Search Engine Optimization

There’s a lot of talk these days about Web site writing with an eye toward search engine optimization, or SEO. Search engine optimization entails the use of keywords and other methods to increase your Web Site’s ranking on search engines, so people will find your Web site when searching for certain keywords.

When people are looking for something online, they often go to a search engine and type in words that they think will direct them to a Web site that contains the information they want to find.

For instance, if I were looking for information about pruning fruit trees, I would go to my favorite browser and type in “pruning fruit trees.” “Pruning fruit trees” would be my keywords, and the Web sites that come up first would be those that the web browser has decided are most relevant to what I’m looking for.

If I had a Web site about pruning fruit trees and I wanted my site to come up at the top of a web search for the keywords “pruning fruit trees,” I could use search engine optimization to help me improve my rankings.

Better rankings mean that more people will click on my site, because people tend to only click on Web sites in the first page or so of their search results. If I’m trying to get people to buy my line of clippers, they have to visit my Web site. By using search engine optimization to improve where my Web site falls when people search for my keywords, more people will visit my site and, hopefully, buy my products.

The most basic way to improve your rankings in the web browsers is by writing your web copy with keywords in mind. The more times the web browser’s “spider,” a program that reads and categorizes Web sites, sees the keywords on a page, the more likely that Web site will come up high on the list when those particular words are searched for.

Up to a point, anyway. If you load your pages up with too many keywords you could actually hurt your rankings. There are ways to keyword-load your pages that might even get you banned from the browsers. But if you write articles with your keywords in mind you will stay out of trouble.

Spiders read pages from top to bottom and left to right, just like people do. If you want to optimize your page for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, it will be most effective if you have your keywords close to the top left and bottom right of the page.

Make your keyword phrase the title of your web page and put those keywords in the copyright statement at the bottom of the page (copyright 2005 pruning fruit trees). Then include the phrase a few more times in your copy on the page. Write in a natural way and you won’t use too many keywords.

Your copy should flow and be useful to your readers, as well as being written with a mind to keeping search engines happy.

Another key way to use keywords to assist search engine optimization is to use your keyword phrase in formatted headings on your page.

There are a few different levels of headings that you can use on a web page. In html code, they are marked with hs: h1 is used for the biggest heading, h2 for the next biggest and so on.

Your main title for the page should be formatted in H1, while your subheadings should be in H2, and whenever possible your keyword phrase should be included in your headings.

Another way to emphasize your keywords is by using bold, italics or underlining. You don’t want to overdo this, though, because it will make your site hard to read. Choose either bold, underlining or italicizing, and only do it once or twice per page.

Formatting and writing your web page will only get you part way to your goal of getting search engine optimization and high page ranking on the search engines. The other way to get a higher ranking is through linking to other sites, or, more importantly, getting other sites to link to you.

Google/ Google, which is one of the biggest search engines out there, has a system for ranking pages that is illustrated in a Page Rank bar on the Google toolbar (which is a free addition to your web browser and can be downloaded here).

Many Web sites these days have sections that include links to other Web sites. These links are part of the way Google and other search engines determine the popularity of a Web site. If more web pages link to yours, the argument goes, your page must be more popular and it will come up closer to the top of the search.

This is particularly so if you get Web sites with high page rank to link to your site. This can be difficult when your Web site doesn’t have a good page rank, but you can start with sites that are similar to yours that you think would have some value for your readers.

An important part of linking is reciprocity: if you link to a site and then ask them to link to you they will be more likely to do it than they would if you didn’t link to them first.

There are all sorts of ways to go about linking for SEO. There are programs that can help you, or people you can hire who will do the linking for you. Or you can do it all by hand.

It is a time-consuming process, but can be very rewarding. The basics of search engine optimization linking are not that hard--just get Web sites with good page rank to link to you. There are some guidelines that will help.

For instance, be mindful and not link to every Web site you find. While it isn’t vital that every Web site you link to have some connection to your Web site (that is, if I had a site on pruning fruit trees, all my links wouldn’t have to be to gardening sites), it is important to pay attention to who you are linking to and how you link to them.

A page that is filled with a bunch of unrelated links that aren’t well-organized is known as a link farm, and it’s no help to you in terms of SEO, or attracting high-quality links, for that matter. It’s much better if you can have a series of pages (one for business links, one for computer links, etc.) and link to no more than 25 other sites on each page.

Also, you’ll want to follow up with the people who you request links from. If they don’t link back to you, feel free to remove their links from your Web site. It is helpful to look over your links once a month or so to make sure the sites are still live and reciprocating.

Be mindful of the Web sites you are linking to. Certain Web sites are considered bad neighbors--gambling and pornography sites are two big ones, and you will want to stay away from those to see your ranking rise.

Search engine optimization is not a quick process. It’s a constant evolution of using keywords and cultivating links.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can write articles and submit them to free article sites. These articles will include a bio box that will have a link to your Web site. Every time someone uses your article, you’ll get another link out there.

Sometimes search engine optimization can seem a little arbitrary, but as you work with these concepts consistently you will see results.

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