What is SEO

Search Engine Optimization or “SEO” is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or “organic” unpaid results.

The importance of having a“search engine friendly” website is the visibility it can give your website to the world for your business or organization.

“Search Engine Marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.” -Marc Ostrofsky

Web Crawlers explained

Web Crawlers (web spider or web robot) is a program that automatically browses the internet. Search engines, use crawling as a means of providing up-to-date data for users.

Meta Tags and how they are used

Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content; they don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s code; more specifically within the <head> element. they are typically used as little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.

SEO attributes and their role in the grand scheme of things

The following two attributes are provided in the html of a site as meta data:

The Keyword Attribute is used to specify words that are a comma-separated list of relevant words that informs search engines what the page is about.

Example: <meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, meta tag, tag reference”>
The Descriptions Attribute is just what you expect, its the descriptions of the page. Search engines can pick up this description to show with the results of searches.

Example: <meta name=”description” content=”Free web tutorials”>

Other SEO attributes:

The Title tag is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page’s content and is arguably the most important on-page seo factor to address on any web page. Title tags are often used on search engine results pages to display preview snippets for a given page.
The Domain name should strike a balance between finding a catchy, unique, brand-friendly domain name and having a domain that contains keywords they are trying to target.

Caution for Spamdexing

In computing, spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, Black-Hat SEO, search spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. spamdexing involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. If you spamdex you will be penalized.

search engine marketing methods:

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Sponsored Listings are another form of PPC you most likely have seen it in the form of the first two results on a google search that look different from the other “organic results”.
Paid Inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index.
Video Search Marketing Search engines are pushing the universal search movement to evolve results into a multimedia-rich blend of images, maps, local and video. As a result, search engine algorithms will look more favorably on video content for the top spots on their result pages, meaning the opportunity for exposure increases for any video producer that is on top of its SEO game.
Google-Adsense is a wonderful tool that allows you the site owner to place PPC ads on your site and start earning some money. You can also you’re in control block ads you don’t like, customize where ads appear, and choose which types fit your site best.

The difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO.

white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies. Whereas, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.