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More about Search Engine Optimization And Marketing

by: James Copper | Print View

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Internet marketing is well on the way to becoming the next big thing in e-commerce in the foreseeable future, partly due to more and more people becoming familiar with the internet, and partly because of the economy it provides to consumers and marketers. A key factor for the success of any Internet or online marketing programme is how well you optimize your website for search engine operations.

For the uninitiated, a Web search engines are tools i.e. software, (examples being Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc) designed to search for information (web pages, images, other types of files or a combination of all) on the World Wide Web. Search engines have three main components: the web crawler or spider which collects information; the index for storing the information; and the search interface software. The web spiders follow any website links they find; automatically evaluate page contents to determine how they should be indexed; and the search engine stores these pages in its index (database) for use in finding the relevant information for subsequent searches. When users enter queries into the search engine (using keywords or phrases), the engine examines its index and provides a listing (the search results) of all the websites that are the most relevant (best matching) to the search terms; the most relevant websites being listed at the top (ranked higher) on the Search Engine results Page (SERP).

The website is the virtual 'store' where online business is conducted in the internet marketplace. You need to, therefore, understand how potential customers find your site; what searches they perform; how they can be positively influenced and so on, so that you can make your 'store' attractive and provide your visitors (potential buyers) a pleasant user experience. A majority of website visitors reach your site through 'organic' or 'natural' search on search engines by keying-in search terms. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of website traffic from such 'natural' or 'organic' searches by tweaking various elements of your website (keywords; anchor text in links and meta tags; the type of coding used etc) to optimize it.

SEO in brief, is making your website more search engine friendly (facilitating 'web crawlers' to easily index all your web pages) so that when a specific keyword or search term is typed by the user, the site will make it into the top few search results on the search results page. SEO, inter alia, includes selection of relevant keywords and phrases, ensuring easy internal navigation between pages, encouraging external links from other sites etc, and a host of other actions such as ensuring a proper density and distribution of keywords in content (text), links and meta tags; proper Titles (Title tags) and headings etc.

SEO is a rewarding but painstaking process; you need to optimize each element to achieve the overall objective; high ranking for your website in organic search, high volume of quality traffic, high conversions and consequently a positive Return on Investment (ROI).

About the Author

James Copper is a writer for the big agency

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