Search Engine Optimization Basics and Tips

When building a web site, many people concentrate on content from the first degree and also on the layout of the site. This is good for people visiting the site. But if they look from the sarch engine optimization view, many points in the web site design may be missed.

The designer must remember that the search engines are just programs that need view certain things in the site to be able to rank the site. If these factors are good for the search engines, the site may rank high. On the contrary, if certain factors are bad in view of the search engine, it will rank low although the human visitor may see it well.

From the above, we see that the designer must consider the human visitors and the search engine optimization factors. Below are given the main elements that will make the search engines love the web site and make it search engine optimized.

First the designer must include the Meta information in above the main page. The meta information is composed of some data that defines the subject of the page or what the page is about. There are three items in the Meta information:

1. Title: this must defines the main subject and contains the basic words in the page. The designer must carefully see what the page talks about and see the most dominant keywords in the page, then accordingly put the title. The title must also attract the visitors because it is seen in the search engines.

2. Description: this is the second important Meta information. It must be put after the title and describes what the page about. The words in the description are larger than the title. The description defines the page at slightly broader view than the title and it must also contain the main keywords in the page and contains words that attract the visitors.

3. Keywords: this Meta information has become less important today especially for Google. It mainly defines the basic keywords in the page. It has become obsolete because the web owner can put any words that will be considered as a spam. It may be optional therefore.

Second design the web site such that the internal pages are easily reached from each other. This is important for the search engine to discover the site links and the visitors also. When the search engine crawl the site, it build a map for that site. If the site pages are easy to reach from each other, the search engines will build that map more easily. A simple layout for the site is really important.

Third try to add good and unique content to the site. The search engines always search for content that doesn't exist on other sites. If two pages have the same content, the search engines display the content that appeared first. Also try to update the content regularly. Always the search engines try to find the most updated content to display to the user.
Fourth try to increase the visibility for the site through building quality back links. All the three techniques were related to the site itself. This technique is different in that it is performed outside the site. It is often called offsite search engine optimization because the web master doesn’t alter the pages directly.

The idea of building back links is that modern algorithms used in search engines rely on discovering external links to a site that points to some pages inside it. These links are like votes for the search engines. The more the links to a page, the more votes for this page given the keywords included in anchor text. When linking to a page find the main keywords in that page using keyword tool and put these words in the anchor text for the link. This will give the highest ranking when the user searches for these keywords in the search engine.