SEO-Caution to Beginners

For web developers and online businesses alike, three little words equate to a very strategic and crucial principle: search engine optimization (SEO).  This is the practice of employing a variety of strategies in order to get a particular website ranked higher in search engine results.  According to A Discussion on SEO Strategies by Scott Johnson, “it is true that all of the websites that you may view on the Internet are after this very thing to get a better ranking, and who are already on the topmost position are on to remain in that very position. The reason behind this is that the better the ranking a website is having the better are its chances of getting the maximum number of visitors to their website, which would ultimately make their business more profitable.” The higher a website or business ranks in search engine results, the more traffic it will have, the more business it will have, the more it will be able to charge for advertising, etc.  SEO, if properly pursued, can have grossly beneficial results for any website or business.

            There are a litany of methods by which a developer may improve the SEO of a website.  According to the article SEO and Website Optimization “these site optimizations can be spread across metrics like site accessibility, URLs, meta-tags, site architecture and many others.”  The key is to knowing which tweaks to make where, and how often.  For those, like myself, who are completely in the dark as to how these matters work, the handy dandy guideline published by Google called Google’s Search Engine Optimization Guide alludes to many of the manners in which SEO may be achieved.  According to this guide, “Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results.”

            It then goes on to elaborate on ways in which a developer may achieve these small modifications.  First, the title is of utmost importance.  The more specific keywords placed in the title, the more likely it is to turn up higher on relevant searches.  Do not make the title just the title, make it the title and a short description of it in pertinent keywords.  The guide offers “The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.”

            Another way to capitalize on website exposure is to properly employ the usage of meta tags.  A meta tag, if used properly, gives Google and others such search engines a brief summary on what the website is about.  Meta tags are different from title tags in the realm of SEO in that search engines may use the meta tag as a brief description when the page turns up in a site.  Therefore, not only are meta tags used to rank the site in terms of relevance in a search engine result, but it gives the searcher a rough idea of whether that particular site is what he or she was looking for.  This fact makes meta tags that much more important.

            A third manner in which someone may employ SEO is to improve the structure and composition of URLs.  According to SEO and Website Optimization, “If the number of dynamic parameters exceeds two, the length and complexity of the URL increases. With this, user readability as well as search engine comprehension will diminish. Wherever possible use human readable links.”  The way to go about this for beginner to intermediate SEO-ers is to simply make the URL simple, easily remembered words.  For advanced SEO-ers, rewriting a dynamic URL to a static one can be greatly beneficial.  However, this task should only be attempted by experts because the guide states that “while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling issues with your site.”

            Once a developer begins to delve into these basic procedures, he can hone his SEO skills an continue onto the more complex methods associated with SEO.

http://www.selfseo.com/story-19722.php

A Discussion on SEO Strategies by Scott Johnson

http://losangelespublicrelations.com/seo-website-optimization/01466

SEO and Website Optimization by Los Angeles Public Relations Firms