDER or a ROBOT.
Crawlers, Spiders and Robots:
A web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical manner. It actually scans or “crawls” through the internet pages to create an index of the data.
How search engines work?
When a search engine’s web crawler visits a web page, it “reads” the visible text, the hyperlinks and the content of the various tags used in the site, such as keywords, meta tags, etc. Using this, a search engine will then determine what the site is about and index the information. The website is then included in the search engine’s database and its page ranking process.
Web crawling is an important method for collecting data. A web crawler is a way for the search engine and other users.
Keywords :
A keyword is simply a word on a web page. If for example, a word “sentence” is a word which occurs few times on this page, but to search this page only on a particular word “sentence” is not possible as this is not a keyword of this page. If a keyword that specifies this web-page or searches web page may be “search”, “search engines”, etc. These keywords would actually tell a user something about the subject and the content of this page.
Most search engines use search term frequency as a primary way of determining whether a document is relevant. If you're researching diabetes and the word "diabetes" appears multiple times in a Web document, it's reasonable to assume that the document will contain useful information. Therefore, a document that repeats the word "diabetes" over and over is likely to turn up near the top of your list.
A reciprocal Link is a mutual link between two websites for mutual traffic to the websites. For example, A and B have websites named A.com and B.com respectively. Then if A.com links to B.com and B.com links to A.com then the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories. Reciprocal Linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process.
Keyword Density:
It is the percentage of a keyword appearing on a web page with respect to the total number of words on the page. Experts suggest that the optimum keyword density to be 1 to 3 percent.
The calculation of a Keyword Density is as follows:
(Nkr * Nwp / Tkn) *100
Where Nkr is number of times a word is repeated and Tkn is the total words in the text of the web page. The resulting value is the keyword density value.
Keyword density is an important factor in website design. If a particular keyword has a higher density on your web page, then the likelihood of your page obtaining a better search engine ranking increases.
Steps to Improve Search Engine Keyword Density:
- Think of what a user will think when he / she wants to know about information on any topic. Think deeply what the user may enter about the topic if he wants to search your web page. For example, a user who wants to know about the topic “Keyword Density “ then he may enter words like “Search Engine Keyword Density”, or “Search Engine Ranking” or “Keyword Density “, etc. Hence its important to think first how an user will think for getting your web page.
- After planning the list of keywords on your web page, just don’t dump them into a senseless list on your web page.
- Form sentences that use the keywords.
For a more generic overview of keyword placement, you’ll have to include your keywords in these parts of your web page:
- The title tag of the page
- META description
- META keywords
- Header tags
- ALT tags
On the basic level, keyword capture the essence of your website. Keywords are the words a visitor to your site enters into a search engine to find web sites related to a specific subject.
Example:
If your website is about booking flights , then the keywords would be as :
- Book flights
- Booking flights
- Pre- book flights
- Re- booking flights
Don’t use a keyword on your page just because a search engine might like it. Your keywords play a large part in determining where in search rankings you will land. When you are picking keywords you have to be sure that you have selected the right ones now its difficult to know what is a right keyword and what is not. In that case, there are two types of keywords:
- Brand keywords
- Generic keywords
- Brand Keywords: are keywords associated with your brand.
- Generic Keywords are other types of keywords that are not directly associated with your company brand.
BACK LINKS :
Back links are incoming links to a website or web page. Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also known as Inbound Links. It plays an important role in the Search Engine Positioning. For your website to be on the top of the search engines like GOOGLE , the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website.
How to build backlinks:
The idea behind including backlinks is that if a page is good, people will start linking to it. And the more backlinks a web page has, the better is the web page popularity.
Now the question arises as how to build the backlinks the natural way …
Even if plenty of backlinks come to your site , additional quality backlinks are always welcome. Among the acceptable ways of building the backlinks are getting listed in directories,posting in forums , blogs and article directories.
The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks.
A backlink could be considered as a Quality Backlink if
1. The Theme of the backlinking website is the same as your website.
2. It links to your website with the keyword (keyphrase) that you are trying to optimize for.
1. The Theme of the backlinking website is the same as your website.
2. It links to your website with the keyword (keyphrase) that you are trying to optimize for.
Importance of Backlinks:
Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO.A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the quality of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site.
Backlinks are important because they are seen as a type or credit given to you from other webmasters. When a link from another site is received it is like a token of appreciation that they appreciate your content. The more of these links are got the higher is the website’s rank.Patience is key in the field of SEO. Google will favor webmasters who practice patience. Backlinks go a long way towards convincing search engines that your site is worth linking to. As a matter of fact it can bump your website’s rankings which can add considerably to your site’s popularity with search engines.
First and foremost, the site that added the backlink needs to link back to your site using the keyword that your site is optimized for. Your site needs to be known for that keyword or key phrase, in other words.
Its been told that one way for a site to build good backlinks is to build a network of sites which backlink to each other- this is called reciprocal linking.
Now what is a Reciprocal link or Reciprocal linking?
A Reciprocal link is an agreement between two web masters to provide a hyperlink within their own website to each other’s web site. This helps to increase traffic to your web site in two ways, first you will have some viewers visit you site from clicking reciprocal link directly. Secondly, most internet search engines take into account the number of web sites which contain links to your web site, the more hyperlinks top your web site found, the higher up in the search engine rankings found in your site.
A reciprocal Link is a mutual link between two websites for mutual traffic to the websites. For example, A and B have websites named A.com and B.com respectively. Then if A.com links to B.com and B.com links to A.com then the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories. Reciprocal Linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process.
Benefits of Reciprocal Linking:
- It provides long-term, stable, targeted traffic.
- It can greatly enhance search engine results.
A reciprocal Link is a mutual link between two websites for mutual traffic to the websites. For example, A and B have websites named A.com and B.com respectively. Then if A.com links to B.com and B.com links to A.com then the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories. Reciprocal Linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process.
The web is a sum of links. Without any hyperlink, it is just a separate collection of pages on the internet. Links act as fevicol for a website. A Reciprocal Link may be a link in the form of text, banner link, a video etc.
The easiest way to get reciprocal links is by exchanging links and blog rolls.
