Why SEO is Important to You.

Search engine optimization in india.

You've built your site. You've tested it. You're ready for business.

You need to get the word out about your great site, but with limited resources and no advertising budget, you need some way to attract visitors.

What can you do?

Instead of blowing your limited resources on banners, use search engines to send motivated visitors to your site. Click through rates on banner ads continue to drop, while search engine traffic is on the rise and growing everyday. Search engine optimization (techniques to improve how your Web site ranks in the search engines) has been called the cheapest and most effective marketing tool available. Search engines are free to users and users know where and how to use them. One of the first things a novice to the Internet learns is how to use Yahoo (actually Yahoo is a directory, but we'll discuss the difference later).

The Basics

Before you can position your site to do well in the search engines, you need to understand search engine fundamentals.

A search engine is a giant database that lists sites on the Internet. You access the database when you enter keyword searches and receive a list of relevant sites. Top Search Engines Google, AltaVista, Lycos, Overture,

What is a Directory? Unlike the automated search engine process, each entry in a directory is first reviewed by a human being. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A keyword search will only look for matches in these descriptions, so be careful how you describe your site. Techniques to receive a high search engine rating will not work with a directory. While good content is necessary for search engines, both good content AND visual appeal are mandatory in human-edited directories. Remember, manual review takes time!

Top Search Directories

Yahoo, Look Smart, Open Directory, Zeal

How to get listed

Don't wait to be discovered! Submit your URL directly to the search engine or directory. Search Engine submissions. There are two ways to submit to search engines and directories, manually or using an automated submission tool. Here is a summary of both methods. • Manual Submission - Use the Add URL form from the search engine site itself. This way, you have absolute control over where your site is submitted. However, this process is that it is a very time consuming and labor intensive activity.

• Automated Submission Tool - Fill in the data once and the tool automatically submits your URL to multiple engines. It is a fast, easy one step process and you only have to fill in the data forms once.

Your best strategy is to submit weekly until your site gets listed. Check your listing frequently. If your site disappears suddenly, you may be the victim of a search engine database omission. Search engines frequently have multiple versions of their databases and they aren't always in sync. You may be listed in one version of their database and not in another. Your only recourse is to resubmit your site. To see if you have even been picked up in a search engine, go to the search engine's site and do a search with your company's domain name as the search query.

Directory Submissions.

Submitting to a directory is a much more involved specialized process. Don't do it in a rush and don't use an automated submission tool. The better submission tools, like Search Engine Starter, don't submit to directories.

How do search engines rank pages?

All search engines have a different method of ranking. That's why you might rank number 1 on one engine and number 25 on another. Robots look for relevance and rank results on a secret ever-changing algorithm. Some look at TITLE, some look at META tags, some look for link popularity. Search engine optimization means optimizing the Web site for the best possible positioning based on the page's keywords and description. General tips to get a good ranking.

1. Create a good site with good content.

This is critical, especially as search engines grow in sophistication. If your site contains worthwhile material, users will return to your site and will recommend it to others. Other sites will link to you - which will in turn help you by improving your link popularity.

2. Pick keywords visitors will actually use on a search engine query.

• If you have keywords that are very competitive, consider narrowing your focus to improve results. The keyword "horse" will return thousands of responses and may not place you near the top, while "Appaloosa" is more focused and targeted to a particular query. • Consider using a keyword phrase instead of just one keyword. Visitors to search engines use phrases to narrow their searches. For example, instead of using a keyword like "horse" that would return too many responses, use a more specific keyword phrase like "Alabama Quarter horse." • Brainstorm a good list of list of keywords. Tap into other people - a fresh perspective can help uncover words you may have missed. This keyword analysis article offers some useful tips on brainstorming.

3. Include keywords in your TITLE tag.

Pages with keywords appearing in the TITLE are assumed to be more relevant to the topic than those without. 4. Use keywords in META Keyword and Description tags. Using META tags will not hurt you in search engines that don't use them, and they can definitely help you in search engines that do index them. While they are not as important as the TITLE tag, META tags can give you the edge over your competition since most web sites don't even use them.

6. Have a good keyword density on your page.

Keyword density is derived by dividing the frequency of that word by the total words on the page. Frequency is a major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. This can turn into a balancing act as too high a density can be considered spam by some engines. Usually you are safe if your keyword density falls between 1 - 5 %. 7. Continually work on improving your link popularity.

Listings on popular Web sites can increase your traffic significantly. They do this in two ways: • They give potential visitors multiple paths to your Web site. • They can increase your ranking in search engines that use link popularity as part of their formula. Most search engines use link popularity as relevance criteria. For example, the Google search engine (not their new directory) is based almost entirely on link popularity.

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