Successful Search Engine Optimisation

1. If you are new to search engine optimization (SEO), we recommend that you read the chapters one by one. The manual has a clear structure so that you'll quickly understand the way search engine optimization works.

2. If you have SEO knowledge, you can just take a look at the checklists at the end of each chapter.

According to recent statistics, more than 1 billion people used the Internet in 2005 (Source: Nielsen/ Net Ratings). Web users spend twice as much time online as watching TV (Source: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society). Consumers spent $143.2 billion online in 2005, 22% more than in 2004 (Source: COM Score).

A survey conducted by market research firm TNS revealed that 75% of all online shoppers said that company size was not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15% said they preferred to shop with large retailers (Source: TNS).

More than 80% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engines (Source: Georgia Tech/ GVU Users Survey). That means that about 650 million people use search engines to find websites.

Search engine users are some of the most qualified and motivated visitors to your web site you will ever have. After all, they have taken the initiative to hunt for online resources on a certain topic. And then they clicked your link to learn more.

It is very important that you do the right things in the right order if you want to have high search engine rankings.

The right keywords are not always obvious. In this manual, you'll learn how to find the right keywords that will work best for your web site. It is very important that you target the right keywords before you start with your search engine optimization work.

Optimizing your web pages for your important keywords is crucial if you want to have high search engine rankings. Optimizing one or two pages is not enough. Search engines analyze all pages of your web site and they put these pages in a context. It is important that the combination of your web pages shows search engines that your web site is relevant to a special topic.

In this manual, you'll learn how to optimize your pages as quickly and efficiently as possible.

After optimizing your web site for several keywords, you can submit your web site to search engines and Internet directories. Although search engine submission is not as important as it was (many search engines will find your web site through links on other sites), it can still help you to get your web site listed faster.

Links from other web sites are extremely important if you want to have high search engine rankings. They are so important that we added an additional manual to IBP that just deals with inbound links. Your web site must have good incoming links to get high search engine rankings.

• It is important that you work on ALL factors if you want to get high search engine rankings. It's not enough to focus on one or two factors.

• You'll get best results if you go from step one to step four. Start by finding the most relevant keywords for your web site and then proceed with the next steps.

There are billions of web pages on the Internet. It's obvious that not all of them can be listed in the top 10 results on search engines. Search engines only list web sites that they find relevant to a special topic. You must make sure that your web site is such a site.

75% of searchers never look further than page one (Source: Georgia Institute of Technology). Most search engines display ten results on the first page; and very few searchers click the links to look at the second page.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen points out: "Users almost never look beyond the second page of search results." Danny Sullivan, ClickZ Search Engine Marketing Columnist, puts it out this way: "Being listed 11 or beyond means that many people may miss your web site."

• If you want to get targeted visitors from search engines, you must optimize your web pages for search engines.

• It's not enough to submit your web site to search engines. In this manual, you'll learn how to optimize your pages as efficiently as possible.

Google uses Page Rank (which is a mathematical formula and not the green bar in the Google toolbar) and hypertext-matching analysis to rank your web pages. To get good results for the Page Rank factor, you need good links from related pages that point to your site. It's a simple principle: if page a links to page b then it is a recommendation from page a to page b. The more links point to your web site, the better your rankings.

As Google analyzes the full content of your pages you also have to optimize the full content of your web pages. It is not enough to edit your meta tags. You have to optimize all factors that can influence your search engine rankings.

The problem is that many webmasters don't know which page factors can be important.

Some people promise to submit your web site to 50,000 or more search engines. There aren't thousands of search engines on the Internet. The majority of these 50,000 so called "search engines" are free for all (FFA) link pages or special interest web pages. Submitting your web page to thousands of FFA sites means that you'll end up with thousands of spam email messages.

In addition, you won't receive a single visitor when you submit your web site about office equipment to a directory of poets in Poland.

There's only a handful of search engines that can really bring visitors to your web site. As always, it's quality that matters, not quantity. For this reason, you should concentrate on the important search engines when you submit your web site to search engines.

Currently, there are only four major players: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask.com. They are responsible for the bigger part of the search engine traffic you can get because they also power other search engines, for example the search engine on AOL.com displays Google results.

In addition, there are country specific search engines. If you have a German web site, you should also submit to the popular German search engines. In general, there aren't more than three or four relevant search engines in a country. The majority of the web surfers uses the same search engines.

Internet directories are different from search engines because all web site submissions are reviewed by humans. There are several directories where your web site should be listed. One of the more important directories is The Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org.

You should also submit to topic specific search engines. If your web site sells garden equipment, you should submit your web site to specific garden directories. Even if they send you only a few visitors, they could improve the link popularity of your web site which helps your ranking in other search engines.

Search engines use indexing software programs, called robots or spiders. These software programs are programmed to constantly crawl the web in search of new or updated pages.

They will go from URL to URL until they have visited every web site on the Internet. When visiting a web site, a search engine spider will record the full text of every page found (including sub-pages). After that, it will continue to visit all external links. The URL of a web page is the address of a web page, for example "http://www.Axandra.com/ibp".

By following external links that point to your web site, search engines are able to find your site. The search engine spiders will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information. Search engines rank your web pages based on mathematical formulas.

Search engines and Internet directories are not the same. Internet directories don't use indexing software programs. If you submit your web site to an Internet directory, your web site will be indexed by real people who decide whether to include your web site or not.

Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical techniques and tricks to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. This dilutes the quality of search results and calls into question the accuracy of search results.

For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to counter the spam techniques which webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them.

They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content.

If you use a web site promotion tool that uses these unethical techniques, you'll put your web business at severe risk.

We provide only ethical search engine optimization methods. They are only techniques that produce lasting results and that don't offend search engines.

Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM. For that reason, Axandra products DO NOT use or promote them:

Some SEO (search engine optimization) companies guarantee that you will get a special search engine position if you let them do the work for you. Actually, this is not possible. No company can guarantee search engine listings.

If a company makes such promises, take a closer look at the small print. The catch is often that the company selects the search terms. You'll be listed for obscure search terms that nobody searches for.

If you have a unique company name or a unique product name, it's relatively easy to get high search engine rankings for that term.

A single spam element can destroy your work

Before you start with your search engine optimization efforts, you must make sure that your web pages are spam free. This is very important. If you use a spam technique on your web site, all other search engine optimization efforts are pointless.

If a search engine has tagged your web site as a spam source then you have to remove the spam elements from your web pages before the search engine will take another look at other elements of your site.

Most search engines consider the following spam:

· cloaking (the web server returns different pages for search engine spiders and human web surfers)

· doorway pages

· misleading redirections

· hidden text (text has a color that is very similar to the background color, text in very small font sizes, text that has been hidden with CSS tags etc.)

If you use one of these techniques on your web pages, remove them now. You might get short term results with them but it is extremely likely that search engines will ban your site if you continue to use them.

When you're sure that your web pages are spam free, you can start with your search engine optimization activities.

• Search engines don't like to be cheated. Don't try to use search engine optimization techniques that try to trick search engines. It might work for a while but search engines have managed to detect all tricks sooner or later.

• Better concentrate on ethical methods that are beneficial to you, web surfers and search engines (you get more visitors, web surfers get what they want, search engines can deliver better results). That way, your rankings will last much longer.

It is important that you read the contents of the previous chapters. If you overlook something, your web site optimization efforts might not work as expected.

If you use unethical search engine optimization methods then search engines might ban your web site. Search engines consider some methods such as doorway pages and cloaking as spam.

Using the wrong search engine optimization methods can get your web site banned on search engines.

If you have spam elements on your web pages, all other optimization efforts are pointless. As long as you have spam elements on your web pages it is very difficult to get high search engine rankings.

(Courtesy:-IBP's SEO Guide)

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