Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an exercise to promote websites on search engines result pages (SERP) for user oriented queries. As an example, a user looking to find an efficient web solutions partner in New Delhi for design & development of a website for his organization, will log on to Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. and type in a query pertaining to his requirements. The query can be anything like
web design New Delhi. Once the query has been shot across, the search engine examines its database & throws results as a best fitting reply to the user query. Now there may be thousands of organizations in the same business, how does the search engine determine which one is the best suited? The answer to this lies in the SEO exercise.
Let us first determine how a search engine ranks a website on its result pages. Each Search Engine has web-crawler software which keeps
crawling the internet and scanning websites. It may even be on this web page as you are viewing it!! This crawler scans the website for its code, content etc. and just as a teacher gives student marks, it gives websites marks based on hundreds of pre-defined parameters. It is the aggregate of these marks which actually determines the position of a website on the SERP.
How can one score the best on the search engines?
The SEO process allows avenues to play on with the search engine's ranking algorithm thereby allowing it to give the website best marks possible. There are two processes one can follow to achieve this-
- Organic SEO i.e. process which search engines recognize to be honest and standardized.
- Black Hat or the dishonest method of achieving rankings. Now one must remember that if one is smart, search engines are smarter! Therefore using black hat tricks can get a website banned on SERP's, if detected.
The safe & best approach ‘Organic SEO’ falls in best.
Organic SEO process is divided into 2 aspects- On-page Optimization and Off-page Optimization. Let us determine various exercises broadly coagulated within the organic process of search engine optimization.
On Page optimization:
This is the technical aspect of SEO exercise. Here the objective is to ensure that your website complies with all technical and architectural norms of search engine crawlers. This compliance relates to crawlability or accessibility of the crawler to all the pages of the website. A student’s note book not only has to be complete for the teacher to assess but also formatted as per teacher’s liking to impress the teacher!
This process includes basic exercises like:
- Extensive keyword research
- Landing page optimization.
- Keyword density correction on the web-page.
- Keywords inclusion in meta, title tags, anchor texts, alt etc.
- Ensuring proper keyword density in the body text as per the inverted triangle rule.
- Ensuring proper internal link structure.
- Checking for code Vs text ratio.
- Ensuring that outbound links from a page are not to a bad or unrelated neighbourhood.
- URL optimization.
- Sitemap Generation.
Off Page Optimization:
The art of being a favourite student of the teacher by participating in various co-curricular activities! Here the objective is to impress upon web-crawlers that not only is your website architecturally sound and technically compliant with search engine norms but it is also well-recognised and recommended by other websites that in-turn are popular with search engines.
- One way link building from high ranking pages with proper anchor text.
- Directory submissions.
- Ensuring proper variations in the anchor links.
- Writing articles for external websites Link adds for higher targeted traffic.
- Getting links from web 2 websites and discussion forums with active participation.
- Back links on landing pages. and a lot more