The Basics Of Search Engine Optimization

The concept of web search engines materialized in the year 1994 with the introduction of WebCrawler that popularized full-text search. Since then, times have been witness to a significant growth in the number of users relying primarily on search engines in their pursuit of relevant information on a broad range of subjects. This led to an increase in the number of search engines as several companies endeavored to serve people with reliable information on their subjects of interest. However, it was only around the year 2000 when Google Inc. came to the forefront connecting people with reliable sources of information and acquainting them of global as well as local businesses and service providers.

Over the years, as the World Wide Web gained prominence, the corporate world felt the need for Internet marketing to reach out to the potential and substantial base of online consumers. In this regard, businesses feel more inclined to rank higher among the major search engine results pages or SERPs in order to target potential consumers. And, this effectively brings us face to face with the concept of search engine optimization or SEO that forms a crucial part of any Internet marketing or web marketing strategy.

Defining SEO    

SEO essentially concerns optimization or improvisation of a website content along with its promotion to make it rank higher in SERPs based on the keywords specified by information seekers. The term “keyword” refers a combination of words or phrases that represents the user requirements of specific products or services. As a crucial web marketing strategy, SEO works in accordance with how the search engine algorithms operate in their quest of presenting users and information seekers with exactly what they are looking for.

The Best SEO Practices 

1. Identifying consumer requirements and keywords: For a business or a product manufacturer, a SEO campaign must begin with an analysis of the consumer requirements. A close analysis of the words or phrases that web surfers and online consumers are expected to feed the maximum into search engines can help businesses as well as upcoming entrepreneurs precisely define their niche and their website content.

For service providers, a SEO campaign must begin with a precise identification of the target consumer base. For instance, if you are a criminal defense attorney in Colorado, using keywords like “criminal defense attorney Colorado” and “Colorado criminal lawyer” would help you connect with local clients in need of your services. To summarize, keywords that are a combination of the city you live in and the service you have on offer can best establish your online profile and help you reach potential clients.

2. Competitor analysis: For businesses as well as service providers, an important Search Engine Optimization practice is analyzing the competitors’ websites and the strategies they employ in their quest of ranking higher in search engine results. A detailed and timely analysis of the web profile of competitive businesses with a similar functional domain can help you devise effective strategies in the long run.

3. Website design and content development with emphasis on keywords: A website design must primarily lay emphasis on the ease-of-access and ease-of-navigation. It must render a website functional across diverse computing hardware and software platforms with a minimal load time and a simplified user interface.

Having figured out the keywords, the very next step concerns proper keyword usage across the title tags, Meta tags, and other relevant HTML elements corresponding to your web pages. Also referred to as on-page optimization, this process involves becoming aware of how the search engines operate and the website parameters or elements they consider the most relevant while indexing websites in their database.

4. Working around the Description tags: The content included in the “description” Meta tags of a web page is used by search engines and presented to online users in the search results. If this content can be conceptualized as a precise summary of the web page content, it can work out to be one of those quintessential strategies enticing web surfers to click through and explore your website. You would do wise to make these web page descriptions keyword-rich, compelling, and unique so that they generate a call to action and help convert search engine visitors into your website visitors.   

   

5. Link Building: What do upcoming entrepreneurs do in the real world to promote themselves? They advertise on or link with the most popular of media outlets with access to masses and classes alike. Similarly, in the online world, a business needs to build a network of links by getting listed across social media outlets like blogs, publishing articles, submitting URLs on web directories, and spreading the word-of-mouth by placing links and advertisements across popular advertising channels.

6. Website Analysis: There are several free website analysis tools, such as Google Analytics, that can help you track the quantity and quality of your website traffic from time to time. The need of the hour is to get acquainted with the working of such tools and techniques and utilize them to know how your SEO efforts are faring against the methodologies adopted by your competitors.

While there are several other significant ways that can lead to better search engine rankings, the above stated practices can be classified as the fundamentals of search engine optimization and marketing. It is also important to note that any SEO campaign must be reviewed from time to time and that it does take time before one gets to see the results. SEO practices must never stop, if you aim to rank consistently higher in SERPs and build up a significant web presence.