Importance of Search Engine Optimization

For anything and everything, the Internet users today go to search engines, and type in what they want to find out. They get the result pages (SERPs), and click and visit some of the first results. This is what is happening everywhere; millions and millions of users access Google every day for information.

When a website offering a particular service gets a hit (traffic), it has a chance to make a sale. So, all of the companies out there try extra hard to make their websites hit the top of the search engine result pages. The simple set of procedures for this purpose is known as Search Engine Optimization, the art of getting a website to rank high on search engine search result pages.

Search Engine Optimization is done through various steps, and if not done properly, it can backfire.

Basic Steps of Search Engine Optimization

For a site to be well optimized for search engine traffic, its content should be understandable to the search bots (the program used by search engines to index a particular site; also called web crawlers, search spiders, etc.) The content in the site has to be generally useful to the reader as well as understandable to search engines; keywords and descriptions in metadata help you achieve this. An important step of Search Engine Optimization is creating Meta tags for each page, with keywords and descriptions. Also the title tag should have your most important keyword.

Search Engine Optimization requires keyword-rich content. People search for keywords on the search engines. And the search engine bots look for these keywords on the indexed pages. So, keyword-dense content easily scales up the search results. However, overuse of the keyword will blacklist the site as spam. Search Engine Optimization, hence, requires an expert to prepare good quality search engine-optimized content. Also, highlighting the main keywords with such formatting as bold, italics, underline, etc., is very advantageous.

A minimum keyword density of about 2-4% is effective. And the content is best optimized targeting only one keyword or two at the most.

Another important aspect of Search Engine Optimization is the number of incoming links to the page. The incoming links convince the search engines that the page is important enough to be displayed as a result. The incoming links, however, have to be from reliable sources (there are unreliable sources like link farms, which are websites solely made for linking to other sites). So, it is very important for Search Engine Optimization to create some links to whichever page you try to optimize.

These methods just introduce you to what you should do to achieve good Search Engine Optimization for your sites. There are, however, so many other important aspects in Search Engine Optimization. Google itself is known to count hundreds of different metrics to calculate the PageRank of a site (Google's measure of the importance of a site).

Conclusion

The potential business a firm can acquire on reaching the top of search engine results is amazing. Search Engine Optimization, as I said earlier, is an art by itself. It should be done methodically and painstakingly. If done properly, you will enjoy great profits from it; on the other hand, malpractices can get you undermined very easily. Hence, it is important for you to hire a reputed, reliable professional for the purpose.

Does your website make you money?

How profitable is your website? When people visit the site, do they take action? Do you even know what you want them to do? Unfortunately, too many organizations fail to ask these questions, and thus fail to understand their website's ROI (return on investment). ROI is a fundamental business concept, but it's too often neglected in this specific area.

According to the book Web Design for ROI, there are 3 key figures to ponder when considering a new website project or redesign:

• 43% of retail sales will either be influenced by or complete on the Internet by 2012
• 83% of businesses now use the Internet to research potential vendors
• 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company's credibility based on the design of its website

The bottom line is that a large number of people will make business decisions based on the form and function of your website. How appealing is yours?

Even small details such as updated content and appealing visuals can make a crucial difference in keeping people on your site. Imagine a business owner who spent a lot of time, effort and money remodeling the interior of a store, but left the outside looking like an old, crumbling ruin. Customers would quickly assess the credibility of the business and pass it by.

The average home page abandonment rate (the rate at which visitors leave a site within a short period of time) is between 40% and 60% in general. Why? Because visitors decide almost immediately if they've found what they're looking for. What the site actually offers is secondary to what a customer thinks the site offers. What if a small change to the wording or placement of elements on your homepage reduced the abandonment rate by just 10%?

E-Commerce ROI

Nowhere is ROI more critical than on websites that directly sell a product or service. Unfortunately, some studies show that 60% of customers drop their purchase during the checkout process -- after they've made a buying decision! Imagine a restaurant where 6 out of every 10 customers ordered lunch and left before it was served. Any rational business owner would consider this unacceptable.

E-commerce site owners should constantly monitor the usability of their systems. Does the checkout process makes sense? Is it simple and free of distractions? Think about it... before you lose another customer.

Converting Traffic Into Sales

More traffic does not automatically mean more sales. If the website does not effectively convert customers into sales then the traffic is not useful. Keeping visitors on the site long enough to perform a critical task is what counts. The longer the visitor stays and learns what he/she needs, the more likely he/she is to convert.

How do you track conversion rates? Measure actions -- filling out a form, requesting a free sample, ordering a product, or contacting you. Track your conversion rate on a daily basis and see if you can improve the numbers. A simple formula would be the number of people who completed the desired action divided by the total number of visitors. You can even set up Google Analytics to do this automatically and email regular reports to you.

For a consultation on website ROI, please contact us a support (at) cws (dot) net.

How to Get Your Site to the Top

The Internet, once only the home of computer nerds and hackers, has long since exploded into mainstream business. A new profession has sprung up in response - Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a service industry based on getting your site to the top of the search engine rankings and keeping it there.

The truth is that SEO boils down to three simple steps:

1. Build a great site
2. Incorporate keywords
3. Get other great sites to link to yours

That's the recipe that will continue to work no matter how often Google reprograms its search algorithms. Following these steps won't catapult you instantly to #1 in the rankings; it's more of a "slow and steady" strategy. But it's a lot better in the long run than resorting to shady SEO tactics that will put your site at the top of the results page... only until Google bans your site!

Building a great link structure has been a part of SEO for some time. However, thanks to Google's changing search algorithms, the ideal type of link structure has also changed. Here are some tricks that will help you build useful links.

Note: Throughout this article, Google is cited as the target for SEO. There are two reasons why it's best to focus on Google. First, it's the most frequently used search engine, so optimizing for Google will tend to bring in the most traffic. Second, Google has the most stringent requirements and elaborately programmed algorithms, so if you're doing well in Google- you're likely doing well in the other search engines.

Not all links are created equal
One strategy you should not rely on is soliciting links right and left. Links from important and reputable pages build your own site's reputation; links from less important sites help a little, but not as much; and links from certain shady sites are no good at all. An example of the last is the link farm, a site that's designed solely for the purpose of providing links to other sites in exchange for money. Google hates link farms with a passion and refers to them as "bad neighborhood" sites. Associate your site with several "bad neighborhood" sites and Google might decide your site is in that neighborhood, too.

On the other end of the link quality scale are the major informational sites and directories. Links from directories like DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) and Yahoo! can provide an impressive boost to your ranking. So can links from extremely reputable sites like CNN.com.

The quick rule of thumb when deciding if a site would be a good source of an inbound link is to look up that site's Google PageRank. You can get this information simply by installing the Google toolbar on your browser. Once the toolbar is installed, click on the Options button and select "PageRank display." Then you can browse to sites and their PageRank will display in the toolbar. As a rule of thumb, don't bother soliciting links from sites with a PageRank of less than 4 (PageRank works on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest possible rank).

Get those links
So how do you get important sites to link to you? Start with having useful and relevant information on your site. If you have a page that's relevant to another site, just bringing this page to their attention can get them to link to you. After all, these sites want to be useful resources for their visitors and providing those visitors with great sources of information will keep them coming back.

Once you've identified an important site and have produced information that's useful to them, search that site for the webmaster's contact information. Call or email that person and suggest that they take a look at your site and, if interested, provide a link to it. This strategy isn't likely to get you a link from MSNBC.com, but it can work very well with smaller sites. Don't limit your searches to .com and .net sites, either - Google tends to look with particular favor upon .edu and .gov websites, so getting links from these sites can give your ranking even more of a boost.

Another way to build links fast is to set up reciprocal links - in other words, contact a webmaster and tell them that if they link to you, you'll link back to them. Having a few reciprocal links is fine but if you have too high a percentage Google will get suspicious. To be on the safe side, try to have at least 3 one-way links for every reciprocal link you build. This will create what Google calls a natural link structure.

Patience is a virtue
The techniques described above are not a magic bullet. Don't expect your site to immediately shoot up the results page. But if you take the time to build a solid, "natural" link structure, you will be able to get your site highly ranked, and you'll be able to keep it that way.