Overview of Search Engine Optimization

With millions of websites competing with each other to find space in the top listings of search engines, the search engine optimization process is fast gaining importance. This is a process of making the web site "search engine friendly" so as to enable your website to be ranked high in search results. In other words, we make the website design and content as easy as possible for the search engine to realize that your web site is an important match.

The common belief among people, who are new to the field of search engines, is that the rankings of the web site involve human aspect, whereas the fact is that it is purely an automated process. There are more than 4 billion web pages indexed by Google. It is humanly impossible to maintain that large volume; therefore, search engines employ automated computer programs. These computer programs, known as "search engine spiders" automatically look at each web site and methodically determine the search terms under which the web site will appear.

Though the search engine optimization process is unformulated, many of its aspects are well defined and involve the website design and content, its marketing strategy and popularity. There are many steps involved in the process of search engine optimization and the following is a general overview of this process in order to understand the basic aspects.

Analysis of the Keyword

The first aspect is to determine the phrases and the keywords to be optimized in the
website. Study your products or services and enter the mind of the potential visitor or customer to your website. In order to decide what your keywords and phrases might be, find out what search terms a customer would be most likely to type in the search box. There are tools out there that help you pick your keywords. Wordtracker™ is one of the most widely used keyword search tools. I use the keyword search tool that comes with my Site Build It!™ web site by clicking on the link in the 'about the author' section of this article to find out more. Once you have picked and researched your keywords, your goal should be to include them in your website design and content.

Optimization as the basis for Design

Incorporate optimization from the very beginning when you build your web site. This will make search engine optimization more effective as compared to squeezing in optimization after you've built a site. If the website design and content is straight forward HTML and does not have frame, flash, hidden links in animation or dropdown menus it will be more search engine friendly. If your website is search engine friendly it will be easily indexed by the search engine spider.

Web Site Content

The search engines can only identify and interpret text in the web site. Graphs, pictures and designs are not identified by the search engine spider; therefore, include a lot of text in your web site design and content. This will not only help search engine optimization, but people will also appreciate and link to your web site if it has plenty of information and depth.

Optimize Coding

Search engine optimization goes into the coding of your web site which is beyond the web site design and content. When you build a web site you can describe the pictures and make the heading tags very HTML specific which will make your code more visible to search engines and optimize your web site. This sort of web site popularity is termed 'behind the scene optimization.'

Popularity of Links

Another important aspect of search engine optimization is the number of other sites which have links to your web site. Search engines keep track of your web site links with other sites while ranking your web site. As a result, you should go into deals to share links with quality web sites and other people with similar content.