Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Introduction To SEO Concepts And Services

By Adriana Noton


Many website owners and webmasters get a harsh introduction to SEO. Search engine optimization is not something to be done by amateurs. It is a very precise science that needs a lot of experience and even more hard work.

Going back to the basics is the best way to understand what this is all about. In a nutshell, search engine algorithms look for some factors when deciding where to rank a page for a specific keyword query. Optimization makes the site and its pages better in terms of these factors that algorithms take into account.

One of these factors is the presence of the keyword within the page content and in the title and URL. How many incoming links and from where are pointing towards the page makes a difference. So does the site's user experience, since visitors need to be able to easily read content and use the site without any glitches or loading errors.

The all-important question now is how to do this. The simple answer, of course, is to get hold of an SEO consultant or expert and get out of the way. But the right kind of provider needs to be hired, because there are whitehats and blackhats in this business.

A blackhat will do anything to improve search traffic and should be avoided for fear of being banned by the search engines. If the provider is talking about things like cloaking or hidden text or hundreds of auto-generated pages, then that is a blackhat SEO. Whitehats will work on it page by page, improving existing content and adding new pages. They will promote the content on other sites and social media, and in general work hard to make the website more useful and better for visitors.

This is one reason why site owners need to look deeper into what the consultant is planning to do and understand the implications. As a rule, anything that improves the site for visitors is acceptable. So the onsite SEO part will involve keyword-focused content creation and changes to design elements, such as a hierarchical menu and bigger fonts. SEO-friendly hosting is required, so the site may be moved to a different host or server.

Once all this onsite optimization is over and done with, the content has to be promoted with offsite SEO activities. Among all the possible services that consultants will offer, only two are absolutely critical. One is a link building campaign and the other one is a social media outreach program.

Another issue to be considered is what to do over the long term, once the provider has finished and the site is again in the hands of the owner. A competent consultant understands the need to continue the good work, and will provide the client with a basic introduction to SEO methods. Afterwards, the site owner should be able to perform simple tasks like creating new keyword focused pages and getting incoming links to each new page, in order to keep the search traffic growth from slowing down.




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