Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders - no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design - Application Development - SEO SMO SEM - Email Marketing

I’m kidding…you actually want to be very selective when creating a title for each page of your web site.

1. It has to be relevant to the page…Make sure all of your pages do not have the same title tag.

2. It helps users distinguish between browser windows or tabs.

3. It may or may not help Search Engines determine what your site is about, the content will end up speaking for itself.

So here are a few guidlines:

1. Google.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

2. Yahoo.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

3. Ask.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

4. MSN.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

So, better to be safe than sorry…keep it at 66 characters or less.  Get your keywords in there but don’t stuff it like a turkey!

This may be obvious but it’s usually missed when developing content or putting together your initial website framework.  Here are 5 Elements to Optimizing your Global Navigation links:

1. Every link on your site holds some weight.

Think about it this way:

- If you link to an external site, you are casting a “vote” for that site….stating to the Search Engine that you value this site you are linking to.

- If you are linking internally, you are telling the Search Engines what your site is about.  The link itself adds to the relativity of your site.

Here is an example:

If you own a company that sells dress shoes or a company that sells horse shoes - you have 2 very different businesses. Hopefully

Now, on your Global navigation that shows up on every single page, if both businesses linked to their product page and the link in the Global navigation said, “Shoes”…well, Google and Yahoo would have to use different methods to figure out what type of shoes you were talking about.

But, if your links said, “Dress Shoes” or “Horse Shoes”, respectively.  That gives Google a much better idea of what your site is about and the link relevancy goes up because you provided better details about what you are selling.

Don’t make it any harder for the Search Engines to figure out what your site is about!

2. Make sure to include all of your important pages in your Global navigation.

Let’s pretend that in your Global Navigation you have a link called “About Us”, and that link is on every single page because it’s in the Global Navigation.  Now, after some time, you’ve posted enough articles that your indexed pages hits 200 pages.  You now have 200 pages each with a link to the About Us page.

In your Global Navigation you didn’t link to your main products, instead you put up some banner image that links to the individual product pages - you have 10 or so products.  And for the sake of the example, let’s say that you split up the links to your products evenly.  So, each page links to one of your products and they rotate…page 1 links to product 1, page 2 links to product 2, etc.  200 pages, 10 products…split evenly gives each product 20 pages linking to it.

By that example…with the same 200 pages indexed, you now have 20 pages pointing to each product.  Yet, you have 200 pointing to your About Us page.

What’s more important?  Unless you are a non-profit, the product is important!

3. Using dropdown menus?  Use a hybrid script…

Some dropdown scripts hide the actual navigation links in a Javascript file or a Flash file.  Search engines can’t read those and if that’s the only way you are linking to your important pages, you’ve just blinded the search engine from crawling through your site using links.

Look for hybrid scripts that use CSS with Javascript so that the links are coded in CSS.  Those can be read and followed by Search Engines.  You can do the same thing with Flash.

Tip: Use a text browser or turn OFF Javascript and Flash in your browser, then browse your site…if your links do not show up, you have a problem!

4. Using Images for your navigation?

Make sure you use Alt Attributes (Alt Tags) so that the search engine knows what your link is about.  Even though a search engine can follow the link, it won’t know what you feel is relevant about the link.  Therefore, if using images in your navigation, use some of your keywords to help guide the Search Engine to know where you are sending it.

Again, let’s make it easier for the engines as well as for people…usually content built for people works well for engines too.

5. Architecture is good but a yarn ball is bad.

When creating Global Navigation links, it’s good to plan out what’s really important.  And in most cases it’s good to interconnect your pages, BUT…there is an exception, isnt there always?  Don’t just link everything together for the sake of linking everything together.  You should have a method for the madness.

Example:

if you have a site that sells car parts and the first thing the user does is searches by Make and Model, say it’s an Audi A6…if you were to show all parts available for the A6, that’s great!  But if you created links on the same page to parts for a BMW M3, you are now diluting your relevancy.  That page may have ranked great for Audi parts, but you just messed it up by diluting your relevancy and adding BMW parts listed on the same page, that page is no longer as relevant for “Audi parts”, but it may be for “Audi and BMW parts”.

Keep that in mind and best of luck with your rank!

Note: This article was first posted on 10/20/2008 and updated on 11/10/2008.