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Three Essential Elements of SEO

You can explain the concept in a number of technical ways but SEO primarily involves optimizing one’s site to be search engine friendly.  Search engines are responsible for most of the traffic on the web and can play a major role in increasing the number of visitors that come to your site.  Because these visitors usually come in with a general interest, webmasters all over the world are looking for ways to increase their visibility.  There are many aspects that go into SEO but these three simple elements are among the most essential.

Keywords and Phrases

The most basic and effective SEO technique of all is the use of keywords and key phrases. Keywords simply refer to the terms users commonly enter into a search engine.  Search engine robots or spiders are trained to crawl the web and find these terms.  Once these words are found, the corresponding web page is indexed by the spider and then listed in a search engine.  For the most part, key phrases are like keywords but simply have more words bundled together.  Key phrases may be presented in the form of a question or other formats commonly associated with a particular niche.  When used properly, both can be the determining factor in the success of your SEO campaign.

Page Titles

If you take a look in the top of left corner of your browser, you will find text detailing the site you’re on and perhaps a brief description of what the page is about.  This is the title of a web page, often overlooked but oh so important.  Some webmasters don’t realize it, however, the title is one of the first elements a search engine spider will detect when landing on your site.  Because of this, you want to make sure your web pages have relative, keyword-rich titles.  When incorporating keywords into your titles, it is important to make sure you keep them relative and to a minimum.  Search engine spiders are designed to ignore sites that contain keyword stuffed pages.  This is why you want to be very careful not to overuse them.

Keyword Density

Because keyword stuffing is often looked down upon by the search engines, one must be cautious of going overboard.  In fact, overusing them can actually be more damaging than using none at all when it comes to getting rankings.  Keyword density is a way to make sure this doesn’t happen.  This technique basically refers to the number of keywords divided by the number of words on a web page.  On a page consisting of 500 words, experts suggest that anything over 5% is considered keyword stuffing while anything less is considered to make less of an impact.  For this reason, you want to find out what is appropriate density for the number of words on your pages.

Conclusion

Every step helps in the race to claim search engine fame.  If you think about it however, the top spots are limited and depending on the competition in your niche, earning high rankings might be next to impossible.   The good thing is that the rankings change frequently so if you stay at it, you could find yourself on the front page of Google at one time or another.

Designing Your Site for SEO

A well designed site is often one that leads to effective search engine optimization.  Genuine SEO can be achieved by a solid website design that is simple to navigate.  By making your site rich with content yet easily accessible, you not only provide simple navigation for your visitors, but also the search engine spiders looking to index your site.  This approach is one that could lead to long term success at search engine marketing.  Instead of trying to buy your way to the top of the rankings and trick the complicated search engine algorithms, you should create your pages with relative keywords and quality links.  When the spiders come crawling, they will usually reward the sites with good content and easy navigation.

Understanding the Spiders

Search engine spiders or robots, are programs designed to explore the web and visit website pages.  These programs automatically read text and click their way through links to view all the pages on a site.  A search engine spider usually collects information on titles and metadata and then combs the text on the page via its source code.  Most robots function like earlier web browsers, meaning they generally do not absorb frames, Flash content or dynamic scripting, all the more reason to keep your design simple.

Drop-down boxes, web forms and other dynamic creations cannot be comprehended by a search engine spider.  The best way to ensure a visit is to use static pages constructed in HTML.  If a dynamic script such as ASP is required, there are a few ways to keep your pages attractive.  One method is to use the rewrite capabilities of your server to transform complex URLs into simple ones.  If you must use Flash to make your pages more vibrant, use it sparingly rather than building an entire page with it.  Don’t let this technology get in the way of the search engine robots or your visitors.

Building an SEO-friendly site is fairly easy for anyone with minimal development skills.  Your main focus is to eliminate all the flashy content and stick with a simple, solid architecture.  Search engine spiders have no trouble comprehending text and have a thing for text links, more commonly known as anchortext.  When keeping your visitors in mind, the design process gets much easier.  Building for the search engines will increase your visibility on the web and help to bring new prospects in.

The most important you thing need to know about SEO is that search engines are attracted to the text on your website.  The more you stay on topic with a decent amount of relative links and keywords, the better the robots will be able to digest it.  After getting the information, it is delivered to a database and eventually translated into what you get in the search engine results.

Once your site has been designed, be sure to test it out for validation.  Check behind yourself to ensure that no programming errors exist as this will keep your pages from being indexed.  By designing with clean code and quality content, you can increase your chances of ranking higher and generating targeted traffic.