Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Search Engine Optimization, Some Basic Tips

By Ricardo d Argence


Traffic is exposure. If no one knows how to find your website or blog, then you will only be showing off your great site to friends and family. Page optimization refers to search engine optimization techniques used directly in the construction of web pages. And SEO is more than just engine optimization, it's about optimizing the page for human readers. If you really do that, serch engines will be glad with that.

It is crucial to be aware of your exercise of keywords, if you want to guarantee your website is full of valuable content. Stay away from keyword stuffing; it gives your website the appearance of ignorance and low principles. Also, search engines can punish your website for keyword overuse if they notice. Use of keywords sparingly and naturally will be ideal. A benefit of using a lot of keywords is attracting search engine traffic, but do not use too many.

Although traditional SEO identifies a keyword density of 2-7% as being ideal for on page optimization, changes in Google's search engine operations indicate that a density of only 1-2% may be preferable (and easier to read). Make a list of commonly used search terms that relate to your subject and subtopics and sprinkle them throughout your site. Google's latent semantic index (LSI) algorithm will also reward you for the use of similar phrases.

Keywords do not necessarily have to be restricted to the content of your page. Keywords need to be emphasized in page titles. A search engine recognizes your page content based heavily on the words you choose to utilize in your page titles. Without using keywords in the title pages, one must have many outside links that point to the specific page to increase web traffic. Keywords, when being integrated into your titles, should be placed as near the beginning of the title as is possible, but ensure that it is easily comprehended. It is important to have a page title for optimal results, as this becomes the link associated with the page in the search engine results.

Each page of your website should have its own unique,relatively short page title which utilizes the main keywords for that page. Remember that search engines only allow a certain number of characters to display in search results. Do not use your keywords more than two or three times in your title; for most keyword phrases, once should be enough.

Meta tags is a term you may read about when reading about "on page optimization" but because it was widely abused by spam, search engines don't acknowledge them. There are very few SEO professionals who continue to depend on meta tags for web page optimization. If you decide to go ahead, make sure you only use meta keywords and descriptions so that these words and phrases show up on the page and are not going to be considered spam.

Links from your site to other related pages will also enhance the popularity of your search engine. Consequently, it is imperative that the links provided are real and sent to sites with similar content that adds value to the visitors. Page optimization is not hard to institute and given that you offer the visitors to your site excellent and relevant content, it will largely benefit the success you will have with the search engines.

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