A Brief Look And Overview Of SEO Techniques
Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has
been needed and used more and more, although it has been around
for much longer than most people think. With new development
tools being used to create websites that are heavy on Java,
Flash and images, it's important to have something that the
search engines can read. If the content can't be read by search
engines then they can't index it, and if your site doesn't get
indexed then it won't be found when people search for it on
Google, Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else. This short tutorial will
outline what SEO is, how it works, and some unethical SEO
methods that you should avoid.
What is SEO?
SEO is a way of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow
search engines to read and index it more easily. SEO is all
about maintaining and building websites that get ranked highly
on the major search engines.
You see, when people use a search engine, they generally don't
look beyond the top 20 or so results. If you want to make any
money from your website, you need to get ranked in the top 20
out of potentially hundreds of websites.
How Does SEO Work?
Search engines maintain a huge database containing information
from individual websites. Most of the information search engines
collect isn't listed on their results pages, but it is taken
into consideration when it comes to deciding those results'
rankings.
It is very important that you encourage the search engines to
rank your website in a high position, and you can do this
through the keywords that you use on your website, as well as
when you submit it. If the keywords you use in your submission
tool don't match the ones on your site then you could harm your
rankings - be sure to have all the keywords you want to use on
the website itself before you submit it.
Most websites don't focus on their topic well, and so keyword
lists containing 50 or more phrases per page are recommended. By
focusing some of the pages of your site on keywords, you will
score higher with the search engines.
Free Search Engines.
The major search engines on the Internet are still free, and
it's not hard to take advantage of this free advertising - you
can do it in as little as an hour.
There are several companies that provide free SEO tools, or you
can pay a professional to take care of it for you. Looking
around on the web will turn up all sorts of useful resources.
What is Unethical SEO?
Unethical search engine optimization techniques can be unlawful,
unscrupulous, or just in bad taste. You'd be surprised how many
people use these methods. A lot of what is now called unethical
SEO used to be accepted, until people went overboard and it
started to have a negative affect on the web as a whole.
Keyword stuffing is when your site consists of long lists of
keywords and nothing else. Don't do it. There are ways to put
keywords and phrases on your site without running the risk of
getting banned.
You may have seen 'invisible text' if you've been selecting the
text on a page and found words that are the same color as the
background. This text is often lists of keywords put there in
the hope of fooling search engine spiders while hiding the words
from visitors. This is considered unethical, and you shouldn't
do it.
A doorway page is a page that isn't designed for real people to
see - it's purely for the search engines and spiders, in an
attempt to trick them into indexing the website in a higher
position. This is a big no-no and should be avoided.
Even though unethical SEO is tempting, and does work, you
shouldn't do it - not only is it annoying to users, but it's
likely to get you banned from the search engines sooner or
later. You sites' search engine rankings just aren't worth the
risk. Use efficient SEO techniques to get your site ranked
higher, and stay away from anything that even looks like
unethical SEO.
SEO is a set of techniques used in order to attract visitors or
prospective customers to your website, and the goal of a search
engine is to provide high quality content to the users of the
Internet. These two objectives are not in opposition, if you do
SEO the way it should be done.