Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing

By Farazdak Nasrulla

The concept of search engine optimization ( SEO ) has gained a lot of importance today due to the success and profitability it brings along with it. To become an SEO professional does not require you to master programming or have an in depth understanding of search engine algorithms. All it requires is an understanding of a few basic things to ensure you have a search engine friendly website.

You may also be having the best products and services to offer, best performance certifications, and an amazing team of professionals working for you and so on that add more value to your business; however, you need to understand few basics on making a great site that search engines can track easily.

Below are some fundamentals that will not only help you in creating the most search engine friendly website but also in keeping an easy track of it.

How Do Spiders Work?

One of the facts about search engines is that they utilize software programs known as bots or spiders that crawl the web and build their database. These spiders are sent to view and index pages which are later processed and retrieved from the database. A search engine spider is designed in such a way that it reads any document from top left corner to the bottom right corner as humans do.

Placing Text Links

You can also use these bots to your benefit by allowing them to spider your site completely. You can place text links that direct to some of your main pages on the website at the bottom of your page so that spiders can easily crawl through your site. It is also recommended to have a text link that directs to your site map.

Site Title

The title of your site is very important as it not only serves as a reference for the Internet users who type in the keyword but also it is one of the first things that is viewed by the search engines. You must select the best keywords and place in your title and also make sure that these keywords are relevant to the content on your webpage.

Meta Tag Description

A meta tag description contains a brief description of the webpage content. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Keywords Meta tag. Search engines usually use this as a source of information to know the theme of the site and to aid them in listing and ranking the website. Your meta description may contain two to three sentences with the main keyword placed in the beginning of every sentence. This description appears fully or partially along with your reference link when users search.

Keyword Usage

Choosing the right keywords to optimize your site is very important. The content on your webpages should contain the keywords that you are optimizing so that the search engine can easily track your website when a user enters a search query containing your keyword. Using your keywords correctly can help identify your site related to that particular keyword from all other sites on the Internet.

Keyword Rich Content

This is a crucial part of the  SEO process as it involves creating compelling text that would make readers remember by linking back to it. Your web page content should be written in such a way that it contains targeted keywords with an ideal keyword density. The content you write must make sense and should be relevant to the person visiting the site. You should also avoid mixing too many themes on a single page. It is also good to know that search engines are mainly text driven and are oblivious to images, sounds, flash movies, java script, frames, directories, and similar stuff. Therefore having lots of these on your website may not be very helpful from the  SEO point of view.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is hyperlinked text that you can click on. This is used in the content as an internal link that directs visitors to different topics contained in different pages in the website. Keywords that are most relevant and that relate to the overall content of your site should be used in the anchor text as search engines use this to relate your webpage content to the user query.

As more and more businesses and websites find their way online, search engine rankings have become the new Wall Street jungle. High placement on major keywords can be gold to businesses as the traffic they generate can mean millions.

For many websites the power larger websites hold with more resources and more money can be overwhelming. You have a weapon to get to the top of Google rankings for competitive keywords. The answer is videos and especially YouTube.

YouTube was bought my Google and shows up exceptionally high in Google organic rankings. Do a test. I bet you that for just about every major keyword there is a video showing up on the front page. If there isn’t one than this is an opportunity I would jump on as if you don’t someone else will?

Since, I have know sold you on the power of videos the following are three steps you can do to make high quality videos that will get you to the top of Google natural search rankings.

3 Tips to Making Videos for Search Engines and the Viewer

Interesting

Your video has to be interesting at some level. It won’t do you any good to get it ranked if no one wants to watch your video. Figure out a way to make your video entertaining, demonstrate a helpful solution, or be funny. If you create a funny video that makes people want to send it to their friends it won’t matter if you are an accounting firm since hundreds of thousands of people could potentially see it.

You only have to be interesting for 2-3 minutes. Any past 3 minutes and you will start to lose your audience’s attention. If you have more to say or think you are that funny cut the video up into segments and now you have more videos to post.

Credibility

Take the time to do right. If you are nervous the first time you shoot; start over. Watch your video back for mumbling or parts that are hard to hear. Remember that this video will represent your brand you want to make it of quality.

Quality doesn’t mean you have to hire a film crew. You know the difference between representing yourself well and something you are not proud of. Remember getting traffic is only half the battle.

Also, be honest with yourself. If you are little dry find someone who can articulate your points clearly and with energy. Think about the types of people that engage you and use those people as your spokesperson in your video.

Titles How you title your video is the most important. It won’t matter how great it is if no one sees it. Your title has two purposes. First, it must be keyword driven. Keywords are what search engines are picking it and those keywords are the terms you want your video to rank for.

Keyword stuffing it won’t work. Think about creating a new video for each keyword phrase that you want to rank for.

The second aspect is you have to capture the attention of the person to want to watch your video. Look at newspaper headlines as they are a prime example of how grab your attention.

Copyright (c) 2009 Rod Hoss