Introduction to Search engine Optimization

Hi everyone this is my 3^rd blog post. Here I would like to give you a brief introduction to Search engine optimization (Especially about the facts that we should know about the SEO as marketers)

We all search on the web using search engines like google, bing ,yahoo,etc. after you search some word on google  you can see searching results on your browser. These results can be divided into two areas. The area  on the top and right side of your browser shows web links with highlighted background is known as ppc (pay per click) in order to place your company website in this PPC area you have to pay for the search engine.  And other white larger area with searching results, known as organic area. SEO deals with this organic area.  If you want to place your company’s web links in this organic area you don’t want pay for the search engine but you have to implement organic optimization (SEO) this is not an easy task. So if you want to place your company’s web links among top ranks in search engine you have to practice proper SEO tactics. (Key successes factors). Following image shows ORGANIC area and PPC area of a google searching result.

In order to place your web links among top ranked web searching results (in the organic area) you have to practice few strategies which are known as key successes factors for SEO.

Enhance the website crawlability

Simply the crawlers are automated programs which come from the search engines to your website to capture your website and make it appear on web search engine results. Because of that your web site should be accessible for crawlers. Crawlers detect new web pages changes and updates of these pages in order to bring them to the google (web search engine) index. Following steps are essential to ensure crawlability. *Make sure that all web links and web navigational system visible to the search engines. *Avoid dynamic URLs (use strong, flat and direct URLs)*submit XML and HTML sitemaps to the search engine using webmaster tools (Google webmaster tools).

Keyword Research

Keyword research is important for understand web searching words used by real customers. To find appropriate keywords for a given product you can use   “google adwords” facility. It shows Competition, global searches and local monthly searches for a given specific keyword. If you want to optimize your website through the Keyword Research you need to maintain webpages for most critical keywords for your product or service. As an example if you are maintaining a mobile phone selling website especially for Sri Lankan market,  it’s better to developed webpages under “Nokia” , “Samsung” , “mobile phones prices in Sri  Lanka” like categories Based on keyword research results.

Website structure and keyword mapping

It’s better to maintain separate pages for major keywords that you identified through the keyword research. Each targeted keyword needs its own page. Then each webpage will optimize for its own keyword. Then webpages need to be categorized. As an example for mobile phone selling website in Sri Lanka (especially target local consumers), Ideal site structure and keyword mapping would be applicable

Home page: Targets highly competitive local keywords like “mobile phones in Sri Lanka”

Category pages: comparatively less competitive keywords like “Samsung phones” ,” SonyEricson”  , etc

Content pages: locally less competitive keywords like “Samsung galaxy”, “Nokia Lumia” (single fully detailed web page for each mobile phone)  

Content building and Formatting

Your website should have significant content to build authority among other web sites. Content building can be done through by creating blogs, category/product descriptions rich in key terms, adding integrated YouTube channel, and adding customers’ reviews to the website. It’s important to create and maintain unique content for your website.   

 Use of images and videos

 In your web site it’s better to use viral videos to and ALT tags for each image because viral videos and ALT tags boost the optimization of your web by adding those to the search engine index. Because if you use ALT tags those are easily readable to the crawlers so crawlers add these images that link to your web site to the search engine results. And there is a high probability for an image with ALT tag to appear in top results of an Image search. Viral videos also optimize your web page by spreading over the internet.

Domain properties and URLs

Use an appropriate domain name for your web site is very effective. (Exact Match Domains). Eg :-Cellularlanka.com . As well as URLs belongs to your webpage should be meaningful and should contain appropriate keywords.

Special thanks goes to Mr suranga Priyashantha  who gave us the SEM knowledge