The Importance of Great SEO

Most people have some idea of what SEO is, even if all they know is that it's short for 'Search Engine Optimization'. But, exactly what is SEO, and why is it so important? Essentially, SEO is a way of improving your chances of getting your website a high ranking in the search engines. Obviously, if you want to get visitors to your site, you need a high ranking, so great SEO is crucial for the success of your site.

How does SEO work, and how is it actually performed? Well, we'll start off with how it works. Each of the search engines uses particular forumulas, or algorithms, to decide how to rank particular sites. In other words, they decide how high to rank sites depending upon how sites meet their criteria. While there may be a vast number of factors that the search engines take into account, some are weighted much more heavily than others.

One of the major factors of a site's succes in the search engines is how relevant it is. When a person types a particular search string into a search engine, the search engine wants to be able to provide that person with sites that match exactly what he or she is looking for, with preferably the top site being the closest match.

The age of the site, and the site's popularity are other factors that can affect your site's rank. Site popularity is pretty important, because if a site is well regarded then it most likely means that lots of people visit it, and therefore the information it contains is good. Site age isn't something you can change, unfortunately, but it's only one factor in the search engine's ranking algorithms, its importance is simply because a site with age is likely to be a site that sticks around, while other sites come and go. While new sites can rank well, search engines tend not to trust them as much as they do older ones. It's because so many websites are created only to be abandoned just months down the track, as the website owner gets tired of them, or develops new interests, the search engines only want to highly rank sites they believe will stay around. A lot of people fear that the preference for older sites may make it impossible to get a good ranking. The truth is, it's just one ranking factor, and if everything else is spot on there's no reason your site can't compete.

Now you know about the importance of SEO, where do you get started, and how do you get your site as high as possible? For starters, it's important to use a bit of common sense. If your goal is to rank your website for "curing baldness naturally" then you had better make sure that a visitor to your site will be immediately presented with information about curing baldness naturally! This means you need a site full of relevant, interesting content, that meets exactly the needs of people looking for those keyword phrases you're trying to rank for. Whatever's on your site must also be useful to the reader! The search engines, you see, also use the amount of time people stay at the site when visiting, to decide how to rank the site. Why might this be? Because they are well aware that if someone visits your site and leaves immediately, they're NOT getting the information they want, and as mentioned previously the search engines want to provide searchers with the best and most relevant information.

Once upon a time, website builders used to be able to trick the search engines, by what's known as 'keyword stuffing', which involved using the keyword they wanted to rank for numerous times on the page, making it virtually unreadable to humans, but seem highly relevant to search engines. Fortunately, this system no longer works, as search engine algorithms have become much more sophisticated, and any sign of unnatural keyword usage gets penalized by the search engines. So, the moral of this story is to make the content read naturally, and don't put the keyword in more than once or twice per every hundred words. Another good idea is including related keywords (these are known as LSI keywords). When a page includes not just the main keyword or keyphrase, but also incorporates other LSI keywords, the overall theme of the page is strengthened, which helps in ranking.

Once the content's in place, including a title, headings and subheadings that utilize your keyword and related keywords, you need to consider the 'back end' of your site, that is, the part search engines see, but readers don't. Here's where you can put in some meta tags that tell the search engines what your site is about. This involves putting in meta keywords, up to about five, as well as a meta description which also uses your keywords and. It's also critical to ensure you have a header tag that uses your keyword or phrase. One other important factor is the site's activity, meaning sites need to be updated on occasion. A good rule of thumb is to add to your site at least once a week, to show it's regularly updated! This is important because the search engines want to provide up--to-date information to the reader, regular changes show that you pay attention to your site.

Now you've got most of your 'on page' SEO in place, it's important to look at 'off page' SEO. As mentioned previously, search engines rank popular websites highly, so you need to make your site appear popular even if it's just new. What steps need to be taken to make a site seem popular? The easiest way is through backlinking. A backlink is nothing more or less than a link from another website. The search engines count backlinks as 'votes' for your site, so the more you get, the more the search engines like it. Some backlinks, however, are given a much higher weighting than others. Backlinks from sites that are themselves highly regarded by the search engines, are more valuable than ones from less popular sites. Ideally your goal is to therefore get as many backlinks from good quality and highly regarded sites as possible.

Go to SEO Expert Global to learn more about getting your site to the top of organic search engine rankings utilizing our SEO Expert strategies.