Website SEO
Getting better search results for your website.
A bit of history
The world wide web has actually been around for over 20 years. The early years were pretty crude by today’s standards. While one website could easily link to another, it soon became clear that there was a need for some way to “look up” a website. The first efforts involved a human curated directory arranged by category. The best known was Yahoo. In time, Yahoo would also join the growing number of “search engines” on the world wide web.
What is a search engine?
A search engine is simply an automated system for indexing websites, and returning search results related to your query. It was soon discovered just how easy it was to “cheat” some of the early search engines. Dozens of competitors offered a range of quite different search results. Now, the pie is shared largely by Google, Yahoo, and Bing (formerly MSN). The latter two getting much smaller slices.
What is SEO and SERP?
SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization”. It refers to website design considerations made to (hopefully) improve search engine results. SERP stands for “search engine results position” and is simply the position on a web page where your site shows up as the result of a relevant search. Having your website appear earlier in the search results will improve your chances that a visitor clicks on your link. There are many out there who claim to be able to improve your search results almost by magic. Beware, as this is no simple task, and it takes time.
It’s all about content
If your site has well written content, and it reads well to humans, your chances of performing well on search results are much higher than a site will little related text content. You should include your target search keywords in the title of the relevant page, headers, and in the body content. Highlighting keywords is also a good idea. Do not however overdo this. Excessive use of keywords is considered to be abusive, and can have just the opposite effect.
Meta tags
Meta tags tend to worry newcomers, as they’re hidden in the webpage code. Many SEO experts these days believe the “keyword” meta tag is all but ignored today. It was too easy to cheat with it. Do however take care with the “description” tag. It’s not only can affect search results, it actually gives some control in what text is displayed in the search result.
Inbound links
This is probably the single most important factor in producing better search results. Your SERP will be affected by many aspects of your website. Most experts agree however, that it is actually websites that link to you that will be the most significant factor. Especially those that link using your keywords in anchor text. Getting those links can take some work. You could offer an article to a popular blog, utilize social networking, and it never hurts just to ask. Get your site listed on a directory such as dmoz.org. Be aware however that a return link often cancels out the inbound link.
Choose keywords carefully
If you targets a single word for your anchor text, you’ll probably be disappointed. If for example, you target just the word “painting” and your website is about house painting, your site will likely fall well below websites about Picasso and Monet. If you instead chose to target “house painting” as your keywords, you’d improve your search result greatly. As a house painter usually serves a local region or city, a better choice would be “Houston house painter”. Your keyword group should appear in your meta description, and in the body text of the page you are linking to.