| Search Engine Optimization |  What is search engine optimization?
The expression “search engine optimization” is something of a misnomer as it not the search engine that is being optimized. The phase describes the process of designing or modifying a website in order to achieve high rankings in search engines results pages (serps). Search engine companies would say that we designers should simply get on with producing excellent content and making their sites easy to navigate and let the search engines get on with indexing the resulting pages. On the other hand it can be argued that the search engine algorithm designers have the best idea of what elements constitute we designed website and by learning from their ideas we should be able to build better websites.
Optimizing a website requires some knowledge of what factors search engine use when ranking a page and how significant each of these factors is for particular search engine. Search Engine use a mixture of on-page and off-page factors. On-page factors include the obvious such as keyword density but may also include less obvious ones like the ALT text field used in HTML image elements. Off-page factors include the number of in bond or back links to the website. Different search engine put different weight on each of these factors the exact algorithms used are a closely guarded secret and change frequently SEO experts spend a lot of time analyzing how improvement each of these is to particular search engine. If all search engines were perfect then they would all return the most relevant results in the same order. However we are some way from this situation so designing a site that ranks will with all search engines difficult. SEO experts will also base their decisions on the popularity of particular search engine. At present this often means designing for Google and perhaps Yahoo and MSN Search. Where this is done judiciously the optimizations should not exclude high rankings with other search engine.
Search engine submission refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engines registration. Gettingh listed does not mean that you will necessarily rank well for particular terms, however. It simply means that the search engines know your pages exist.Think of it like a lottery. Search engine submission is akin to you purchasing a lottery ticket. Having a ticket doesn’t mean that you will win, but you must have a ticket to have any chance at all. |
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