Search Engine Optimization FAQs
Published October 23rd, 2009 by WebsitesAre.UsHow Does Search Engine Optimization Work?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art to optimize your website in order to rank on top positions in the search engines without having to pay for advertising.
Do I Really Need Search Engine Optimization For My Website?
These days, you have to work very hard on getting the search engines to notice your website. Without a proactive approach to optimizing your web presence, you website’s only visitors will be you and your family and friends. But imagine what it will do to your business, when your website shows up for free on Google’s front page, every time a searcher is looking for the product or service you are offering!
How Long Does It Take?
You can get free top rankings in a matter of months, weeks, or even days – it all depends on finding the right ‘keywords’. However, if you select the ’wrong’ keyword – e.g. a highly competitive term like ‘life insurance’ or ‘real estate’ – your website will most likely never be among the first 100 results… The good news is : Websites Are Us knows many other ways to get you lots of visitors to your website - without you having to pay a high fee to Google every time a visitor clicks on your link!
What is ‘On Site’ Search Engine Optimization?
On Site Search Engine Optimization is the overall job of ensuring that your website content is accessible, suitable and indexable by the search engines. For the content for example, your site needs to have relevant content with the right relation between keyword density and page copy. For the architecture, it means e.g. having a targeted title and Meta description, headers and image alt tags, and providing some ‘extra help’ to the spiders in forms of intelligent robots and sitemap files.
What is ‘Off Site’ Search Engine Optimization?
Even more important that having a well structured website with great content is Off Site Search Engine Optimization. Your ranking in the search engines is mainly determined by the ‘link popularity’ of your website. Think of ‘links’ to your website as ‘votes’ from other websites for your site. The more other relevant and high ranking websites link to yours, the more popular it is in the eyes of the search engines, and the higher they will rank it. You can get a good part of such links by listing your website in local or specialty directories, being present on the many social network or social bookmarking websites or even publishing ‘how-to-videos’ on YouTube. However, as web marketing techniques become more and more sophisticated in an ongoing cat and mouse game with the ever-changing search engine algorithms, it becomes harder and harder to secure good quality, relevant links, and the risk to be ‘penalized’ by the search engines if it is done unprofessionally or in a ’spammy’ way is big.
When your website is optimized On Site and strategical and consistent Off Site promotion is done, you will see a dramatic improvement in your website’s positioning in the search engines. It’s not easy to get top 10 rankings on Google but it’s also not difficult for those who know how to do it.
Read more about our 3 Steps To Google’s Front Page Website Optimization Plan, or
