Anne P. Jackson

SEO or Search Engine Optimization Explained

What is Search Engine Optimization? Well, it's the process of positioning your website (or article) to be indexed by search engines and rank highly in the organic search results for a given keyword.

Now you're going to want to know what I mean by “organic search results”, aren't you? Organic search results are Non-Sponsored results that appear in the left middle of a Search Engine Result's Page. (SERP) (It took me a long time to “get” that one!). Basically, it's indexing for FREE., unlike the PPC ads and the sponsored ads. Organic search results are great because:

• It's Free
• It's high quality traffic
• It's can be a LOT of traffic

Search engine are constantly changing their algorithms – the method by which they search the internet, a website and determine it's relevancy based on the sites keywords. No one has yet to really figure out these algorithms as they are changed often, sometimes in just a matter of days.

All is NOT hopeless, however. You can make very educated guesses by studying websites that are already ranked high in the search engines. You can test your own website by making small changes and watching the ranking in the SERP. Switch your keywords around – or your content. But do only one method at a time so that you know which one is best!

Factors that are known to affect search engine ranking:

• Keyword in the page title
• Keyword META tags
• Keyword in description META tags
• Keyword in first sentence of content
• 3-5 per cent keyword density in the page content. More might get you a Google slap – less might get you ignored
• Keyword as internal anchor text – don't use “click here” use your main keyword (did you know that if you type “click here” into a Google search box you'll get over 2 BILLION results?)
• Backlinks – you will want as many backlinks from high page rank sites as you can. The easiest and often the most effective method of getting backlinks is to write articles and link to your site.

Page rank is a number (0-10 per Google) that is assigned to a website that provides some insight to its' “importance” on the internet – per Google! O is of least importance and 10 the highest. A ranking of 1 or 2 is not to difficult to attain – sometimes all it takes is time. A ranking of 3-4 will take a bit of work and 4-5 is pretty darn good. A ranking of 7-8 will take a LOT of work and 9-10 is almost always the search engines themselves. The biggest factor in determining page rank is backlinks!

As you can see there are many factors that contribute to your websites “importance” and getting them on the SERP. Keep working at a little bit at a time and don't give up – you'll eventually get there if you have all the “factors” in place correctly.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

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