Articles - What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the creating, analyzing and modifying of a webpage or website to make them more search engine friendly. This is done by editing both the internal and external aspects of a website. A SEO optimizer can edit both the website content and its HTML coding in notepad.
The process of SEO takes into consideration how search engines work. SEO is mainly done to make a webpage compatible to a search engine. This is done so that the contents of the website match up with the different algorithms of a search engine. When a webpage or site is search engine compatible it is more likely to be ranked among the top 10 websites with the most relevant information. As a result of a website being ranked among the earlier search results more people will be able to visit the website and see what it’s all about. SEO is vital aspect of promoting a of site.
In order to understand how SEO works a person has to first understand how search engines work. Search engines are text driven so they depend mainly on words. When a search query is entered into a Google search engine the following process occurs:
- The search engine crawls the web to search for sites that have relevant information pertaining to the search query.
- It then indexes the contents of the websites, saving the websites with the most relevant information in a giant database.
- The request is then processed by comparing all the stored websites in the database that match up with the search query.
The search engine then ranks the websites by order of relevancy. This is how the results will appear after the search. They are two types of search engine optimization categories. They are white hat SEO and the black hat SEO.
- White hat SEO confirms with the search engine guidelines and involves no deception.
- Black hat SEO is the one that is not recommended by search engines. This is when an optimizer puts in false information on the website just to make people come to the website.
SEO is done with the knowledge of how a search engines work. The following process describes the SEO process in a nutshell.
- The first step is to create a website that has a search engine friendly design. This will help increase the visibility of a website by search engines.
- The second step is to choose keywords that are relevant to the contents of your webpage. After that a person can then use various different optimizing techniques to help improve the website.
- Finally when the website is done the optimizer can then build links that will link to that page from different websites. This will help increase traffic to the website.
The most important aspects to remember with SEO are:
- It’s all in the coding.
- A title tag should be no more than 60 characters, the metatag description should be no longer than 150 characters, and the meta keywords should not exceed 874 characters.
- 2/3 of internet users do searches using Google. Your concentration should be on coding a site so it is most friendly to Google’s site crawlers. You want to make it friendly to all search engines, but your main focus should be on Google.
- Reliable links and effective link building may be the most important aspect of SEO.
Namatirai Mavugara
2K Computer Solutions