subject: Discover The Secrets Of Search Engine Optimization [print this page] Well, SEO in its basic form is about making your website(individual pages included) relevant and visible to search engine users. But how is this achieved?
The ABC of good Search Engine Optimization
You'll be surprised to find out that good search engine optimization is very basic. A properly done optimization campaign will usually involve these important elements.
Quality content
Content is the main driver of search engine rankings, content is what attracts users to your website and content when treated properly with keywords and keyword phrases, will feed search engine crawlers. When it comes to content, you're supposed to provide fresh content always. Content is at the very core of search engine optimization.
Simple and user friendly site design
Do a research and you'll discover that most well ranked sites share one thing in common and that is their simple site design. Sites designed to use less bandwidth, optimized graphics, less memory footprint usually load faster and are easier to navigate. Simple designs are also search engine friendly and people will enjoy interacting with it.
Properly written and placed meta-tags
Meta tags form part of the overall optimization strategy. Meta-tags need to be drafted in a compelling, key-phrase heavy content that makes it easy for site users to click through from SERP.
SEO is not neurosurgery
There is no doubt that search engine optimization like any other subject can appear a little complex and technical to the uninitiated. The simple and plain truth is that search engine optimization is actually simple and easy to do if you dedicate time to learn it. Do not be intimidated by the complicated technical stuff when you're just starting out. The best idea is to start slowly, read, learn and apply as you go. Never be afraid of asking questions, above all patience pays dividends here. Learning may take you time and most other subjects do. Below are some good resources to learning SEO.
Google's SEO Guidelines
While I wouldn't tell anyone to do "whatever Google says" to do to get your website to rank, it's important to know what Google's public position is on a variety of tactics/techniques you might employ.
Search Engine Journal
This blog has been around for some time. It was started by one of SEO pioneers. Maybe I don't need to tell you about this one since you're already reading it but in case you were thinking you need to look elsewhere, you've got years worth of tremendously helpful blog posts right here.
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine
This the legendary paper submitted by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their Post-Graduate work at Stanford. It is a blueprint of sorts of the original working model for Google.
While in its current form Google in many ways dwarfs the original concept, the original Google concept was truly an engineering work of art - and reading the paper above will take you a long way in understanding the processes that are at the core of the search engines we know today.
