You own a human resource management company, but when you type in “human resource” into a major search engine, you notice your company doesn’t make it to the first page. Or the second. Or the third. In fact, you’re somewhere down in the sixth page. A recent study conducted by Penn State University shows that 54% of users only view search results on the first page, and 19% stop after the second. If you’re somewhere on the sixth, that obviously hurts your business. What do you do?

That’s where SEO or Search Engine Optimization comes in, a standard set of methods that are aimed at improving a website’s page ranking in a search engine. Alternatively, SEO also doubles as Search Engine Optimizers, a group of consultant web development firms that offer optimization services for clients.

To get a better understanding of what search engine optimsation can do for your site, understanding how a search engine works to parse results is key. When a user types something into the search field, the engine “crawls” through various sites noting keywords that match the criteria. However, Google operates slightly differently. Google’s PageRank relies on how many incoming links a site has to it; the more the links, the higher it’s “rank”. However due to the fact that an increasing number of web developers and administrators began to use backdoor methods to increase their ranking via buying and selling links, this technology now plays a secondary role.

Most major search engines no longer display their algorithms on their sleeves, as the race for pulling in more users based on accurate searches reaches its zenith. However, most SEOs agree on the following list:

• Keywords in the meta tag (not applicable to Google)
• Keywords in the title tag
• Keywords in links pointing to the page
• Keywords appearing in visible text i.e in the main body (eg tags)
• Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page.

How to get listed

Now that you’re clear on what SEO is, how it works and how to rank higher in search engines, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and ensure you know how to get listed. Each major search engine has their own separate methodologies serving as an how-to guide, but these are the key points.

While it’s not necessary to submit sites to search engines, both Yahoo and Google offer inclusion services. With Google, this process is incorporated into Google Sitemaps – however, this may take several days or even weeks before the site and its contents are indexed and included. Generally, if the site is references from a high ranker, chances are it will be easily picked up by various crawlers and major search engines. Once the new site has been found, the spiders get to work, visiting and indexing each page on the site as long as each page is linked to with anchor tags.

Yahoo!, on the other hand offers a paid inclusion program which, although guarantees inclusion in the search results, does not ensure a high rank.

What to do

Whether you’re hiring a SEO consultant firm or developing in-house, these are the basics you need to consider as part of the “green lights” provided by major search engines. The rules you must abide by to ensure your site isn’t banned due to using unacceptable methodologies.

• Use unique and relevant text in the title tags.
  
• Ensure that each page contains content relevant to the website’s subject material, incorporating keywords the audience the site was developed for will be likely to search.
• Increase the amount of unique content on the site (spamming results in a ban. See What not to do below).
• Focus content for users instead of search engines. Inevitably, the users are going to view your site and you can’t have a perfect ranking without usability.
• Use a reasonably accurate description in the meta tag without an abuse of keywords and off topics to bring users to your site. Also avoid the usage of exclamation marks.
• Ensure that all pages are accessible via anchor link tags. This can be done via a site map, ie a page references all other pages.
• Allow search engine “spiders” to crawl through without requiring Cookies or Session IDs.
• Incorporate interesting, relevant content into the website ensuring the website will be backlinked by others, thereby improving ranking.

What Not To Do\

\There are a set of strict Don’ts that all major league search engines strictly adhere to. Trying to be overtly clever will not benefit you, only hurting you and your business in the long run.\

If a website using “black hat” SEO methods is located by a search engine, it can be banned, have its rankings revoked and/or being removed entirely from the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) listing altogether; and is usually incorporated within the search engine’s algorithm.

Spamdexing refers to the promotion of irrelevant, usually commercial content using decepting keywords. Unfortunately, due to Yahoo!’s paid listing, most of the results are usually commercially driven.

How SEO Helps

SEO is an important marketing ploy which, when used in conjunction with pay per click ads can effectively boost your site’s reputation and revenue. However, for small-budget companies and campaigns, search engine optimisation can be a better deal considering the amount of consultancy and web development firms that are offering the service.

Be wary of an important thing, however: high ranking on one search engine does not necessitate high ranking on another.

Generally, it takes 2-3 months getting a good ranking within Yahoo!’s directory. However, due to the fact that Google has stricter measures in terms of measuring keyword density (the number of times the word has been used over the total number of words on the page), it might take longer to get a good ranking.

Both MSN Search and Yahoo!, although sharing Google’s policy on spamdexing, can bring the condemned site back into their indexes after an editorial review and a chance to present your case forward. Google’s algorithm can take up to four months to process the new developments of your website.

However, all in all, if you keep to the guidelines proposed in this article, you should see quick and effective results.

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