| So important and relevant is it that
most, if not all, businesses are beginning to understand the powerful
ways search engine optimisation (SEO) can help to achieve their objectives.
Consider, every day millions turn to their computers
and search for information, products, and services on the web. With 81%
of users using search engines to find this information.
It’s estimated that 350 million searches are carried out every day.
Google accounting for 47.3%, yahoo 20.9%, MSN 13.6%, AOL 4.2%, Ask 1.9%
and Others 12.1%.
However, it is also estimated that most user’s (80%) don’t
look past the first two or three pages of search results. Search engine
algorithms are therefore designed to deliver search results to the user
with the most relevant information appearing first in the results.
As more individuals and organisations embrace search engine opimisation
concepts, competition for space in the results becomes increasingly fierce.
Having the right strategies and practices in place becomes more critical
for long terms success.
For the web owner it is vital that the user experience is the main aspect
that is taken into account, as 70% of users who can’t find the information
they are looking for, or can’t easily navigate the site, leave the
site within 1 minute. Those who ignore this will inevitably fail. The
reason; a better website, in terms of user experience, information relevancy,
and search engine friendliness will generate greater profits, and will
have available more resource with which to compete for search engine rankings
and traffic.
When it comes to search engine rankings and traffic, the saying within
the search engine optimisation industry is “content is king”
and this should be reflected to the interests of users and business.
One key to developing a long term search engine optimisation
strategy is to understand what the search engines want.
By understanding search engines, how they rank and index pages, where
search results come from, and how search engines crawl the web, retrieve,
sort, and store the web pages they find, one can begin to understand how
web pages are indexed and ranked in the search results.
Always, we try to use this knowledge and look at way’s to influence
our customer’s positions in the results.
For instance, by understanding how users search, and what keywords and
phrases they are using, or the effect of placing copy in specific places
on a page, or creating link structures that can easily be crawled by search
engine spiders within a website, could be the difference that puts a website
on the first page or on the ninth page of search results.
Or the importance of external links, and the relevancy of the text in
the links. By understanding that it’s not the quantity of links
that point to a web site, but rather the quality of those links, and where
to find them, that can make the difference.
As more people become aware of search engine optimisation
practices, web owners are now optimising their Meta tags, and structure
systems. But many are still struggling to get their web sites indexed
at all, let alone achieve high rankings.
One over looked aspect of SEO is http and server side errors that make
it near on impossible to have web pages indexed and ranked because the
search engine spiders can’t get or refused access to the web pages.
Many web owners are unaware these problems even exist,
but some are finding that optimising their web pages alone is not enough.
By understanding website statistics, often found in the server log files,
many of these problems become apparent, and easily fixed. Only by addressing
these often over looked SEO concepts, can the real results of search engine
optimisation can be appreciated.
Search engine optimisation is a complex and ever changing
set of practices, concepts and processes that can not be carried out in
a vacuum. Once web owners embrace this, results can be spectacular; on
the other hand they might find themselves being left behind in their efforts
for more traffic.
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