S.E.O

The Need of SEO

02.10.2006. 18:20

Why? Because search engines matter.

Funny way to begin an article, but necessary, because, unfortunately, not many entrepreneurs understand the importance of SEO. They hire web design companies and ask for fancy websites with flash intros, sound and other features that, although do have an impressing appearance, frustrate the web users by increasing the loading time of a web page, diminishing its usability, and offering practically no valuable information.

SEO Is About Content Optimization

Flash is a great tool. Websites created with Flash are simply amazing. Flash is perfect for entertainment websites, interactive websites and so on. But, when you have a commercial website, it is simply a mistake to create it using Flash. People don’t need special effects, they need information and they need to get this information fast, reliable, in time. If you have an artistically designed website, but no valuable information, clearly displayed on the landing page, you’ll lose potential clients. Besides, Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the other search engines are unable to read Flash. They will index your website, but, unless you have a huge amount of one way links to your website, your URL will appear at the end of the search engine results pages.

SEO Is About Creating “Understandable” Websites

The search engines need to “understand” your website, therefore they need information and information means content. The robots will scan the texts on your website and try to relate it to the keywords they consider relevant to your website. The real question is how does a search engine decide which websites to place at the top of its SERPs?

For example, Google values links. Don’t think that Google values any links! It’s true the higher the number of incoming links to your website the higher the possibilities to rank high in the Google SERP. But you should definitely focus on link relevancy and quality rather than on number. When you exchange links, try to get links that are related to the content of your website. Too many unrelated links and Google might think you are trying to manipulate its algorithm in order to climb higher in its SERPs. So if you have a site about real estate, a back link from an online gambling website will do you no good. Another important aspect is the quality and the “age” of the links coming to your website. The older the link, the better. On the other hand, link strategies without proper content optimization don’t mean a lot.

While linking strategies work for Google, they have less importance for Yahoo and MSN. These two search engines focus on content. MSN and Yahoo allow a high keyword density. But don’t you increase the keyword density just to please Yahoo and MSN. Google considers sites with a keyword density higher than 2-3% spammy.

SEO Is an Art, and There Is Solely One Way to Master It!

The most important SEO aspect is creating website for the people and not for the search engines. This might sound odd, as SEO means, “search engine optimization”, but do remember that the search engines were made to help users (people) find information online. Search engines focus on the users. So should you. Search engines don’t care about your SEO efforts. They care about the relevancy of your efforts. If you just repeat some keywords in your Meta tags and page copy, search engines will understand your website: they will understand that you don’t care about the users, but about your search engine rankings.

Conclusion

You need plain HTML because you need SEO. You need SEO because you want people to find your website: more than 80% of the web users find websites through search engines. But they cannot find your website if your URL shows up far down the SERP list! To make it clear: you need SEO if you want to succeed in your online business.

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