SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. SEO is a technique to improve a website’s position in search engine results. The first result on any search results page gets 34% of all clicks, the second, 17%, and so on. Getting your website high up in the search results for your target keywords is, therefore, a good way to grow “organic” traffic to your site. Organic traffic refers to traffic a website receives that is from these non-paid search results (as opposed to paid traffic, which is the result of PPC advertising).
SEO Techniques
SEO techniques include optimizing the coding of a site, ensuring that content on the site includes target keywords, and improving a site’s structure and presentation. Off-site optimization is important as well. This includes attracting links from other relevant, quality sites.
Keyword Research & Implementation
Keyword research is the first step in any SEO campaign. These keywords should be implemented into the site’s domain name, urls, code, content and internal links, where appropriate. As the search engines give great importance to the page titles, these must be meaningful and keyword rich. The text within the heading tags should also contain keywords, as search engines attach more significance to these tags. The target keyword phrases should be included in the first paragraph of the content.
SEO & Site Design/Development
For your web site to get good listings in the search engines, frames must be avoided while designing the site. Frame-based sites are not as common today, for this very reason. Search engines also find it difficult to index web pages created entirely with flash. The search engine can’t read the text contained within the flash file. If possible, it is also best to avoid dynamic URLs. Search engines “read” urls and can get confused if there are too many parameters. Using keywords in urls and in domain names has been proven to be a VERY effective SEO tactic.
Today, where the Internet has already proved to be a potent medium for marketing your products, SEO techniques play an important role in bringing visibility to your company. This very basic overview has, hopefully, given you an idea of some of the most important components of a successful SEO campaign.
Here are some other articles on domain names and SEO:
Why Use Keywords in Domain Names?
Local SEO & Domain Strategies to Boost Site Traffic
Better SEO & Domain Visibility with Big Brand Sitelinks
SEO Domain + AdWords Express = Local Search Goldmine
Most Expensive PPC Keywords of 2011
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