Search Engine Optimization: How It Changed The Face Of Web.

When we say internet changed our entire world, we are not entirely wrong. Since its development in 1960 till today, internet has brought transformation in most of our systems such as education, commerce, organizations, home and what not.

During the earlier days, if we had any questions or queries we would ask others for solutions, keep a stack of dictionaries and encyclopedia but with development of Internet and web search engines hardly anyone glances at them.  It’s true, internet changed our search methodology. There are millions of informative websites on the internet but it is not easy to find them. The power of finding information lies in the hands of Web search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and to find particular information, you are just a keyword away.

But this was not so many years ago. Let’s find it out.

The onset of search engine goes back to 1987 when the first search engine developed was Archie. The program created a searchable database of file names but it did not index the content of sites. Jughead and Veronica were the next search engines to be developed and they worked on the keyword search method. Nevertheless till 1993 there wasn’t a proper development of a search engine.  But soon after, Internet experienced a shower of search engines such as Infoseek, Excite, Altavista, Northen light, Yahoo etc. However their only downfall was that their search function worked on the basis of web directory.

By 2000, Google search engine rose to prominence and few years later Yahoo evolved and launched its own search engine based on keyword search results. In 2009, Microsoft launched Bing and today these 3 search engines are the rulers of Internet.

But do you know how search engines work?

For any information to be retrieved, you first have to find it and to find information among the millions of web pages that exist, search engines employ special software robots called spiders. The spiders crawl through a vast number of websites and build a list of words from those sites. That’s why the process is called web crawler. The spiders analyze every link on the sites, its content and determine how and from where the words on the sites should be indexed. For instance, spiders can crawl your sites’ Meta titles, description, content, headings etc to determine the words for indexing. The data gathered is stored in index database which is then used for future search queries.  Now, when a user enters a particular query (keyword), the engine examines the index and provides a listing of the best matched web pages.

Did you know –  Google search engine spiders can crawl 300 pages per second, generating around 600 kilobytes of data each second?

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevancy of results it gives back. In today’s time there are millions of websites competing for the same keyword and each day 100 more enter the league. Expansion of online business has resulted in increased competition and the pressure on website owners to be ranked No.1 on a search engine’s top page.

That’s when webmasters realized the importance of Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization commonly known as SEO is one of the many online marketing tools essential for small to midsized businesses who want to make their mark in the world of E-business. In today’s era, many businesses are running online and there are thousands of businesses/websites which are struggling to make their presence felt online. However, let us tell you that one of the major means of success for e-businesses is online visibility and that’s where search engine optimization comes in.

Till mid 1990’s SEO was all about submitting websites to search engines. Even today, the echoes of the past are heard when so called SEO companies promise site owners immediate ranking by auto submitting site to hundreds and thousands of search engines and directories.

Did you know – The beginning of SEO era was a heaven for spammers?

Yes, it’s true. Webmasters took advantage of search engines and stuffed keywords in their content, Meta tags, headings, HTML comments etc and hid it from the eyes of human visitors. Lack of search engines’ technological sophistication resulted in such sites ranking higher. Even today, SEO consultancies indulge in such practices for their clients, risking their client’s site rankings. Because with the number of technical and algorithm development, search engines now have the ability to recognize spam and ban the sites which are encouraging such practices from the face of search engines.

At present, Search engine marketing requires an integrated approach to improve site content, quality and popularity. For a Website to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target audience analysis, competitive analysis, copywriting and copyediting. And, because things keep changing, search engine optimizers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

“My rule of thumb is, build a site for a user and not a spider” – Dave Naylor

Today, very few optimizers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking. In many cases, spamming and the so-called “black-hat” SEO is recognized by automatic spiders as they become more and more intelligent.

Before there was no doubt a webmaster could get his website on the first page, but now every site owner has one question in mind. How do I get my website to rank on the first page of Google? And the only answer is Successful search engine optimization strategy. Many people still live in the misconception that SEO is a piece of cake but to be precise, Search Engine Optimization is much more complicated and difficult to understand as compared to email marketing or paid search. SEO requires continuous tracking, reporting and monitoring which is generally not an easy task because as mentioned earlier the algorithms and factors which affect SEO keep changing on a daily basis.

Nevertheless, there are certain strategies that you can follow to ensure maximum optimization for your website. Let’s have a look at them:

• CONTENT OPTIMIZATION – One thing that is of utmost importance for the accomplishment of SEO strategy is content. You need to have relevant content for your homepage and inner pages as well as for your alt tag, image tag, Meta tags etc. Your website content should be relevant to the site topic, knowledgeable, understandable and interesting besides being high with relevant keyword density. One note of caution here is: DO NOT fill your content with just keywords or irrelevant keywords because Google may consider it as spam and this may hamper your efforts to appear in Google search engine.

• META TAG OPTIMIZATION – Meta tags are an important part of SEO because they are what are indexed in the search engines. There are 2 main parts of Meta tags; Description and keywords. When writing your Meta tags, always ensure that you target the right keywords and the right content because in the end traffic to your site is directed through the description of your website that user reads on the search engine.

• TITLE TAG – Although title tags are generally associated with Meta tags, however they are technically not Meta tags. Title tags play a major role to index your website as compared to the other Meta tags (description and keywords). Title tags or page titles are the first thing that search engines notice when determining what your site page is all about.  Also page titles are the first thing that users see about your website.  A page title should be very specific to what the page is talking about. It is essential that you include 1-2 keywords in your page title but stuffing it with keywords will not do anything but make your site look like spam.

• ALT ATTRIBUTES ON IMAGES – Images make a website attractive. They are eye catching and prompt people to have a look at the website. But what about from the SEO point of view? Do images help you rank on search engines? NO. Images are as good for search engines as they are for users who are visually impaired. That’s why Alt tags are essential. Often people overlook them and hence lose out on better ranking.

• RELEVANT AND WELL SEARCHED KEYWORDS – Success of your search engine optimization strategy depends on how well you target the right and relevant keywords for your website. To make your websites Google index friendly, one thing that you must ensure is to have your content rich with relevant keywords which in turn will help get relevant traffic to your website.  But remember, not to spam your website by stuffing in keywords.

Although search engine optimization is not inordinately difficult, but it’s not something you can achieve in a day or a week. SEO is time consuming and rarely simple. It requires hours and hours of labor, dedication and commitment. As a website owner, you may have an outstanding website but is it really an optimized site? Will you be able to attract the targeted traffic and audience to your site? And most importantly, will Google or Yahoo want to place your site on their top pages? Think again.