What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization. For the understanding of beginners, search engine optimization is the art and science of making a website to perform better with various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com. In other words, SEO involves a number of activities that make your site search engine friendly.
As you know, search engines offer the platform to extract particular information on almost anything existing in the world. Users generally type in some text known as keyword or key phrase in the search box and get the most relevant information on that keyword in the form of listed web pages. Have you ever wondered how and why these web pages appear in that sequence for a particular keyword?
Search engines normally adhere to a set of rules or algorithm to rank websites or web pages for a certain search query (keyword). So, if your website contains good, original content related a search query and receives high-quality inbound links from other similar websites in great quantity, then the site is highly favored by search engines that give it a high rank in the search results for that query.
Now, we can provide a more advanced definition of SEO which is the process of optimizing your website (or setting it right) according to the preferences of search engines through the implementation of some techniques both on and off the site, so that it obtains a high ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs).
SEO – Advantages & Impact
Preferring search engine optimization can deliver a number of advantages and positive impacts for your website. These include:
1. As search engines nowadays are the most popular online tools among web surfers to look for specific information, the scope of SEO is quite enormous. With millions of search queries every day, search engines can prove to be the ultimate source of potential customers for your products or services.
2. Conventional advertising and promotional techniques bear a local impact. Global promotional techniques call for huge investments that small and mid-size businesses are unable to make. So, search engine optimization becomes all the more important as it is the most powerful online promotional tool having a deep impact on global customer base.
3. Optimizing a website for search engines is the cheapest technique around. Generally, the costs involved in a full-fledged SEO campaign are much lower than that of conventional promotion. Converting a sales lead to a customer can also be performed in a cost-effective manner with the optimization technique.
4. With the help of search engine optimization, your website can receive a large number of highly qualified leads that have maximum chances of becoming customers because they land on your website through search engine result page, looking for their desired product or service you sell.
5. Implementing SEO techniques can allow you to gain valuable knowledge of keywords used by your potential clients to find the products or services you offer. This information will be helpful in identifying customer tastes and preferences and formulating your optimization strategies accordingly. You can also target your end customers in a better way through better positioning of products or services.
6. Search engine optimization can open the door to nonstop generation of revenues through increased web traffic and sales. When your website obtains top ranks for all your profitable keywords, it becomes highly visible among millions of search engine users.
7. This technique is the quiet means of product promotion, devoid of any extravagant advertising tricks. As a result, your prospective clients will find your website offerings more reliable and believable.
SEO – The Past, Present & Future
The field of search engine optimization has been witnessing rapid changes and the same trend will continue in the future also. So, both webmasters and SEO service providers have to be on their toes always to cope with these changes. We’ll take a look at the evolution search engine optimization over the years and its future ahead.
The Past
During the beginning of search engine optimization in the late 1990s, more attention was given to optimizing the on-page factors of websites rather than building link popularity through off-page optimization. We’ll discuss both on-page and off-page optimization in detail later in this article. The reason behind lack of efforts on link popularity is webmasters and Internet marketers were exchanging links with other related websites freely. That was enough to bring traffic to their websites. Banner ads were actually popular during this period.
During the early 2000’s, the popularity of link building gained momentum. You can say, this was the beginning of the era when link popularity outclassed on-page activities. Numerous websites concentrated on building more and more links from related websites and creating sub-domains. On the other hand, it was also the era of rising SEO companies who adopted unprincipled and unfair strategies and techniques to achieve link popularity.
During the middle period of 2000’s, more than 75 percent of all SEO activities were focused on link popularity. This period also witnessed the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Orkut, etc. that revolutionized the process of interlinking. Search engine optimization turned so prominent that it did away with the need of listing on Yellow Pages for countless businesses around the world. This period was also important for Google as it established itself as the number one search engine.
The Present
Talking about the present scenario, the concept of SEO is in full swing and has become the paramount choice of online businesses to promote their products or services. As stated by Internet Retailer Magazine, the expenditure on search engine optimization worldwide is expected to rise by a staggering 43% this year.
As far as link popularity is concerned, there is no sign of dying away as more than 80 percent of all activities are currently revolved around link building. Such is the craze of link popularity that links have got the status of commodity and are often traded over the Internet by link brokers. The PageRank toolbar offered by Google regarding the importance of a web page has lost some of its sheen for ranking intentions, but it continues to exist for viewing by web surfers only.
As the number of websites is presently numbered in millions, the competition for optimizing the majority of 2-word phrases is getting tougher. The keywords that had mere 50,000 search results some 6 years back have now more than 300,000 search results, thereby making the task of top 10 ranking all the more difficult. This implies that only the most innovative SEO techniques employed by the most competent SEO firms can get you the top ranks for your targeted keywords. So, guaranteed optimization services are not a cakewalk anymore. The advice for webmasters is to choose a service provider cautiously after planning their expenses meticulously.
The Future
In the future, search engines will start to present search results that can be controlled locally. Though noteworthy progress has already been made in this regard by Google, it would be more prevalent in the days to come. Browser-specific results will also be witnessed. Link building will continue its growing streak, but the evaluation of links will get trickier with the advent of more complicated search engine algorithms and link determination factors. On-page optimization will get back to the popularity chart with mounting emphasis on cutting down the website size. Video search will grow in stature with the potential to become the most preferred choice of online marketing.
SEO – Various Processes Involved
Preliminary Analysis of Website
The typical process of search engine optimization starts with the analysis of the present status of the website. Various aspects of the site are closely examined to find out potential problems that need to be sorted out. The content on different web pages is reviewed for duplication and for the presence of keywords. If the present list of keywords is found inadequate, a new list of profitable keywords is prepared. Various important on-page factors that are evaluated during the preliminary website analysis are discussed below.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the technique employed to investigate and find out potential search phrases that people use to extract information from search engines. Some of the popular tools for keyword research include Google Keyword Tool, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Suggest, Google Trends, Wordtracker, Yahoo Keyword Tool, and Hitwise. This technique must be able to produce keywords that have good search volume and potential capability to compete. Keyword research is also termed as the fundamental principle of web page optimization.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is usually carried out on the website itself and aims at rectifying a number of potential website problems. It has quicker and straighter bearings on SEO results than off-page optimization that takes some time to show effects. On-page optimization takes into account the text and content on various web pages. There are several on page factors that must be addressed properly to make your website search engine friendly. While optimizing your web pages, you must stay away from hidden link or text, cloaking (two versions of the same site for search engine robots and users), and duplicate content.