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Search Engine Optimization: Art & Science

July 26, 2011 by  
Filed under Affiliate Marketing

One of the main components of the Internet is the search engine. A search engine, as the name implies, helps browsers find pertinent websites and web pages which contain info based on the keywords that the surfers have encoded. A survey revealed that around 90% of Internet browsers utilize search engines in doing their Internet-related jobs.

Websites are designed for the main reason of being viewed. They are portals which provide information that are intended to reach their target market. This is the main context which explains the importance of search engines. Being listed in Yahoo is one thing and being listed on the top lists of the search engines is another thing. When someone searches for a certain keyword through the search engine, the most important websites appear first and are usually the most visited websites because of that. There are many factors that search engines consider when they rank websites according to keywords. This is the main task of Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization consists of methods which aim at improving a website’s ranking in search engines’ listings. Search Engine Optimization has become one of the sunshine industries that are related to the Internet. There are multiple ways on how to do SEO and many companies have moved into this business. If you have a Site, You want it to rank as high as possible! That’s it!

How do Search Engines Operate?

To be able to appreciate the beauty of the art & science of Search Engine Optimization, one must be able to understand how search engines work. One may not be able to fully understand the nitty-gritty details of SEO operations, but he can appreciate it to a level that he realizes the importance that it plays in effectively marketing his website. Search engines rank websites in many different ways. A website can primarily be listed by a search engine as a sponsored link/pay-per-click advertisement or as a result of a Free organic search. With the continuous development of search engines, many search engines have introduced paid advertising.

Website owners can actually bid to be displayed on top of the website listings of search engines. The most popular example of this system is the Google Adwords system, which is displayed at the right-hand side corner of the browser when one uses the Google search engine. But, that’s a topic for another day! A website can also be listed through organic search. Search engines use “spiders” and “robots” to be able to assess the meta data contents of a website and they then relay the data to the main search engine system so that when a surfer searches for a certain topic, the websites which are organized to contain that topic appear first. SEO is aimed primarily to be able to do certain things to a website so as to achieve optimal organization to reflect a certain keyword or topic.

History of SEO

Search Engine Optimization can be traced back to the mid-1990s. During those days, the search engines initiated the cataloging of the contents of the Internet. Webmasters needed to submit their websites to different search engines to be able to get the attention of the engines’ spiders. The spiders collected, collated and reported the info to the search engines. The engines would then organise the websites according to topic and displayed the websites when the keyword or topic is searched by surfers.

Meta tags were used by webmasters to be recognized by the search engines. Then, abuse of meta tags became rampant, causing websites to dominate searches that are irrelevant to them. Search engines began to fight back by using more complex algorithms which took into consideration other factors such as the text that is contained within the tile, the domain name, the file names, the keyword density, the keyword proximity, and other such factors.

Modern Times

Today, the newly developed websites don’t need to submit to the search engines to be noticed. Spiders today are capable of finding websites even through links that are in the website. The use of a site map or hypertext links can help the spiders to find the site. The industry of Search Engine Optimization is a big one. As the Internet takes people’s lives into more advanced stages, it has become more and more important in terms of information dissemination, business development and communications.

Having one’s website noticed by search engines is a good way to start the whole Internet journey. Let me use the example of Blogging. Most Bloggers use WordPress for their Sites. To optimize your WordPress site is very easy because you get plug-ins for almost anything. I use only two plug-ins to get ranked on the first page of Google. All-In-One-SEO Plugin and XML Google Sitemaps. This will get you ranked, along with a keyword-rich domain name.

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