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What is SEO?


Search engine optimisation or Search Engine Optimization refers to the procedure for developing the position your site appears at in the "organic" search results returned by sites such as Google.

Your goal is to place 1 and ideally to get to page one, but whether that is possible mainly depends on the market that you're operating in. If you are in the mobile phone space or traveling, you will be fighting a losing battle until you've got a sizeable budget to invest.

Keyword rich content

Among the key tools that search providers such as Google and Microsoft (Bing) use to determine your rankings are "spiders". They browse your website (and everyone else's) to identify the specific copy composed on the page in addition to things like usage of key words and phrases. This data is then used to learn the relevance of your site when someone enters a key word or phrase into Google, Bing or another search engine.

With this in mind, you must consider the search habits of your target audience, and be sure the terms they could use to find your company are reflected in your pages. For instance, if you offer physiotherapy services, your site content should comprise words or phrases that individuals may search for, for example "massage", or special issues such as "lower back pain". Remember that text included in images cannot be crawled by spiders, although alternate text related to the pictures is, so you may wish to revisit the style of a number of your pages.

This is designed to help prospective advertisers identify the most important key word for his or her preferred market, but it is also very helpful when writing copy for your website.

When you have identified your key word, ensure they appear in the body of your pages, and in the metadata of your own page, which is the unseen data that gives the spiders key information about your page. This may be performed on your own, having only a little knowledge of HTML and access to your server, or it can be achieved by your web designer.

Linking

PageRank is a number scored out of 10 that's provided to your own web site depending on inbound and outbound links, and helps search engines to check how trustworthy your internet site is. Linking between sites allows "link juice" to be carried through, so if your site is linked to by a site with a good PageRank, link juice will probably be carried forward to your site, improving your rank.

While you cannot typically control the inbound links to your own website (and Google disapproves of link farms as well as other man-made methods of linking), there are many steps that may be taken to enhance your PageRank score. Make sure your website is linked to from your social networking content, most notably Google , and try to get listed on free open directories like DMOZ or professional bodies related to your marketplace.

Both internal and outbound links are critical. Wherever you mention a website or a source, make sure these comprise a hyperlink as well as a reference. For internal links, meticulously linking will grow the time spent on your own website from the spiders. You might want to revisit your menu construction, or to add a rapid links footer, which will ensure that each page on your site has a link to all the other pages on it.

In order to determine the PageRank of your site, you can download a browser plugin such as PageRank Standing for the Google Chrome browser.

Ensure that it stays fresh

As a way to ensure that your content is regularly updated, bearing this in your mind, you may choose to generate a monthly task to change text, pictures, or add or remove pages.

Otherwise, create a blog on your site and allocate time each day (or week) to write or curate some content that is relevant for your target audience. This may seem onerous or daunting, but once you get into the custom it becomes second nature and should not take more than about half an hour or so a day. For reference material - which should always be credited - use Google Alerts to keep current with on-line content that fits your keywords.

Keeping up to date with Search Engine Optimization

The algorithms used by Microsoft and Google to decide the sequence of their results are subject to improvements and tweaks as they try to produce ever more precise search results. As a result, Search Engine Optimization is something of a moving religious holiday also it pays to stay current. Nevertheless, these basic principles are unlikely to change significantly as they may be key determinants of your position. seo

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