let's learn seo

What is SEO?

SEO is the act of modifying a website to increase its ranking inorganic (vs paid), crawler-based listings of search engines

How do organic search listings work?

●A spider or crawler which is a component of a SE gathers listings by automatically "crawling" the web

●The spider follows links to web pages, makes copies of the pages and stores them in the SE’s index

●Based on this data, the SE then indexes the pages and ranks the websites

●Major SEs that index pages using spiders: Google, Altavista, Msn,

SEO strategies/techniques

1. Domain name strategies
- domain names are traffic magnets
> 63 million domain names registered
> 4.7 million domain names registered 1st quar 2004
- choose a domain name that will increase your search engine ranking. How?
- simple, short, no hyphens, no numbers
- use keywords, common words, advertising terms, product names
- choose a keyword that is important for your business

2. Linking strategies
- the more inbound links the higher the SE ranking
- if the site linking to you is already indexed, spiders will also receive your site
- quality of inbound links is critical
- how to increase links: a) good content b) good outbound links c) target a list of sites from which you can request inbound links
- links for the sake of links can damage your search rankings

“Link relevancy is critical in getting your site indexed by search engines”

“A small number of inbound links from high-quality, relevant sites is more valuable than many links from low-traffic, irrelevant sites.”

3. Keywords
- important in optimising rankings
- keywords are words that appear the most in a page
- the spider chooses the appropriate keywords for each page, then sends them back to its SE
- your web site will then be indexed based on your keywords
- can be key phrases or a single keyword
- do not use common words eg ‘the’ ‘and’ ‘of’: spiders ignore them
- write keyword-rich text
- balance keyword-rich and readability
- always have text in your page: at least 100 words

4. Title tags
- important in optimising rankings
- the first thing that a search engine displays on a search return
- must keywords in title to be ranked no. 1
- should have the exact keyword you use for the page
- every single web page must have its own title tag
- you can use up to 65 characters eg Ebay
http://www.ebay.com/ (title is littered with keywords)

5. Meta description tags
- the next- important

- displayed below the title in search results
- use dynamic, promotional language
use keywords

Meta keywords tags
- no longer carry weight with major SEs
- a myth that meta keywords alone affect rankings

6. Alt tags
- include keywords in your alt tags

7. Submit your website to SEs for indexing
- submit your site to search engine directories, directory sites and portal sites
- indexing takes 1 wk to 3 months