2. HOW SEARCH ENGINES OPERATE
Search engines have two major functions - crawling & building an
index, and providing answers by calculating relevancy & serving
results.
Through links, search engines’ automated robots, called
“crawlers,” or “spiders” can reach the many billions of
interconnected documents.
It is both “relevance” and “importance” that the process of SEO
is meant to influence.
Currently, the major engines typically interpret importance as
popularity.
Popularity and relevance are determined by carefully crafted
mathematical equations – algorithms – comprised of hundreds of
components – Search Engine Ranking Factors.
3. LIMITATIONS
online forms (such as a login), any content contained behind them
may remain hidden.
Websites using a CMS (Content Management System) often
create duplicate versions of the same page - a major problem for
search engines looking for completely original content.
Poor link structures.
Text that is not written in common terms that people use to
search.
Language and internationalization subtleties (color vs. colour).
Location targeting.
Mixed contextual signals.
Text in Flash files, images, photos, video, audio & plug-in content.
The "Tree Falls in a Forest"
4. HOW TO OPTIMIZE RANKING
Most important content should be in HTML text format.
A crawlable link structure is vital in order to find all of the pages on
a website.
Keywords are prominently used in titles, text, and meta data.
Research and use the right keywords.
Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool
Google Insights for Search
Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction
Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
5. KEYWORDS
Use the keyword in the title tag at least once. Try to keep the
keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible.
Once prominently near the top of the page.
At least 2-3 times, including variations, in the body copy on the
page - sometimes a few more if there's a lot of text content.
At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page.
Once in the URL.
At least once in the meta description tag. Meta description tag
does NOT get used by the engines for rankings, but rather helps
to attract clicks by searchers from the results page, as it is the
"snippet" of text used by the search engines.
6. URL CONSTRUCTION
If you can easily and accurately predict the content you'd expect to
find on the page, your URLs are appropriately descriptive.
Shorter is better.
If your page is targeting a specific term or phrase, make sure to
include it in the URL. However, don't go overboard by trying to stuff in
multiple keywords for SEO purposes - overuse will result in less
usable URLs and can trip spam filters.
The best URLs are human readable without lots of parameters,
numbers and symbols. Using technologies like mod_rewrite for
Apache and ISAPI_rewrite for Microsoft, you can easily transform
dynamic URLs into a more readable static version.
Not all web applications accurately interpret separators like
underscore, plus, or space so use the hyphen character to separate
words in a URL.
7. TITLE TAGS
Critical to both user experience and search engine optimization.
Search engines display only the first 65-75 characters of a title tag
in the search results.
Place important keywords close to the front.
End title tags with a brand name mention, as these help to
increase brand awareness, and create a higher click-through rate
for people who like and are familiar with a brand.
Title tags should be descriptive and readable. Creating a
compelling title tag will pull in more visits from the search results
and can help to invest visitors in your site.
