The SEO Basics Story
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of preparing a web page in the best possible way to encourage the search engines to rank it highly on their results pages for certain keywords.
This process includes both on-page and off-page factors. On-page SEO includes things such as the title of the document, using heading tags, and using the keywords on the page.
Off Page - links
Off-page SEO mainly consists of pages that link to your site and the text they use to link to you, called anchor text. On-page optimization used to be the only thing that really mattered. Many years ago, all you had to do to get onto the first page of a search engine was stuff your pages and Meta tags full of the same keyword over and over.
The more times the phrase was repeated, the higher the page would appear. But search engines realized webmasters were doing this, and they had to take steps to counteract these effects. They started penalizing sites that repeated keywords too often in their meta tags or title. They began to ban sites that used “hidden” keywords, which was placing white text on a white background so search engines could see the text, but visitors couldn’t.
The search engines had to take these steps, because their visitors were getting upset. They didn’t like the fact that they were searching for music lyrics or recipes and ending up at a site advertising porn or pharmaceuticals because the search engine spiders had been tricked into sending more traffic to that domain.
Search engines began working harder and harder to counteract these measures, but for years, they weren’t very effective. Once the search engines plugged one hole in the matrix, webmasters found another one and began to exploit it.
Then along came Google. They had a unique algorithm that virtually eliminated all of those on-page spam techniques. They did give some weight to on-page factors, but they also included a new system that helped determine the importance of pages.
They figured that sites that were truly high quality would have a large number of sites linking back to them. This system has come to be known as Google Page Rank, or PR. The more PR a page has, the more important it’s believed to be.
Of course, PR itself also began to be abused. People figured out that all they had to do to increase their PR in Google was to get thousands of links pointing to their site.
They started spamming guest books, free-for-all link sites, and other low quality sites to get links. So Google changed their algorithms again to give far less weight to links from low quality sites and more weight to higher quality sites.
Anchor Text
Another big part of off-page optimization is the actual text that other websites use to link to you. This text is known as anchor text, and it’s very important to your search engine rankings.
Anchor text is used to tell people what a particular site is about, but it also tells the search engines what the site is about. If your site sells golf equipment, and you’re trying to optimize a page specifically for “golf equipment,” then you should have sites use that text to link to you as often as you can.
Back Links
Back links are very important. These days they’re arguably more important than on-page optimization. Back links from sites that are in the same niche as your site are weighed especially well, especially if those links are on pages with high PR.The more links from reputable sites that you can get, the better your page is likely to rank, especially if you’re on-page factors are also well optimized.
Back links are a critical component of any online business. You need back links if you hope to rank well for phrases with more than a couple of hundred competing sites. Back links can help propel a site from the unknown to a number one position.It’s important to keep growing your back links on a regular basis. Just because you reach the first page doesn’t mean you can become complacent. If you stop growing your back links, your competitors could end up surpassing you in the listings. For this reason, you should always keep working on gaining new back links.
Here are some common ways of getting back links:
- Exchange links with other webmasters in the same niche.
- Offer to write exclusive articles for other webmasters in your niche in exchange for a link back to your site.
- Write to authority sites in your niche and ask for a link.
- Post comments on blogs that don’t have the “no follow” tag on their links.
- Write articles and submit them to hundreds of article directories.
- Submit your pages to social bookmarking sites.
- Create and submit a press release about your site via PRWeb or another similar service.
- Post on high PR forums in your niche with a link in your signature.
- Create pages on various web 2.0 sites and link back to your site.
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