SEO - Search Engine Optimization You Can Do On Your Own
SEO is an important term you will see thrown around in webmaster circles, it means Search Engine Optimization, basically, the act of making your web site as the best it can in search engine listings. Why should you care about it? Can it hurt to use SEO tactics? Should you hire someone to do it for you? Is this something you can do on your own?
Why should you care about it?
Simply put, the Internet is crowded with pages and competition is fierce. If you want traffic to your web site, there are only a few methods to accomplish that goal: word of mouth, advertising online or offline, web site links, or search engine listings organic or paid.
Word of mouth is free and very effective. However, to pull this off you need to have something that is "viral" in nature that people cannot resist in sharing. If you rely only on word of mouth traffic, you can have a lot of lean times until it catches on and by that time your site may be old news.
Advertising can be expensive, but effective. Offline, you could put ads in newspapers, on the radio, on flyers, in the mail, in the phone book, on television...the possibilities are endless. Online, you can pay others to post a link to your site or buy space in search engines by bidding on terms. On or offline ads are risky because what you might think to be a clever ad if done the wrong way will not bring results. Testing the ad in different markets or with different ad copy can run a lot of money until you find the one that works. If you are just starting out and don't have much money, you might want to have another method of getting people to your site.
An easy, but free way to get traffic is by exchanging links with other web sites. The tricky part is unless your link is in a location where people will 1) see it and 2) want to click on it, then your link is meaningless. It is even more meaningless unless exchange on a site related to your site. An alternative to a plain link exchange is an article exchange, but again, it has to be done in the right way or that too becomes a meaningless link.
The search engine is the most obvious place to get traffic, but the competition is fierce on keywords and if you are hoping for organic listings you may have to wait awhile. If you are bidding on keywords, it can be expensive and may not result in you making money from your effort.
Most people who do come to a web site do so because they did a search engine search to find it. They typed in a keyword or two to find what they are looking for and were presented with a listing of sites that matched those keywords. It is because search engines are the most efficient way to bring traffic to your site that you should care about Search Engine Optimization.
A search engine has a format for listing web sites that is set up by the designer of that search engine or directory. If it is a directory, it is something humans have to verify. If it is a search engine, it brings results from a spider who visited your site. To make sure the spider lists your site correctly and as high as possible, there are things you can do.
Can it hurt to use SEO tactics?
There are two ways to use SEO tactics - black hat or white hat.
Black hat tactics are what you want to avoid. That includes ways to temporarily trick the spiders visiting your site to make them think you have more than your page actually has that humans are seeing when they come to your site.
White hat tactics allow the spiders to accurately describe your site while placing it higher because of deserving factors.
Typically, a spider is reading meta tags and pulling information from your title, meta description and meta keywords to correctly list your site when those keywords are entered by a surfer. For example, if your tags looked like this:
<title>SEO - Search Engine Optimization</title> <meta name="description" content="SEO is an important term you will see thrown around in webmaster circles, it means Search Engine Optimization." /> <meta name="keywords" content="SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO tactics, white hat, black hat" />Then the search engine results for someone who typed in "SEO tactics" would list sites that have it as a keyword in the meta tag keywords and optimized for that term in the content. If your site used that keyword, your web site would look something like this in the listings:
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - SEO is an important term you will see thrown around in webmaster circles, it means Search Engine Optimization.
The term "SEO tactics" might bring up results from 25,000 sites on 250 or more pages, but typically people will only browse through the first page listings and at most up to the first 5 pages of results if they don't find what they need on the first page. Having an inviting title and description also aid your chances of your link being clicked over the others that come up on the same page. As example:
- SEO - Find out how to do seo.
- SEO - Search Engine Optimization - USE SEO tactics for search engine optimization and get your site at number one.
- Search Engine Optimization - learn the ropes here.
Which of those links would YOU click first in that search result? Think what the surfer is looking for and cater to that keyword niche. The link that makes the surfer look twice is the one they are more likely to click first.
If you want people to your site on those keywords, your site has to be better in search engine ranking factors than the others. That is what SEO tactics are for.
Should you hire someone to do it for you?
If you simply do not have the time to tweak your site, you can always hire someone to do it for you, but you take a big risk. Not everyone who says they can do it for you will always do their best for your site, but will either use black hat tactics that will end up hurting your site in the end, or using outdated technics that won't do you any good.
SEO tactics are always changing because search engines are always changing the way they list search results. This is something that should be done by a webmaster on a continual basis. Having an outsider do this task for you can be costly and may not be as effective if you did it yourself.
Is this something you can do on your own?
There are many things you can do on your own to optimize your web site for a higher ranking using white hat tactics and not having to keep up with the constant changes.
The best thing you can do is have useful and relevant content that is unique, original and most importantly in your own words. Don't just take content from another web site, copy and paste it in your template and tweak the words. Start from scratch. Surfers looking for information want something fresh they haven't already seen a million times before.
Correctly designing your web site so it does not trip the spiders into stopping short of spidering everything is one of the best things you can do. Bad html/xhtml coding, redirects, poor robot.txt instructions are all factors that can keep spiders from doing their job correctly and keeping you from a good listing. While there are many sites with errors in all of these categories that get top 10 listings, they may also be selling the rest of their web site short by tripping the spider and can easily be beaten by a site that decides to overtake their top 10 position using the corrections.
Don't spam the spider by overuse of keywords or using text that is unnatural or hiding keywords in invisible text (putting the font in the same color as the background). Try working with an accurate set of keywords that truly describe the nature of your site. Use that set of keywords in your title, description and keyword tags and try to cover it in 1-4% of your content. Use the keyword in at least one alt tag of an image.
Exchange links with web sites that are similar in content with your own which will lead to a credible rating of your site in the eyes of the spider.
Update your content frequently, at least once a month if you are busy. Newer content gets spidered frequently and keeps your site from being "archived" to the end results.
Use your web site in a signature link when you participate in forums and newsgroups using the appropriate keyword in your link.
Participate actively in newsgroups and forums that focus on the topic of search engine optimization techniques and trends or other webmaster groups to keep up with the business.
Axandra offers good updated advice to the trends of the major search engines. They also have a very helpful, although quite expensive tool called the Axandra IBP. It is something I highly recommend and have used.
Search Engine Watch was started back in 1996 by Danny Sullivan in an effort to keep up with the changes of the different search engines. Although ownership has passed hands, the mission is still the same and it is a good place to go to keep up with the current trends.
As long as you are doing your best work, using honest methods, and really putting work into your site, you should be able to get your pages in the top 10 results from time to time. Just don't think there is one shortcut in doing it. It takes real work.
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