This article is intended to give the layman a general idea of what search engine optimization (SEO) is and what it can do to help your search rankings. It is not intended to cover the technical aspects. Links will be provided at the bottom of the article for customers wanting to read more about SEO.

The Why:

Search engines use a method of ever-increasing complexity to rank one site higher than another when someone types a search phrase. To add to the fun of SEO, search engines do not disclose how they go about ranking a website. Due to abuse by people trying to sell you what you don't want (spammers), the search engines have made it tougher for everyone to rank high in search results. SEO is the process of making your site more palatable to the spiders. This is done via a number of methods:

The How:

For our example, you own a company called "Ajax" that sells widgets in Alaska. First we need to decide which keywords we want to work toward getting a high ranking on. We will work with: Ajax, widgets & Alaska.

This is the process of adding pertinent keywords in the title of your page. Your title
might look something like this: "Ajax Widgets-Providing Quality Widgets in Alaska since
1997".
Moral: Title content counts more towards score than body text.

2) Keywords should be inside links pointing to the page:

This entails both onsite and offsite links. Keywords in links would look something like this:
"Click here to order widgets straight from Alaska"

Offsite links are links on other sites that point toward your site. You have no control over
what these links contain.
Moral: Link content is important for rating relevancy on a site.

3) Keywords should be in the body text:

Visible text is text that a visitor can read. It does not count text embedded with javascript
or in HTML tags. For this reason, you want to write descriptive and complete blocks of text
on your site to use as meat for the search engines. For less than the price of a cup of coffee
a day, you could feed a search engine. Give it something to work with.
Moral: Make sure your site uses any descriptive words, phrases and terms that you want
search results for!

4) Link popularity is important:

Link popularity is the number of offsite links pointing to your site. To help you in this area,
you can ask other sites to become link partners with you. Also, submitting to business
directories, local chamber of commerce and any other business listing service you can think of
helps in this area.
Moral: Get listed on as many sites as you can!

5) PageRank of the page (for Google):

Page rank is Google's way of determining your propensity to offer bogus content or use
underhanded methods to get search results. For instance, your link showing up on whitehouse.gov
would mean more to Google than your link showing up on bobs-house-of-bogus-links.info. This
was done to combat spammers setting up thousands of bogus websites that linked to each other
to boost their PageRank. You know that service for $19.95 that promises to submit your site to
400+ search engines? It will damage your site's ranking more than help it.
Moral: Do not submit your site to link farms!

6) Keywords in Heading Tags in webpage:

H tags are text that you see on a web page larger than standard text and in bold. Search engines
assume that this text is more relevant than your standard text in regards to what your site pertains to.
Moral: Any key phrases or terms should be in H tags to ensure it gets logged as important.

7) Linking from one page to inner pages:

This means that it's better to have multiple pages branching from your index page than it is to try to
fit all of your information on one page. Search engines like to see sites that have some complexity
to it. Single page sites usually insinuate that it was thrown together and doesn't plan to be there long.
Think it's an unfair generalization? Talk to the hippies man....
Moral: Allow your site to spread it's wings. If it doesn't return, it was never yours to begin with.

A punch line is the first line of text you see on a site, usually a motto or slogan. For Ajax, we might want
something like this:
"Need the best widget in the state of Alaska? Try Ajax!"
Moral: Search engines figure your first line of text will be more relevant towards the content of your site.

This covers the basic concerning the content of your page. You also need to optimize the code to ensure the engines can properly spider your site. Search engines might have a problem harvesting text embedded in javascript, and it can't deal with flash at all. Your content needs to be accessible to the spider. If it can't see it, it can't save it! This process of optimizing your site code consists of making sure that if you use a technology to present content on your site that a spider can't index, that an alternative is offered for the spider(alt, title, NOFRAME tags, etc..).

Want to read more on SEO?

Wikipedia entry
SEOChat
Pandia

Feel intimidated by the possibilities and want someone to handle your SEO for you?  We use  seozachz.com, aChicago based seo consultant.</a>

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