How to Start your Search Engine Relationship the Right Way
Search engine optimization. SEO. It’s a phrase that will come up often, both in this blog and on this website. So, what is it, exactly?
Search engine optimization is taking the steps necessary to make your website more valuable to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.
It’s kind of like getting ready for a new relationship. Search engines have a list of turn-ons; things they like to see in a website. They also have a list of turn-offs; the things that make them lower where your site sits in their rankings.
If you’re looking to start a new relationship, you probably have a mental checklist you go through every time you meet a new potential partner. The list has essential qualities (financially sound, polite, makes you laugh), preferred qualities (great eyes, healthy, established career), and things that will send you running for the hills (substance abuse issues, psycho ex, scary hygiene). If you have a lot of possible partners, you’ll probably order them based on how well they fit what you’re looking for.
Search engines are doing the same thing. Your website has to have certain characteristics to rank well in the list of sites on your topic. There are essential, preferred and “run for the hills” qualities that Google (and other search engines) are checking for.
Essential Qualities:
- Original Content
- Correct Use of Keywords
Preferred Qualities:
- Incoming Links from Quality (high-ranked) Websites
- Dynamic Content (Regular New Additions to Site Content)
“Run for the Hills” Qualities:
- Spam Website
- “Black Hat” or Questionable SEO Methods
This is a very, very simplified list. And, for right now, we’re only going to focus on the most important aspect– the correct use of keywords.
Keywords are the words, or strings of words, people type into search engines to find the information they need. For example, if someone was looking for advice on SEO, they might type in “advice on SEO”, “SEO advice” or “SEO tips”. Then, the search engine goes through its directory of websites for the sites that best fit the keywords.
How do search engines know which sites are going to give a searcher the information he is looking for?
Search engines scan websites on a regular basis. As they scan through a site, they look for the occurrence of words within the site, or how often each word is used. Words that most websites have a lot of (the, an, if…) are ignored. Other words are tallied up. In order to be a highly ranked site for “SEO advice”, that phrase, and phrases similar to it, would have to be used often within the site. The current recommendation is around 3% of the total content.
There are a lot of things you can do with keyword, once you know how to pick the right ones for your site, which we’ll be discussing in part II of this series.
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