OPTIMIZING SITES TO OPTIMIZE SALES News Article Written By: iQuantum
What is search engine
optimisation?
Search engines return pages of results ranked in
the order of relevance to the user's query. Naturally, sites that appear first
in the search results are more likely to have visitors clicking on the link to
visit the site. Ideally, more visitors mean more people know about your website
and your product, and more people will purchase from you.
Search
engine optimization is a means of increasing traffic from search results to
websites. Optimisation activities primarily involve the adaption and
modification of web content and/or HTML coding to heighten relevance to
particular keywords as well as the obliteration of indexing barriers.
Activities such as these are often referred to as 'white hat' SEO and are in
line with guidelines released by most search engines. 'Black hat' SEO
techniques are more underhanded and users are often penalized by search engines
for deliberately attempting to compromise the integrity of the search engine.
Why do some sites rank better than
others?
The business world is quite the rat race. We compete on
everything and everything, to become bigger, better and the best.
Online, we compete on who wins in the search engine results list
lottery. Everyone wants to be at the top of the list or wants to be whoever is
at the top of the list. As crazy as it sounds, it's all within good reason. It
is proven fact that businesses that score a listing in the first page of a
search engine results list are much more likely to get a click to their website;
and we all know what a few little clicks could potentially lead to, right?
Yep, that's right: Sales, sales, and more sales!
The question
is, how do some businesses do it better than others? Why are some sites
consistently ranked above and beyond other sites? Why them and not
us?
The answer is that these businesses have simply optimized their
websites to be 'search engine friendly'.
While search engines generally
operate on proprietary algorithms that the developers guard under lock, key and
fire-breathing dragons, there are some influential constituents of these
algorithms that are well-known and widely proven. Search engine friendly
websites have been adapted to meet these constituents and are therefore picked
by the search engine as being relevant to the searcher's query and are ranked
highly in the results.
This is commonly known as Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO), and is undertaken by businesses for the sole purpose of
driving traffic to the business's website from the search engine's results.
Sites that consistently win first place in search results have probably been
optimized to perfection (or as damn-near close to perfection as
possible!).
One of the simplest search engine optimization techniques is
sparkling fresh website content. Fresh content is magnetic to search engines
and keeps the crawlers coming back time and time again. Just make sure you have
spell-checked the content before letting it loose; Google, the world's most
popular search engine, hates spelling errors with a passion. Also ensure the
title of the page or document is all-inclusive of your relevant keywords.
Google places a strong emphasis on these and it is to be fair, the mother of all
search engines.
Once content is sorted, everything else simply follows
on. HTML coding can then be adapted to incorporate keywords, indexing barriers
can be obliterated, and fundamental links to, from and within the site can be
determined.
These techniques mentioned above are known as 'white hat'
SEO techniques and are endorsed by most search engines. There are other
techniques available that may help your site in the short term, but are widely
considered to be unethical.
'Black hat' SEO techniques incorporate
guerilla tactics such as hidden texts, keyword stuffing, and link farms. Such
tactics are perceived as a deliberate and underhanded manipulation of search
results, and undermine the integrity of search engines. Consequently, users of
black hat SEO tactics are often severely penalized by search engines when
caught. It's definitely a no-go zone, unless you are on a self-destructive
mission.
Other than avoiding black hat SEO techniques, the only other
cautionary tip is to not expect miracles overnight. Search engine optimization
is not difficult but it takes a lot of time and an infinite amount of patience.
Just remember, you are not looking to only benefit tomorrow, but also in the
long run.
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WEB MARKETING SCIENTISTS
