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by Govind Dhar
Following from 'Why are words important on the Web?' comes the stunning new sequel on how to make your website work for you.
From the makers of 'Why Don't PCs Fly?' and 'Dude Where's My Terabyte?' comes
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
One man desperate to get his website to the top of the search lists.
He has little money and even less idea of silly IT acronyms.
He has no experience in web design or web programming.
He has little time, needs his site up and running yesterday and needs to catch a plane for a conference in Kazakhstan in 5 hours.
He will stop at nothing to succeed. He must understand SEO and fast!
With only a weblink to Content Syndicate, our hero embarks on his mission for
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Coming soon to a printer near you.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a term you'll see bandied across web marketing proposals all over the web design shop. If you have an idea of how meta tags, HTML code and web crawlers work in conjunction with the copy on your site, you'll have a better understanding of how this process works. If not, refer to my previous article Why are words important on the Web? (hyperlink).
Essentially, SEO is a way of optimising your website so that there is an increased flow of traffic to your site from its propensity to be picked up by search engines when users look for keywords and terms related to your field of business. (phew!)
Clever Example
Imagine the World Wide Web is a trade fair for classic cars.
Our friendly neighbourhood car enthusiast is visiting the fair. He's looking specifically for accessories for 1960s Chevrolets. And that's exactly what your company sells…at stall 1543 in sub-section 1-F of Hall 23 on the West Side of the Classic Car Company Fair at Exhibition City, Dubai.
Our car enthusiast has no definitive guidebook for the fair (there is no single directory of all the websites on the web). Nor does he have a sitemap of the entire fair to navigate his way to your specialist store (there is no sitemap for the World Wide Web). The only way he will beat a path to your stall is if he is given a clear path to follow as and when he looks for your stall. This means that only by asking the people around him will our intrepid car enthusiast find your stall. And the only way this will work, is if the people around him actually have the right information about your stall, your company, its products, your usefulness, relevance and ability to procure much sought after accessories for 1960s Chevrolets.
And that's what SEO does.
It improves the information that search engines pick up about your site so that all sorts of explorers can actually find your site immediately in search lists. Hurray for SEO!
Web Crawlers
Web crawlers trawl the net to find relevant and unique information sitting on websites for a kazillion terms and keywords. How they rank your site is based upon a number of criteria (HTML tags, web codes, content, copy, related terms, related information, unique information, focused information, etc.). Using these criteria properly to help your site be picked up more easily and more frequently by web crawlers, is called SEO.
What SEO means for you
SEO is the construction, reconstruction or modification of your site to be friendlier to search algorithms or web crawlers. The idea is to construct your website in such a way that you make it easy for bots or crawlers to point to your site when people search for your products or services, using key words. So this involves modifying your website on two levels - one of course is to modify the actual code on your website (what web programmers put together when they actually construct your site and give it descriptions) and the other is the physical copy on your website - the all important information your site gives to visitors.
Web crawlers do not count how flashy your website is nor how many banners, downloads, gizmos and design features it has on it when giving it a ranking. It judges your website on the information you present, and its quality.
What Web Crawlers are looking for
HTML code and Meta tags
This is the description given by a web programmer in your HTML code and web tags when the programming is laid down for your site. Web crawlers use these descriptions as a guide when looking for sites and key words.
Presentation of content
The use of titles and body copy on your site. Web crawlers pick up on these to help it get a picture of what information you are offering.
Relevance of content How relevant the actual copy is to related keywords and search terms helps your site climb the search lists. Crawlers rank this by checking phrases and vocabulary used in body copy to see if they are well related to search terms and HTML descriptions for similar subject fields.
Originality of content
You must generate fresh and original content for web crawlers to like your site. If you offer related articles or articles of interest within your field of business that are original, web crawlers will rate your site higher than others. If you use the same content everyone else is using, even if it is modified, you will slide by the wayside.
Focus of content
Keeping your content focused on your industry or specialist field earns you more points from web crawlers. Don't try to include areas outside your immediate focus. It diminishes your offering and your ranking.
Incoming Links If a series of websites lead to your URL for a particular piece of information or content, Google owned PageRank gives your site a higher rating in the search results.
Bottom line
Tweaking your site's code and content so that its wonderful innards may be inspected and ranked by bots, is the all important x-factor in search engine optimisation.
Now that you know how SEO works, give your web programmers a run for their money and don't be confused by any IT jargon again!
THE END…or is it?
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