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Monday, January 26, 2009

Search Engine Optimization Unveiled

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By Alex Plana

Search Engine Optimization or also referred as SEO is the act in which a website is optimized to gain free positioning in a search engines result pages. If the site ranks well, a website owner can reap the benefits that of the free traffic that search engines provide.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN use automated programs known as spiders and robots, which crawl website pages. This precedes the crawling of a page, which is later added to a search engines massive index. Literally, billions of pages are indexed. When a search request is made, the search engine compares the string to the data stored on the billions of pages in the database. The search engine algorithm calculates the relevancy of the pages in the large index to the search string that is requested.

Search engines perform the following functions:

- Crawling - Indexing - Processing - Relevancy - Retrieve

Search engines use a set of rules, called an "algorithm" to determine relevancy of requested search queries. The algorithm are kept in secret by search engines from the public to avoid altering of their search results. To date, there are over 200 plus factors that contribute to organic search rankings. As you've searched on major search engines, you may have noticed similar but not identical results with the different search engines. Search engines have there own algorithm with slight differences with ranking rules but for the most part, all major search engines follow similar rules when it comes to determining search rankings.

On-Page Optimization

These are factors that can be altered on a site by a web owner is considered on-page optimization. These factors include the density of key terms used on a page, keywords used in the Title, Meta, and Alt tags, the type of support pages and links being used throughout the website. Search engine's algorithm will also consider the strength of a keyword by it's prominence on a web page. Usually, the first 200 words on a page holds more weight than the keywords below it.

Other factors that contribute to a pages optimization are the use of synonyms, videos used, blogs, and the way that top-level sections are structured. The server used, a sites domain name status, site analytics of site bounce rate are other factors that can contribute to how highly or low a page is ranked. However, how well a page is optimized only contributes to roughly 30% of an overall SEO implementation. Off-page factors contribute the other 70%.

Off Page Optimization

Factors that can not be altered by a website owner or webmaster is considered off-page optimization. These factors include the type of links pointing back to a site. To search engines, this is considered a vote and the site providing the link is basically vouching for the website they are pointing to. The type of links coming into a site will have different weighing factors. It's not uncommon to have most of the inbound links providing absolutely no link value to a site. So, when acquiring links, it's important that a site receives quality links as opposed to quantity of links.

Social media is another off-page optimization strategy that can help influence search listings. This is one of the more popular strategies in search today. With so many social media sites online, someone can become inundated with all the opportunities. Building up followers and creating attention getting viral campaigns is quite important to success in social media. Once you can capture your audience, expect to receive a large stream of traffic and potential inbound links.

SEO is also the hardest strategy to execute of all the online search marketing disciplines. Results take time, and in some cases it may take up to a full year to see the kind of results hope for. However, the wait is well worth it.

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