What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization can be performed by anyone who has the ability to learn and has knowledge of basic HTML. In fact, search engine optimization has more to do with marketing than it does programming. Search engines rank your site by a complex mathematical equation called an algorithm or "algo" for short. This algorithm is written and designed by individuals who are mathematical wizards who hold PhD's. When I think of these experts I think about Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind, just not delusional. It's truly amazing, for example, that Google is able to organize billion web pages using nothing but a mathematical equation. Because the rankings are based on math there is some predictability to how they are organized and what one must do to rank well.

The question is should you do it yourself or hire a search engine optimization company. I personally decided to do it myself as I enjoy learning new things and the multiple levels of strategy in Search Engine Optimization is very challenging and rewarding.

Before performing any Search Engine Optimization you must first determine what keywords your buyers search for within your industry. What you call your products and what your buyers call your products may be two different things. A great example of this is very common in our industry. Within our industry we call a particular type of display a Pop Up Display where the most common term our buyers search for is Trade Show Displays. You want to optimize for all terms within your industry but primarily focus on the terms most often searched for by your prospects. They provide a free Search Term Suggestion Tool that can be found on their Advertiser Center page.

Word Tracker provides assistance in developing related keyword lists like the keyword

Convention Displays in our industry and polls keyword results from multiple search engines. We recommend creating a focus group to come up with every keyword or name you or your employees have ever heard a customer call your product and then research these keywords for there search frequency.

If you're just starting out building your website you'll also be able to develop your website structure around your keywords. For example, you can assign the home page your most common keywords where as secondary keywords will be assigned to second and third level pages. Typically the less often a keyword is searched the deeper within your site it will be assigned to a page. Each page can be assigned anywhere from one to three keywords. Before optimizing it is also highly recommended that you read what is considered good and bad optimization from a search engines point of view. These are guidelines that

Google and Yahoo publish.

Google Search Engine Optimization Guidelines

Yahoo Search Engine Optimization Guidelines

When deciding if you should perform your own search engine optimization or hiring someone else you should consider a few factors. The biggest is that the rulebook on good versus bad search engine optimization is somewhat unwritten. Although the search engines provide guidelines, they do now stipulate every rule. You may, as a beginner, break a rule and not even know it and get your site banned and possibly dropped from the search engines. In this case all your efforts were in vain. Secondly, your time may be better spent doing something else within the company.

On and Off Page Components of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO, as it's become to be known, is broken down into two broad separate components. These components are on-page and off-page.

On page components include the following:

1. Title Tag
2. Meta Tag Description
3. Meta Tag Keywords
4. Heading Tag
5. Keyword Density
6. Alt Tags
7. Page Name / URL structure
8. Internal Linking
Off page components include the following:

1. Content Relation
2. Links
3. PageRank®
4. Page Traffic
5. Content Donation
6. Anchor or Linking Text

On Page Components

On page components can easily be created in FrontPage. The built in help function provides detailed instructions and we recommend that you use this source in learning how to perform these tasks. On page components are the easiest to control because these components are created as you build or modify the site of which you have 100% control.

Title Tag - The Title tag gives the search engine a basic understanding of what your web page is about. The Title Tag functions the same way on Internet as it does for the title of a book or the name of a chapter within a book. Each page of your website should be titled to reflect the actual content on that page. You shouldn't name your title "Blue Widgets" if the page has nothing but "Red Widgets" on it.

Meta Tag Description - The "Meta Tag Description" provides a basic description of what's found on the webpage. Typically this description will be 12-15 words as most search engines ignore anything past the 15th word.

Meta Tag Keywords - Your Meta Tag Keywords are the same as the keywords that you researched. Your Meta Tag Keywords should reflect what's contained on your webpage. If the page is about Blue Widgets, then the keyword Red Widgets shouldn't be contained within your Meta Tag Keywords for that page.

Heading Tag - A Heading Tag is similar to sub-sections within a chapter of a book. They are used to break down the overall content within a web page. There are six heading tags and they are H1 - H6, with the H1 tag carrying the most importance and H6 carrying the least, but more than text that does not have a heading tag. For example the following heading tags have been used on this web page.

Search Engine Optimization - A do it yourself guide.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

On and Off Page Components of Search Engine Optimization

On Page Components

When using the Heading Tags you'll find that FrontPage automatically assigns a font size and other font characteristics, but these can be changed to fit the design of your website.

Keyword Density - Keyword density refers to what percentage a particular keyword is used on a page. In most cases it is recommended that a keyword be used anywhere from 2% - 8% on a page, but it can be analyzed for different aspects of your page. For example, your keyword density should be different for your Title Tag than your on page keyword density.

Overall keyword density is calculated on all aspects of a page and that includes your Title, Meta Tags, on page text, URL structure and others. If you would like to check your keyword density of a page try this helpful Keyword Density Tool as it gives you percentages of all portions of your site.

Requires registration for use.

Alt Tags - Alt Tags are primarily used to assign keywords to an image. If you've ever held your mouse curser over an image and it shows a description then this was created by the Alt Tag.

Your Alt tags should match the actual image. If the picture is a Red Widget then the Alt Tag should read Red Widget, not Blue Widget or Red and Blue Widget.

Page Name / URL Structure - Your page name or URL structure refers to the actual page name.

For example, if you wanted a website to rank well for the keyword "Blue Widgets" then your

URL could be http://www.bluewidgets.com or http://www.blue-widgets.com. In many cases your URL is the same name as your company, but you can still use this as an optimization tool.

For example, http://www.acme-blue-widgets.com. Other pages can also be optimized like the following, http://www.acme.com/blue-widgets.html. There has been much discussion on using hyphens (-) or underscores (_) or nothing at all to separate words. Google did say that they see underscores as text and and hyphens as separators. Based on this information then a URLstructure of "blue_widgets" is seen as "blue_widgets" where "blue-widgets" is seen as "bluewidgets". However, any ranking advantage given to one style over the other isn't that apparent at this time as there are many other factors that are weighed to get ermine your overall ranking.

Internal Linking - Linking to internal pages refers to using keywords that normally occur within you site as links. For example the following sentence occurs on our site, "Tradeshow Displays can be an incredible aspect of marketing your business at your next convention." The keyword

"Tradeshow Displays" is being used as an internal link to another page within our site and is being tied to the keyword tradeshow displays. These keywords are referred to as Anchor or Linking Text and are explained in the linking section of this article. This doesn't mean that every keyword should be linked as this could be viewed as spam.

Off Page Components

Off page components primarily refer to building links or link popularity. Link popularity is a score that adds up the total number of links you have pointed to your site over various search engines. Marketleap offers a free link popularity tool. Search engines heavily weigh how many links there are pointing to your site. You can view a link as a vote, however, all links or votes aren't equal. The more votes or links you have the better. Evaluating a links importance is quite complex and is determined on various factors. Some of which include content relation.