Getting Started with Search Engine Optimization – Part 2
Is it really that simple to bring your site and internal pages to the first page of Google results within a few simple steps? Yes, but you’ll need to learn a few basics about SEO and how search engines work.
Google, Yahoo, and any other search engine available were all created equally, in some respects. Each was designed to bring their users to the pages that contained terms related to their search. Using algorithms to determine the relevancy of the result versus millions of other pages, no matter how similar to one another, results are returned within a matter of seconds.
It may seem like a complex process to “cheat” the system, but in reality, you are simply exercising proper site building techniques to increase your ranking. Doing it properly can lead to a huge boost in daily traffic, but doing it wrong could leave you de-indexed from the search engines for trying to manipulate their results.
The Basics
Search engine optimization begins with simplicity. Despite being forms of computers, search engines are built to think like their users. People want the most relevant result or the most popular one, and want it delivered based on what they have inputted. Everyday, the index of sites is updated, and any new information is collected and the content is re-calculated based on what has changed.
When web crawlers or “bots” scan over your raw site – the code view, in this case – they look for good practices of optimization and analyze where you have been linking to, what sites are linking back to you, what keywords you are using, and an overall value score is determined based on their review.
Site Structure
Pages of your site or blog should follow a structure based on what you would find within a book. Your main page is essentially the index page, guiding your readers in a direction that you want them to go. Readers that find a single page are essentially starting the book from the middle, so they need a way to “catch up” on what has been happening – what your blog offers.
Breadcrumbs are just the start of how you should implement a good structure. On the back-end you can use parent and child pages should your blog platform support them, and on the front-end, you can actually implement them this way. Drop-down page menus might not be the cleanest process to implement, but they will add the links to your blog for your readers to navigate through and search engines may pick them up as a good structure.
Being Original
Having your own content may appear obvious, but you also want to be able to truly make it your own. Don’t use numbers to represent your content, unless you have no other alternative. It makes it difficult for the spiders to find keywords from a title of 332050, for example.
Content that is found on multiple sites will be judged against one another. The original piece of content may not even rank that highly if the owner of the site did not implement the proper keywords and titles. Furthermore, the scraper sites might be the winners, as they could get the traffic, comments, and ranking that they don’t really deserve.
to be continued …
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Hi
Do you have an opinion in exactly how important the format of the url is? I know that named URLs are better than post numbers have read that it isn’t that important.
I think the format of the URL is very important. Particularly because your url includes some important keywords from the title which search engines use carefully. So its indeed necessary that you choose the title carefully and have the same words of title included in URL.
Very interesting details you have listed. I like your diagram of the site structure, it explains it in a very simple way.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Yup diagram shows that your site should be properly structured and thus easy to navigate.
nice article. it’s inspired me to optimize SEO on my sites. thanks for sharing this important information.
Nice SEO guide, well, I will be waiting for the continuation of article. I need this since I am hopping that my page will get a nice rank in search engine. Thanks for this nice info and keep it up!
Its good to read two important areas of SEO i.e. “Site Structure” and “Original Content” included in this post.
Site structure really makes it easy to browse for your site users and robots to explore your site details. Its essential that you have a proper site structure that can be navigated properly. This also helps to increase your traffic as site users may be interested in exploring more pages due to the ease.
And ya originality is the real thing that matters for any site. It not only adds up your page rank but also increases your readers. And for search engines its crucial. But ya as you say the important guideline “The original piece of content may not even rank that highly if the owner of the site did not implement the proper keywords and titles.” and the benefit can be taken by the scraper sites.
I absolutely agree on this one. SEO basics can really help once enhance the rankings of their website or blog in major search engines like Google and Yahoo.
SEO is the main weapon for us, webmasters, to gain traffic