Onbit Web Designs - Search Engine Optimization Information

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What this is referring to is the tailoring of your pages to convey their true purpose. This allows search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Blekko, etc, to learn about your website via search bots that crawl the web on a nightly basis. Once the search engines have interrogated your website, it gets indexed into the respective databases and become searchable based on the content of your pages, enabling your audience to find you on the Internet.

The role a web designer plays in implementing SEO in your company's web site is very important. Adding the correctly worded content that directs your customers to you is the first step in building an online presence.

Page Ranking

The position your site is displayed in a search engine's results, depends on several conditions. These are, but are not limited to properly written source code, content, familiarity, quality linking, and time.

Properly written source code

Making web pages that are compliant to W3C standards will prevail in SEO rankings over websites that are poorly coded. W3C specifications require certain guidelines be followed to assure content is accessible to all that use the web including the meaning of non print medium. The proper use of markup language tags and attributes conforms to these standards and assist search engine bots in determining the content awareness of your site.

Content

The importance of properly writing the content of your website so it can be found by your target audience, is paramount. For example, if you are a remodeling contractor, these words should show up in the text of one or more of your web pages describing what you do and your areas of expertise. Using these words within descriptive paragraphs is important and tells the search bots that this is useful and legitimate information, relating to what was searched for. Be careful not to try to fool the search bots by repeating keywords one right after another in large quantities. Doing so could hurt your rankings since this would be seen as an attempt to fool the results and could cause your website to be removed from the database index altogether.

Familiarity and Time

Familiarity happens over time. Once the search bots index your site, it can be displayed in the search results when someone searches for text that is contained within your web pages. The problem here is, at first, your position in the results could be very low. As time goes by, and the search engines see that your site has stability, your rankings will improve. It could take anywhere from six to nine months before your page is displayed within the first ten positions of a relevant search.

Quality linking

The major search engines keep track of links you have to other websites as well as links to your website from others. If these other sites have good rankings, it can improve your rankings as well. This is a double edged sword, since it may be possible that the linking to other websites could also harm your rankings if the other site is a search engine offender. The use of link farms should be avoided since this could cause your website to receive a negative ranking. One good way to get links to your site is to add your business to listing directories. Most provide a free listing for businesses with the option for more robust advertising at a cost.