In this article we shall discuss about Search engine optimization, its importance and the various techniques used in the SEO process. In the next article we shall discuss in detail about website submission to search engines and directories.

Search Engine Optimization is the process to improve the visibility of a website in the Search Engines via natural/organic search results for specific keywords. The process involves on-page and off-page optimization of the website.

More and more people are using the web to search for information and products and, this is an activity more popular second to email. How do they search? People use keywords in major search engines and look for related information. Search Engines identify the relevant contents for the keywords and list them in the natural results. Visitors tend to browse about 20 results and it is important that the website ranks high for those keywords, thus increasing the chance of visitors coming to your website.

For a higher ranking in the natural results nobody can pay the search engine, as search engines crawl the website initially to identify relevant contents and index its details and later complex algorithms are used to check whether the website is useful and more relevant to the search. Hence to rank high in the search results, it is very important for the website to be optimized.

The most widely used search engine is Google and here are some statistics about the search engines. As of 2007, the global search engine market for Google and Yahoo were 71.6% and 11.1% respectively, and the share in the UK market were 80.2% for Google and 5.5% for Yahoo (Courtesy: Enquisite’s Zwicky). This clearly indicates the dominance of Google among the search engines.

So far we read about search engine optimization, its importance and Google’s dominance, let’s now discuss about the various techniques used to optimize a website and this can be classified as on-page and off-page optimization.

The techniques involved for on-page optimization are,

1. Tag optimization – The title tag and meta tags are the first SEO technique and what you place in the title tag is important. The keywords and description content of the website are to be added in meta tags.
2. Site map creation – Linking all pages of your website using a site map is essential. Both search engines and visitors use site map, hence the website requires to be user friendly.
3. Creation of Robots.Txt file - The most important aspect in creating a robots.txt is to make sure that it is done correctly. If the file contains incorrect rules then it can completely block all the spiders and prevent them from indexing your website.
4. Page size/Website Load time check – The smaller the size of the web page the easier and faster for the search engine to crawl your website. It is known that visitors will be annoyed if the websites take time to load forever and it’s been confirmed that 75% of the users will not return to the websites that take longer than four seconds.
5. HTML Validation - Validating a website is very important to ensure that the search engines index your web pages, load the web page faster, check for broken links and make the pages easily accessible by users.
6. Alt Text – For browsers that don’t show the images in the website alt text is an alternative which will show the visitor what it’s about. The important keywords are to be placed in the alt text but we must be very careful by not over doing it.

The off-page optimization techniques are building links and submitting websites to directories.

Buildings links is the most important aspect of SEO. Search engines consider the credibility of the links to the websites, they look for links that are relevant, high ranking and have keywords in the link text. To keep it simple, the search engine looks for quality, quantity and strength of the links.

When you build links, simultaneously you have to submit the website to directories. Directory submission is the best way to get one way links, and when carried out effectively it could help promote your website and bring success to your online business.

Good, effective search engine marketing takes time and effort. The process is accumulative, and the more time and effort that is put into it, the more marketing power your website will have.

The online market is increasingly becoming competitive, and those companies who perform SEO for their websites will have more advantage in visitors and customers and can remain top among their competitors.

At Samran Web Design, we have a dedicated SEO team who can ensure that your business is successful online through effective SEO techniques. For more information contact us today!