Search engine optimization, sometimes called search engine optimisation, is the process of enhancing the quantity and quality of site visitors to a web site or a blog from search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. SEO targets unpaid web traffic rather than paid or direct traffic. SEO strategies aim at improving web users’ experience of finding relevant web pages and information quickly and efficiently.
The importance of search engine optimization can be understood only by studying the success of online businesses in terms of growth in sales and customers. For a business to grow and succeed, it must be visible to potential customers. And visibility of a business can be achieved by increasing its ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). A company with an excellent web presence will enjoy a good customer impression and that is what gives it an edge over competitors.
As a rule, any traffic coming to a site has to be converted to paying customers. But search engine optimization aims at ensuring that the number of visitors to a web site increases considerably, thereby encouraging conversion of that traffic to paying clients. An ideal SEO strategy will increase a site’s ranking in search results for targeted keywords. And the best way to achieve increased ranking is to optimize search query or search engine results pages (SERPs) appropriately.
So how does one go about optimizing their website to make sure that it gets noticed? There are many SEO companies that offer SEO services at affordable prices. The first step is to understand the concept of search engine optimization. In short, the objective is to improve the volume of traffic coming to a site. This can be achieved by improving the website’s search engine results rankings, which can be done by optimizing the site content. Keywords or key phrases used in the content of the web site need to be optimized for higher search engine results ranking.
The other aim of SEO is to get a high ranking among search engines in the particular niche that the client deals in. There are two methods that one can employ to achieve this. One is to implement techniques that make the website’s pages easy to read and navigate. The other is to employ techniques that ensure that the keywords used in the content are highly searched, thereby achieving a better ranking higher among search engines and in particular keyword oriented niche.
When it comes to optimization of website pages, experts recommend building a periodic table of all the SEO factors affecting the performance of a site. The on-page factors include title tags, descriptive Alt Text in Meta tags, page title, Meta description, Meta keywords, content keywords and Meta names. On the off-page factors include on-page optimization such as meta description, alternate image text, site map and title tags. Of the above, the on-page factors are considered to be the most important ones since these affect the user experience, search engine visibility and search engine ranking.
Among the many factors affecting ranking, the most important in recent years has been user experience. It refers to the usability, the appearance, the navigation, the speed and the language interactivity of a site. Many users do not want to spend more time on a site they do not feel comfortable in or do not find easy to use. In search engine optimization, these factors are taken into consideration in order to provide better user experience. Among the many factors affecting user experience, the two that have had the greatest impact on search results are user experience and search engine optimization.
In search engine optimization, the on-page factors are given the most importance, followed by off-page factors such as keywords density, meta tags, URL, title and image text. These factors together form a periodic table of ranking factors that has had the greatest impact on search results. In recent times, the importance of user experience has grown, as the user’s ability to manipulate the website has grown and is now at a position to decide how comfortable he is with the site. The importance given to keywords density is based on the fact that each keyword represents a fraction of a percent of the total words in the whole site. In this regard, if you can get a high percentage of keywords within the first three to five words of the page, you will definitely have good rankings.