Search engines are not just search engines. For many websites they are one of the primary ways of promotion by driving traffic from the search engines to the site. However, the Internet has billions of websites, hence searches for common terms may result in millions of results – making it unlikely that your website is among the top results by default. Search engine optimization (called SEO) is the action of modifying a website to be as accurate and search engine friendly as possible, so it becomes more likely it is displayed among the top results for a given search. I will help you to understand the basics of SEO in this article.
Search engines regularly crawl the web for content and index it accordingly in its own database, from where it gets the results displayed whenever a user is performing a search. The logic behind the result list is individual for each search engine, and mostly the specific algorithm is not public. However, it is not a secret that search engines value different parameters, and by optimizing them you can get a better result for your website.
1) The page title. You should make sure that you use a characteristic page title for each of your pages. A generic “My website” as the title on all your pages is not optimal. You should use different titles to differentiate your sub-pages. On this blog for instance, the main page is alled “Servage Blog”, but when you click on a specific article the title will be the name of that article. Thereby we make it clear what that specific page is about.
2) The URL. Many websites are relying on dynamic content, which is collated and presented to the visitor by the use of web applications (scripts). One of the most common programming languages for web apps is PHP, which often has a default URL structure like http://mydomain.com/index.php?page=Start&show=all_news because it relies on different parameters to display the right content. These URLs make the application work, but are not user friendly, because they make it hard to see what the page is about by looking at the URL (and that only gets worse when more parameters are appended). Instead you should use more friendly URLs. I will take the Servage Blog as an example again. The default URL syntax for our blog application is something like http://www.servage.net/blog/index.php?page=123. This has been switched to a more accurate description of the current page by using the publishing date and article title (example: https://blog.servage.net/2009/02/11/your-emails-everywhere/). This makes it more friendly for users, but also easier for search engines to understand what the given page is about.
3) Meta tags. There are a set of so called meta-tags that can be used in the head-area of your HTML website to include summarized information about it. Many search engines strongly rely on the meta-tags “keywords” and “description”, which is why you should make sure that these two are used properly. The “keywords” meta information should be a set of keywords that characterize the current page specifically. Using a ton of unrelated keywords defeats the purpose by cluttering up the logic and most search engines are smart enough to understand that, thus actually giving a poorer listing. The “description” meta-tag should include a brief summary of the current page. Use the meta-tags with care, and avoid using generic sets of keywords and descriptions on all your page. Individualize them on a per-page basis for a better result.
4) Create good content. Nothing is more important than your content. Make sure that you structure your website correctly, using the proper HTML tags. Titles go into title-tags and so on. Depending on your target group you should try to make content as easy to read as possible and keep your content up to date. There is a saying that “Content is King”! If you are unfamiliar with basic HTML structures I suggest you take a look at W3 Schools.
5) Links. Links are one of the primary ways for search engines to find new pages, but also to measure the relative importance of individual websites by evaluating the amount of links to a given page. Encourage your users to link to your page, share you website or perform other actions to promote your page. Thereby search engines learn that many people find your site good, hence ranking it higher.
This was just a basic introduction to SEO. All five points above can be optimized even further than what I described, but applying the above guidelines to your website should get you started pretty well. I can recommend this SEO starter guide (PDF) as a more comprehensive source if you are interested in more details and more advanced SEO techniques that were not mentioned here.
33 comments (leave a comment)
SEO is now so important, that it has basically become an implicit part of many companies’ marketing strategy. The relatively new field that is getting more and more attention is Social Media Marketing (SMM). Social media – blogs, articles with comments, forums, social networking sits, etc – are ways to get your potential clients talking about you. The more people talk about you, the more people will check your site.
Beyond that, social media are areas to monitor quite seriously simply because that is where you will get people expressing their opinions. What do they like, what do they dislike? This is a direct outlet for reputation management and connecting with (potential clients).
The web has become social (a while ago), and SEO is now a background task. Stuff like Social Media Marketing is what is really being focused on now. What’s next? :)
by Social Media Marketing on February 15, 2009 at 14:48
It could also be valuable if you look at your PageRank. This is a calculation by looking at the position of your website in combinations to other website. It will answer the questions Do you have relevant (very important) partners (link sharing)? and What is your position in the Google Search Engine?
by Flip van Rijn on February 15, 2009 at 15:45
Hello guys, not many hosters will put up this much free SEO information as servage but for newbies out there it can be the start of something big.
One other point that Servage has missed out is the fact you need to be with an reliable hosting like Servage to succeed in this game the reason is simple lets assume your with other hosters and you have lots of 15 min down times which is not that un-usual these day’s and the search engine bot is in having a look at your site, if it can’t get in that time it may try again in 7 days time if your unlucky to be caught again off-line the bot will report back an dead link and it may take months for your site to be indexed again.
We have hundreds of top ranked SEO websites and servage hosts them all (about 1% of the 81000 sites on servage) and we can not be happier with the service.
If your interested in anything to do with SEO then please visit our free SEO information website at http://www.websitedesignoptimisation.com
Or you may be starting out and its better to start the right way and learn about Validation mark-up Servage hosts our W3C Forum as well at http://www.w3cforum.com and the software for that site is part of the service package you get for free from Servage as well!
Best regards and good luck,
Domain Holdings.
by Brian Hunter on February 15, 2009 at 16:10
My fave style of URL:
http://some website.com/simple
no trailing slash, just a simple /page
Meta tags are that that important any-more, most search engines have moved past them.
by Dave on February 17, 2009 at 10:29
:) thanks for the info.
by Marshal on February 17, 2009 at 18:49
It is nice to see that Servage takes an interest in how their customers (I’m one) sites rank in search engines.
Who you are sharing your server with is also important for pagerank and the sites i’m sharing with on Servage are crap. Most of them don’t exist or don’t have any content. This can’t be good.
See who you are sharing with with reverse IP lookup: http://whois.webhosting.info/77.232.68.44 – Just ping your domain name and put that it the URL to see what domains are on the same server as you. Maybe Servage could remove domains that are no longer hosted with them?
Reply by Jakob (Servage) on February 25, 2009 at 16:13
This is interesting indeed. Maybe a solution would be using a dedicated IP? You can activate dedicated IPs for your website via our control panel.
by Kristian on February 24, 2009 at 17:59
Brilliant Information. :]
by Harry on February 25, 2009 at 16:10
thx for the info.
Servage is not good for website where need fast traffic.
But private is ok.
by face on February 27, 2009 at 18:34
Just thought I might add a few things that I have learnt over the past ten years.
I agree that content is important, but not so important for SEO as that it should generate links pointing to your website. Have something on your site that will make people want to link to you.
(admittedly content is useful for search engine key phrase generation as well, but the engines have to find you first, and then consider your site important enough)
As such I believe that links pointing to your site is no 1 priority, and in my experience makes up 90% of any SEO efforts you might make. (Onsite less than 10%)
Second is anchor text in links. Search engines will rank you for anchor text as key words. Eg Esoteric Library. If all the links pointing to your site anchors with this phrase, and you have 100 links. You can be sure you will rank highly for this phrase in searches.
Last but not the least. Simply one of the best ways to get links to your site is to use the viral marketing benefits derived from article distribution. Submit your articles to article distribution services and see how others spread your links. Just make sure you articles have content of value, and most certainly you will have tons of links pointing to your site, all over the internet, in no time.
Hope this helps a bit. These tips have worked well for me.
by Pieter on March 3, 2009 at 09:08
I really liked your blog! You have some great content. Check out my blog,
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I just got an informed there is a HUGE JV going on right now and its great for everyone. If you haven’t heard about it here is the general idea. One marketer is having every other JV submit a gift ( eBook, software,scripts,etc) which visitors will have the option of downloading (for free). This gives marketers a bunch of exposure and visitors a bunch of free gifts…
If you haven’t heard about it you might want to check it out. Its only lasting for about a week
Either Get Free Gifts or Tons of Traffic..
by affiliate.solutions on March 9, 2009 at 06:22
SEO is a grey area that not many people know where to start!
The information above will really help novice users to start SEO’ing their sites.
Keep up the good work Servage!!
Sheps GetThings4Free
like a Free Playstation 3
by Sheps on March 9, 2009 at 11:31
I believe one of the key areas of SEO is to create all pages as a potential for Google to list. So make each page about one niche subject.
by lee on March 9, 2009 at 12:00
Good Information, helpful to anyone starting with SEO.
by Circatek on March 9, 2009 at 15:20
I was toying with the idea of going with a different hosting company but this kind of clinches it for Servage. At least we are talkin to humans!
Some quick suggestions:
Wider screen estate for this blog. Forget the stickies up on the side. Bold, brilliant, beautiful text boxed in. (Or use Google Website Optimizer to test conversion with these options). Separate formatting for mobile (iPhone).
Reply by Jakob (Servage) on March 9, 2009 at 19:11
Thank you for the suggestions. And once again a little hint (it pays of reading the blog): Something’s coming up… ;-)
by abey on March 9, 2009 at 17:03
Thanks for the info.
you get nowhere today without SEO
by Ussing on March 11, 2009 at 05:06
One thing that everyone forgot to mention is the free and helpful information that Googgle provide themselves: http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Read what they say and follow it because it is them that you are optimising your website for.
It will also help if you understand how search engines work. They all use modified forms of Full Text Search, a database technology that you can read about at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-search.html.
Search engines see websites as text documents and index them as such. Basically, the more unique a word is the more weight it carries. The nearer such a word is to the beginning of a document, the more weight it carries and the more it is held to define what the page is about. Extra weight is given to words in the H1, H2 etc tags.
When we talk about a page being source ordered for search engine optimisation we mean that the content comes first and all of the navigation, logos, etc are down at the bottom. We then use CSS to rearrange the page for display. You can see an example of what I am talking about at http://www.integralcm.com/. View the source and you will see that the first thing in the body is the H1 followed by the rest of the content. The banner, navigation etc are down at the bottom in the source but up the top in the display. So learn to use CSS to dynamically arrange page layout instead of tables or just plain old display order.
Hope this helps.
by David Soussan on March 21, 2009 at 02:41
Good Information, helpful to anyone starting with SEO.
by Deao.org on April 4, 2009 at 00:30
Hey thanks for this. I think i will apply these these tips on the next website ill be managing.
by Jesse Manalansan on April 19, 2009 at 07:13
Nice one this will help my SEO campaign
by lee on April 19, 2009 at 17:10
Yes I have tried several of the improvemants to SEO anfd they work!
by Pat on April 19, 2009 at 17:11
Were did you find these informations?
Reply by Per Strömqvist (Servage) on May 4, 2009 at 06:40
This is really no “mumbo jumbo”. Simply look from the search engines perspective. Google wants more people to use their search engines in order to sell ad-space to others. So everything that presents better results to “you” will benefit “them”, since you will stay. Remember the days when Yahoo ruled this world, but search engine result page (SERP) was crappy, so customers left. Google presents their guidelines, so mix the guidelines with your content and you have come a long way. Remember that “cheating” will hurt Google and for this reason they penalty you (by removing your page). For this reason hidden links and text is forbidden. In all games there will be cheaters, when found they are suspended. Content is king, but you have to make your page visible and popular.
by webkataloge on May 4, 2009 at 05:18
We link our site to this blog – for the important information that it gives.
by Free Gift on June 21, 2009 at 21:14
Nice share, thanks!
by Click on July 11, 2009 at 02:04
Make sure ALL written content is totally original Google loves this.
by lee on July 27, 2009 at 20:35
You Always have good tips and how to information for the beginners, and even for more advanced readers. Everyone who wants to make money using the internet must know that making a blog popular and making money with it is hard work. Marketing issues are complicated and SEO eats a lot of time. Thank you for the great information I get here.
by get more traffic on August 23, 2009 at 13:48
Indeed a great blog post. The eye to detail simply for this post is just as impressive as all of the sites detail above. Nice work, and a good read.
by Randal Lalim on April 19, 2010 at 02:32
Can you provide more information on this? cheers
by Traffic Generator on May 8, 2010 at 19:32
excellent.. but i want more seo tips, c’mon guys.
by Teddy on August 8, 2010 at 22:11
Many marketers don’t realize that traffic exchange is the perfect tool to not only increase traffic and even affiliate program signups. But also to generate buzz and brand any program or web business.
by Increase traffic on October 19, 2010 at 05:23
I was a blogger but today I start my new business, Villas Rental Agency for any villas in Bali.
I have learning many things of SEO and SEM.
For Bloggers; they focus on Page Rank for Paid Post, Good Traffic for Paid for Click and Text Link. Blogger doesn’t care about REAL VISITOR or NOT.
But for Online Shopping or Online Industry (e-Commerce) like me, We prefer and focus on REAL VISITOR. We don’t care about PR and Bad Traffic.
I already used some SEO and SEM tools to my portals and seems it is working….
Thanks servage..
by Villas Rental Agency in Bali on November 24, 2010 at 21:06