What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process marketers and web developers use to create or upgrade websites, making them attractive to popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The goal of search engine optimization is to produce a high-ranking site in the “organic” (also called “natural” or “algorithmic”) search results produced by search engines. For example, when you type in a search term in Google, the organic results are those that occur below the sponsored links and local business results in the main body of the search results page (SERP).
How Do Search Engines Rank Websites?
Search engines use website crawlers (also called robots or spiders) to find and rank pages that match their unique set of algorithmic values. These values are defined by each individual search engine and can change at any time.
When search engines crawl your website, it should contain all of the key algorithmic values for which they are searching. What are search engines looking for? Well, search engine algorithms are one of the best-kept secrets in the industry – no one knows with absolute certainty what is contained in the algorithms. We do, however, know that search engines rank websites based on two main categories: on-page factors and off-page factors.
What are On-page Factors?
On-page factors include anything on a web page that can be manipulated to include keywords, such as the title, meta description, meta keywords, H1 heading tags, image file names and ‘alt’ tags, body copy, anchor link text, and multimedia file attributes. Optimizing on-page factors starts with researching and identifying the keywords that will attract your target market. By including those keywords (also called optimization) in the on-page factors of your website, you will increase your chances of appearing high above your competitors in the search engine results pages, or SERPs. These days, we tend to optimize for one to two keywords per page given how competitive it is to rank for a given term.
What are Off-page Factors?
Off-page factors are those such the number and quality of incoming links, overall ‘buzz’ on the web, and overall web footprint. These are external factors that you have less control over, but still play a large role in your website’s ranking. The quality of incoming links to your website is probably one of the most important criterion used to determine your site’s ranking. Inbound links using anchor text that contain your target keywords are considered high quality links, along with incoming links that come from long-established, authoritative sites that cover a similar topic and have a high Page Rank.
Which Are More Important? On-page or Off-page Factors?
On-page factors used to be the most important values used to determine rankings. Many websites who built and optimized their sites a few years ago using only on-page factors are now finding that they do not rank as highly as they once did. This is because of the frequent changes search engines make to their algorithms. In recent months, the importance of off-page factors has taken a significant lead over on-page factors, particularly with Google, which has more than 72% of the online market share of searches worldwide.
When optimizing your site, however, you must keep in mind that both on-page and off-page factors are critical – you won’t have a high-ranking site for long if you don’t do both well!
