This web page has no session time limit and is accessible to people with disabilities. An assistive technology friendly site.

What is Search engine optimization?

We explain Search engine optimization

You are here: Search engine optimization

Need a Good Website SEO?

[ Content How to use the SEO Website Design site l Alternate Navigation (a) l Home (h) l Main Menu (m) l Search (c) l Site map (s) l Accessibility Policy (i) l
[ Content ] Basic Display Style (1) . Larger Font (2) . High Contrast (3) . Portable (4) . Print_Style (5)     Our Access keys Navigation Menu Section

Accessible Website Navigation & Text Information Content
Skip to Page Menu (p) [ Content ]

Site Search    or    a Web search?

Search engine optimization provides visitors with: topic relevant information.

Search engine optimization is the process of creating or rewriting web pages that search engines will rank at the top of their search results pages. ( SERP) Although it sounds pretty simple, it's not. Search engines rank webpages by the information content quality they provide, period. Writing topic specific information on each page is just the beginning. Knowing who the information is intended for, is the single most important factor in search engine optimization. Most good optimization techniques involve educated guessing about which keyword phrases that a specific user group might use to find your website.

There is no magic formula or no guaranteed method to get a first page ranking on any major search engine. Search engines have become far too sophisticated to allow themselves to be easily manipulated. In fact, they can retaliate when bad website optimizers try. Write a great webpage, get a great search engine ranking result!

For anyone researching or already planning to hire a "search engine optimization company," Google has some good advice about search engine optimizers.

[ Content ]

Search engine optimization 101 for business website owners

Anyone can build a great search engine optimized website, there are no real secrets to building search engine optimized webpages. All it takes is knowledge, skill, experience and a willingness to learn how to play by the rules! Anyone with basic computer skills, can build a good website. It's more about experience and perspective, than a mysterious, technical formula. Ethical search engine optimization is about "how" and "how well" you present information. Unethical SEO involves using tricks to try and mislead search engines.

Important search engine optimization web page components

[ Definitions Menu ]

Page Title

The single "most important webpage element" is the title of the page. The title should describe the main information topic of the entire webpage, since it appears at the top of your browser window as soon as the page loads. There are thousands of "untitled" webpages on the web, with millions more titled with terms like "About," "Home page," and "Links." Search engines list webpages by their title on their results pages. ( SERP ) A good page title will automatically increase your page ranking.

Headings    <h1 — h6>

The structure of a webpage is determined by the use of "headings." Search engines use the heading tags to help analyze the page text content. Like the page title, headings indicate an important "sub-topic," beginning with h1 as the most important and h6 as the least. Note: They must be used in the sequence of importance.

Hyperlinks

Links to expanded or focused information allow search engines to follow a specific topic. Links to other pages or websites, help your visitors (including search engines) find important information easily. Menus are simply a collection of hyperlinks. Becoming an "important hub" of information referrals, can increase your search engine ranking... dramatically.

Text Information

All good webpages are written to provide " specific visitors " with important and unique information, about only one specific topic. The way that you write a webpage should describe as fully as possible, for all your visitors, one main topic per page. Describing several important topics on a webpage, dilutes the information, confuses search engines and probably your human visitors too!

Page Size

To achieve a balance between writing all that important information on one page and having webpages that load so slowly that your visitors leave, try focusing specific information on several pages. This page is approximately 40K of text and takes less than a second to load using a high speed internet connection. If you need to have more than 40K on a single page, that information needs to be very relevant to the page title topic! (40K is considered fairly large.)

Graphics (pictures)

Search engine optimizing your website graphics is very simple. Eliminate the pictures! Probably not a realistic option! Although this is not appealing to your human visitors, website graphics annoy search engine spiders. They can't "see," they can only read. Good " alt text " helps search engines to understand what your pictures represent. Keeping your graphics file sizes small, reusing the same graphics on your webpages, and keeping graphics use to a minimum, will help your pages to load faster and will make them more "readable and search engine friendly."

[ Content ]

Search engine optimization is about meeting visitor expectations

Every website visitor has the same expectations:


Search Engine Optimization is about seeing your website from a search engine spiders' perspective!

What's the difference between search engine spiders and human visitors?

Ethical Search engine optimization is not illegal!

Optimizing each web page for specific key-word phrases and concepts, is exactly what the www expects from every webpage on the web! Specific information is what every web page should provide. Unfortunately, most websites don't follow the rules. Engaging in deceptive or intentionally misleading practices, is not search engine optimization, it's called spamdexing! If you allow your website designer or optimizer to use their special tricks to optimize your website, your site will probably be de-indexed from the search engines' databases! If that was the end result of your last attempt at search engine optimization, we would suggest a complete website re-write!


Has your existing business website been "search engine optimized?" If not, why would you waste time and money, building a company website?

See also: Questions (FAQ) about Search Engine Optimization

and Find a Good Optimizer?

Confused about SEO?

[ Top of Page ]


[ Your E-mail Feedback? (E) ]

[ Content ]


Search the Internet for more search engine optimization information?

Please note: Google does not permit direct searches from non-exclusive business websites and so they are not included in our search engines list. Please search Google directly at www.google.com

Search Multiple Search Engines including:   yahoo . yahoo.ca . msn . msn.ca . alta vista . ask

Search Engine optimization search access

[ Page Menu (p)]   [Main Menu (m)]   [ Text Version (t) ]

Relevant Text Information . Optimization 101 . Optimization Pays   [Top Menu]

Reload the search engine optimization Page? (l)   Our web site url: http://www.seowebsitesdesigners.com

[ Good Site map (s) ]

The Valid XHTML 1.0 label from Validome.org [ d ]