subject: How to SEO, Google SEO and Organic Search Strategies [print this page] How to SEO, Google SEO and Organic Search Strategies
One abbreviation that has recently caught my imagination and has been thrown around a lot in the web world is SEO. Now I know that I'm pretty late discussing the meaning and importance of this abbreviation, but I'm sure that there must be many out there who like me would be as clueless to this sudden rise of its popularity. Now if we get down to the basics and try to find out what exactly is the purpose served by this term, what is it that companies and websites do to make themselves visible online.
Now take the particular example of an amazing new product or service, which its company plans to promote online. The first step would be to make a beautifully designed yet simple to navigate website that speaks about the product or the service. But would that be enough? What if the effort that went into designing that website was of no use at all when its target audience/market does not even know of its existence? The changing consumer behavior in this day and age has lead to people believing and trusting the web to provide them with the optimum solution to all their needs and desires. Almost everyone we know logs on to the web and search for things they want to know about or desire to seek information about. This is done on various search engines, the biggest of them all being Google. User perception says that if something is on Google, then it has credibility.
In the very same way, your website, which has been made after months and years of hard work, if not shown on Google search results would miss out on the opportunity of reaching out to millions of people. The same would be the case with an e-commerce website or a job portal or any website that deals with any kind of selling online. The repercussions would be the same.
Imagine having a company that sells shoes, like so many others. An individual who wants to buy shoes would simply Google his search, say, "Buy Shoes Online" and the results shown on Google would simply guide this individual to what it (Google) thinks is the most relevant shoe selling website. Research also states that a typical internet user, when searching for information, hardly goes beyond the first page of search results (10 results on one page at max). Now what if your website in not displayed in these top ten search results? Simply stated, you would be losing out on a valuable customer and hundreds like him as those looking for your product or service would end up buying it from your competitors. For your online business to grow, you need to be easily discoverable and fast!
Now where do SEO fit into all of this? Says Neeraj Khanna, Business Head, E2 Solutions, "Search engine optimization is a tool that today has become one of the top priorities for any company in the world. Being at the top remains the main agenda in every business, may it be in the real world or the virtual world and SEO provides the perfect strategy for an Online Numero Uno business ranking!"
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your website to make it more search engine friendly so that it ranks higher on the search results and becomes visible to the maximum number of people. The SEO strategy of a company or a website decides how it would fare on the guidelines set by Google and thus would have a direct impact on its ratings, its page traffic and finally the amount of revenue it generates for the company.
A SEO strategy for Organic Search for a website works in two ways:-
1. On-page optimization
2. Off-page optimization
On-page Optimization, as the name suggests deals in optimization being done right on the website/webpage in which the following elements are considered:-
Keywords
On-page tags
Unique Content
Interlinking
On the other hand, Off-page optimization deals with creating the buzz around the brand/company all over the internet so that maximum number of people comes to know about the website and subsequently the traffic to the website increases. It would help in making a search engine understand that your website is more relevant for a keyword searched, as compared to other websites. In off-page optimization, no activity is done on your website that brings the traffic there. It consists of the following elements:-
Link bait along with Viral content creation
Blogging to share information and engage visitors
Article Submissions
Press release submissions
Widget and embedded content creation
User generated content
Links exchange
Social networking
Social bookmarking
Page speed
Back links generation
"Off-page optimization is as much important (if not more) as On-page optimization, as it performs the highly essential task of engaging the web surfers and spreading the word about the brand or the company. These efforts, if translated into real-time visitors on the website, can result in increased business activity for the website, leading to profitable returns", reiterates Neeraj Khanna.
Devising the SEO Strategy for Organic Search
Individual web-pages as well as entire websites are optimized depending on the need of the company/individual.
Keywords
A website, depending on its business and purpose of operation, has to choose a set of keywords that it thinks would be feature most on the search results. These keywords have to be thoroughly researched depending upon their relevance to the website as well as their frequency of use on search engines by the users. Things to keep in mind while performing this exercise are the number of searches that were done using a particular keyword to reach a website like yours, the different demographics involved and the different kind of keywords used to reach the same result. The placement and indexing of these keywords is also a very important issue, but that would be explained later.
Content
For any SEO strategy, content remains the King. The right words used in the right context go a long way in making the website relevant and creating the right perception about the company itself. The content should be written in such a way that the keywords build a direct link with it.
Link Building
This exercise is done to generate the maximum number of links which would share the link of your website so that its visibility increases across the web. Emphasis is on building links with top level domains, such as, .GOV, .EDU etc. This helps in building the credibility of the website wherein top level links acts as more of an endorser for your website. This fact is noticed by Google, which in turn gives more preference to your website, when it comes to search engine rankings.
