SEO Made Easy Part 1 - (SEO)

If you are a regular on the Internet, and if you have not really heard about Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. SEO, where have you been?

For the past decade - i.e. ever since search engines have started playing a significant role in the sending of traffic to a particular website, web masters have been trying out different techniques to popularize their sites - within the framework of the ethical rules that have come into existence around the same time. That is actually how SEO was conceptualized.

The original idea was to make a website respond better than the competition for a particular phrase (also known as a keyword), by tweaking the site and making it more search engine friendly. This could be accomplished by simply putting in the right meta tags and alt tags, for text and images, in the initial days. However, as search engines became more and more intelligent, the process of optimizing a website underwent serious changes, and it became much more complex. What could be accomplished with a few tags and a bit of tweaking grew to become a lengthy process that involved a lot of permutations and combinations.

As SEO became very popular, most of the websites worth their salt (figuratively speaking, that is) got onto the SEO bandwagon; and the result was that search engines had to be further refined to filter the chaff out.

Otherwise a Spam site made it to the top of the search engine result pages just because it was stuffed with keywords. Even as we read this article, more filters and improvements are being put into place on leading search engines, and these rules won't stay the same a year from now.

For several years there were all sorts of self styled SEO 'experts' who called themselves Internet gurus, and made a horde of money by doing a few maverick optimizations. That was because there was no standard fare when it came to optimizing a website. However, today's Internet is a whole new place, and it is almost certain that by applying the basics of SEO, a site can come up to the first page of any search engine - and even to the top of that page - within a short period of time - like in a couple of months.

SEO is an ocean, and there is a lot to learn. As we go along in the series, we'll talk about the more important factors which constitute this exciting topic.

SEO for Small Businesses

The best of SEO practices are not rocket science. They take some time and some effort. This effort and time will pay off however when you are receiving visits with no pay per click costs. Here's a short list of the best and most easily accomplished SEO practices for all you small business website owners.

Global Link Popularity - Try to get links from websites with a high PageRank. Alexa's page ranking system works on the basis of a 0 to 10 ranking. Getting a 5 is good - a 6 is better - a 7 is best. If you can get higher than that consider yourself lucky.

Rate of New Inbound Links - The timing and rate of adding of external links to your domain - The idea is to add links steadily. If possible get links that bring traffic from quality sites.

Link Popularity within the Your Market - The link weight or authority of a target website amongst its topical peers in the online world goes up strongly when a link is gotten from a top site for your particular keywords.

Relevance of Inbound Links Topic - Sites who link to you with tags, anchors, and other textual content that is relevant to your keywords give a much better result.

Link Popularity from Internal Links - This is about the importance of your internal links that point to your own target page. You can push a page's rank by linking to it from your home or other strong pages.

Age of Your Website - This is the date of the first indexable content texts read by the search engines. The longer your website has been read by the search engines, the more status you get in page rank.

Keyword Use in Texts - Keep your content focused on your keywords and vice versa. Adding irrelevant content is not good for your readers or search engines.

Anchor Text of the Inbound Links - The Anchor text of the inbound link is one of the best assessments of what your website is all about - or it should be.

Keywords Used In Your Title Tags - HTML title tags should reflect the key terms that you want for your page's content, descriptions, and all other tags.

Try these tips to get SEO and page rank for your website.

Do It Yourself SEO Software

If you're strapped for cash and you want to perform search engine optimization, you may be tempted to use one of the many pieces of do-it-yourself SEO software that are available on the market. The makers of each software program tout easy-to-use features and an inexpensive price as major selling points for these programs. While they may be easy to use, these programs can also be a waste of money because of a lack of features. Knowing the basics of do-it-yourself SEO software will help you to make a good SEO decision and save money for professional SEO efforts.

Features

SEO software programs can have some features that make SEO a little easier for business owners. However, these programs often lack features that make it easy to track your SEO results. When you do keyword research and implement SEO strategies on your site, you will want to be able to track your results and easily make changes to your strategies. When you purchase a piece of software that lacks these reporting and tracking features, you are making SEO even more difficult than it has to be. In this case, it may be a better financial investment to hire an SEO consulting firm that provides full search engine optimization and analyzes return on investment and results on a regular basis.

Ease of Use

Do-it-yourself SEO software programs are often advertised as being easy to use by even beginners. The interfaces of these programs may be easy to use, but how is it possible for a program to be simple for someone who does not know a lot about SEO and is just doing it for the first time? In order to be truly easy to use, these software programs need to have tutorials, help pages, and informational articles that explain how to use each feature to add to your SEO efforts. If you find a piece of software that does not have these help capabilities, it is best to save your money and use it to hire a professional SEO consulting firm.

Price

SEO software programs may seem inexpensive because their prices are low. However, you need to analyze the cost of the program in terms of the results you will realize once you have used the software to optimize your web site. If a software program is only $199 but it is difficult to use or your find that your traffic only increases by 5%, it may be a better investment to hire an SEO consulting firm that will increase your traffic by 20%. The whole goal of search engine optimization is to make your site more accessible to search engines so your page is ranked within the top 10 of sear results for your keywords and phrases. If an SEO consulting firm can make your site so accessible that you see a 20% increase in site traffic, the SEO may pay for itself with the increase in profits you see when you convert these new web visitors into buyers.

Optimizing Your Site

The SEO Team is a full-service SEO consulting firm that can help you optimize your web site and skyrocket your traffic. If you'd like us to help you accomplish your SEO goals, visit our web site and find out how we can help you get increased web site traffic.