Search Engine Optimisation Explained

Just what is Search Engine optimisation or SEO? Why does it appear so valuable to so many webmasters and others with internet commerce sites? The definition of this term is simple. It is the process of ranking a site high in the pages of search engine results in order to get more visitors. The concept behind Search Engine optimisation is if your site appears on the first page of a Google or Yahoo search query result then there is a high likelihood that you will have a greater number of visitors. More visitors usually results in more business.

The definition is simple but the process is much more involved. The entity that will do the ranking of your page is not a person but a software process known as a Searchbot that finds your site, classifies it, and determines how popular it is. If it determines that a site is very popular, it ranks it higher than the others. Companies hire Search Engine optimisation consultants to analyze your web site and implement methodologies so that searchbots will be able to easily find and rank your site.

One of the first steps implemented in Search Engine optimisation is finding popular keywords for your site and then making sure that keyword appears on the top or home page frequently allowing the searchbot to classify it. For example, if the products you sell from your site are related to snow skis then you want the words snow skis to appear at several places on especially the home page. The searchbot will traverse the web, find your site, analyze the text, and determine that your site is a one selling snow skis and related products.

Part of Search Engine optimisation is to make sure that the text on your site is actually text (like what you would type in Windows Notepad). In other words, a searchbot cannot read text in images. It can only read pure ASCII character text in order to extract the keywords. The way many sites put this text on their home page is with what are known as keyword articles. In our example of a snow ski site, the webmaster would put informative articles on the home page of the site about snow ski topics. In these articles you would find the words snow skis used quite often so that the searchbot will detect it.

The other popular methodology used in Search Engine optimisation is to have a link back to your site on some other popular site related to your product. This helps the searchbot determine that your site is popular enough to be listed on an already popular site and the result is a higher ranking. If a link to your site for snow skis appears on numerous popular ski resort sites then this is an indication of popularity and searchbots will rank your site higher.

There is a lot more to Search Engine optimisation than just the two concepts above. There are issues such as what not to do. Some are tempted to stuff their sites with hidden keywords that saturate the page but cannot be seen in the browser but will be found by the searchbot. Doing this will ban your site from ever getting classified so avoid it. There are also unrealistic claims made by so-called SEO consultants to get your site ranked quickly but the process actually takes time to adjust strategies and figure out what works and what does not work. A good SEO consultant will know this.

Thomas Sinfield is the founder of http://www.marketingpros.com.au a marketing company based in Queensland, Australia that specialises in search engine optimisation, and internet marketing.