14 DAY TRIAL // Search engine optimization is a process that generates traffic for your website. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) includes principles and algorithms, mainly related to the website design, capable of generating actions to improve the search engine ranking for your webpages. Increasing the value of your page's rank, the quality and quantity of visitors will be increased too. For example, the main search engines, Google and Yahoo will index your website and will rank pages according to some complex algorithms.
In order to obtain higher page ranks, you should have in mind some basic rules that will assure your SEO success. There are two types of SEO: on page SEO and off page optimization. In both cases, you should check if your site design matches the SEO main conditions:
1. Optimization of URLs - It is recommended to use short URLs titles having static character (for example .html pages), clearly named and if is possible to contain relevant keywords for your page's content. The ideal case is when the relevant keywords are even in the domain name. When choosing the keywords for meta tags you should think what keywords or key phrases you would type to search for a certain page or content on a given search engine.
2. Optimization of the page title tag - The search engine spider will look also in your page title tag for relevant keywords that describe the content of your webpages. As a consequence, the title tag should contain from one two three keywords or key phrases related or present in the page's content. You should also limit the length of your page title to 50 characters or less. And of course, every page should have a distinctive page title, easy to understand for crawlers. The abusive use of keywords will induce a decrease of page rank.
3. Optimization of the website content - The website content is among other factors that will decide the page rank. You should know that crawlers or spiders (the search engines indexing tools) do not index the content of pictures or a javascript action for example. In case you use extensively images for your page content, you should provide a detailed description for every picture. The main idea you should follow when you add content to your website is to maintain simplicity. In conclusion, the text should be present on your webpages in a higher percent as compared to images, javascripts or others. You must also provide fresh content to your visitors periodically.
4. Optimization of the site navigation system - You should build a site map having links that point to the main parts of your site. For example, Google uses your sitemap to analyze the structure of your website. All links must point to valid webpages. It is recommended to check the validity of your site navigation structure using a link checker. You should pay attention to the internal links that should contain keywords, and the number of internal links must be increased in order to provide a clear site hierarchy and an effective navigation system.
As a suggestion, the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) will determine a simple and yet rapid site structure, easy to understand for search engine spiders. The external links must point only to quality sites (for example, your page rank will be increased when you link to sites having higher search engine ranks themselves). You should not use links to "link farms". There must be also other links from weblogs, forums or other sites that point to your site. You can achieve this goal by performing a link inter-change process.
5. Optimization of the general site structure - In case your site design does not allow the SEO modifications mentioned, you should change the overall site structure. You can simply do this by using a ready-made CMS (a content management system). It is easy to use and in most cases it's created having the SEO principles in mind, so you will have to manage only the content, without being concerned owith the design.
These rules are not enough to obtain the maximal search engine rank, but they should be taken as a good start for a complete strategy of search engine optimization.