Search Engine Optimization: Tips and Tricks Essay

An explanation of search engines and how they work

People find it easy and time-saving to gather information available on various search engines. The SEO services are helpful in extending information to such people. It has become inevitable for any new business to make use of such services in order to enter the market and also for the existing businesses to sustain the competition.

There are various reasons as to why companies should make use of SEO services. One of the most important reasons is that a company might have a perfect website with all the required information for promoting its products or services but unless the website is viewed by the customers, it is futile. So optimization of the websites is very crucial. Choosing a good search engine for optimization can enhance the traffic to a company’s website. Consequently, there will be an increase in the opportunities and possibilities of getting business.

Uncovering the right keywords for your organization

Identifying the perfect keywords is the most vital step towards a booming marketing drive over the internet. It is a well known fact that search engine optimization is based on keyword search. Your website should contain such keywords that any person searching for your products will anyhow come across your website. Keywords are the foundation of your online marketing and promotion. You have to make a thorough research before incorporating the keywords into your website. It’s a common practice to identify keywords according to their perception, forgetting that everyone has his/her own way of thinking. This thinking process depends on various factors such as the ethnicity of the targeted audience. The geographic location of the targeted audience is also an important factor.

Understanding the conversion cycle & how it applies to your organization

The conversion cycle is also a crucial aspect of search engine optimization or your online marketing and promotion. As the name suggests, it simply means the rate of conversion of visitors to your website as being your valued customers. Organizations opt for SEOs in order to bring more and more visitors to their website. But unless such visitors become customers, it hardly matters. But again, customers ought to create a margin. Organizations with greater margin are the winners in the long run. Following is a depiction of a typical conversion cycle:

Writing for search engines: Appropriate titles and descriptions:

Titles and description of your website is not an easy job. There are certain things that you should keep in mind while writing a title tag for your website:

The length of your title should not exceed 70 words.

Your keywords should be at the starting of your title tag.

You should not use punctuations such as commas, full stops, dashes, etc. to separate the keywords. Instead, you should use a pipe (I) for this purpose.

You should try to keep your title tag as informative as possible, giving the visitor maximum possible information. Connecting words such as and, if, however, otherwise, despite, etc., should be avoided so that you have more space for valuable information.

Try not to include your company name in the title tag if it doesn’t coincide with your keywords.

Never copy-paste your title tags on different pages. The title tag for different pages should be different. This way you will have better traffic.

Your title tag should be relevant to the description on your website pages.

Regarding the description, following things should be kept in kind:

The information should be in text form instead of graphics.

The information should not be limited to a single page. Try and scatter the information on several pages.

While writing the description you should take care that important information surrounds your keywords.

Identification of spider traps

You should take care while designing your website. You should understand that easily accessible websites are found easily and displayed by search engine spiders. “A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and ‘ban’) spiders that do not respect robots.txt” (Dbasemedia, 2006). Following precautions should be taken while designing your website:

The design should be simple as complex or poor designs may mislead the SEO spiders and your website may be written off from the index. This means that in future searches by prospective clients, your website will not be searched for contents by the SEO spiders.

You should employ a content management system that will help you in creating uncomplicated URL for your website. Another benefit of short URLs is that the prospective clients will be able to remember your website address.

Search engine spiders hesitate to promote sites with more advertising material. So you should take care that your website has minimum possible advertisements.

Avoiding spam

An easy way to know whether your website contains spam is that a website with spam will have repetition of contents such as the menus on majority of the pages. This will make the pages appear to be duplicates and the contents or description on the pages might be overlooked by the SEO. “One of the best ways to get to the top search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN is to write unique and expert content while maintaining an overall keyword density of 2.9%” (Priya, 2008). Any excess percentage may result in your website being deemed to be spamming.

In order to avoid spam, always install an anti-virus plug-in.

Computer programs such as Spam Assassin should be installed on your server. The scoring level should be set accordingly but it should be understood that as the scoring level increases, the chances of missing e-mails also increases.

Never include your email in web-forms.

Never use common phrases such as ‘contact us’ or ‘mail to’ in your website.

Try to incorporate special mail scripts in your website.

Using site maps

Site map page is the most significant one in your website. It acts as an index to your website. Prospective clients can have an idea about your website after viewing this page. The site map page also contains all the links to the various pages of your website. “A good structure for a sitemap is first a paragraph describing your company, your products and your philosophy, then a formatted list of your links, along with short descriptions for every link” (Voget, 2003). You can improve the traffic of your website in the following ways:

Instead of submitting the main page of your website to the SEO, you should submit the site map page of your website so that the SEO will find it easy to find all the pages of your website and index accordingly.

In the description on the site map page of your website, you should include key words and phrases that may lead to the respective pages.

Provide a highlighted link on every page of your website that will lead your prospective clients to the site map page of your website. This will make it easier for the people visiting your website to find what they want.

Performing competitive link intelligence

You should do the following in order to perform competitive link intelligence:

Identify a search engine and search for your keywords.

Make a note of the top 15-20 competitors. Try to find out the back-links to all these websites. “Back links are considered valuable when they 1) Are do follow, 2) Contain the appropriate anchor text, 3) Are deep linked to the relevant inner pages, and 4) Are linked from high pr niche websites” (WordPressak, 2010).

Prepare an Excel sheet and enlist those websites of which you have the back links.

Make a separate list of the ‘do follow’ websites in a descending order based on their PR.

Once you have completed all these steps, you will have a list of the most important websites that you can link your website to.

A PPC (pay per click) campaign

In a pay-per-click campaign, “Marketers specify an amount they’re willing to pay for each visitor who clicks through to their sites. They also indicate whether they want their ads to appear in search engine results or content blocks embedded within websites or both” (Kumar, 2011).

The success of your pay-per-click depends on your choice of keywords. The keywords should be such that may be frequently used by people to look for your products. Using proper keywords can increase the conversion rate of your website. Following are the ways in which you may identify proper keywords:

Always choose the appropriate or such keywords that are pertinent to your business.

Try and identify maximum low cost keywords that don’t have many searches. Instead of ten costly keywords, it is better to have 100 low cost keywords.

Include your keywords in the title of your webpage and the description as well.

Avoid such keywords that may have a ‘broad match’ with keywords of other similar websites.

Target your advertisement campaign based on factors such as geographic location and time zone.

References

Dbasemedia. (2006). SEO: Spider traps. Web.

Kumar, A. (2011). Seven tips for improving pay-per-click campaigns. Web.

Priya. (2008). Ways to avoid website spam. Web.

Voget, A. (2003). 1. Facts of the week: Use sitemaps to improve your search engine ranking. Web.

Wordpressak. (2010). How to build valuable back links – SEO service provider. Web.