Basics
1. Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
A search engine is the most effective tool
that can bring a prospective customer to your Company website. Millions
of web visits are initiated daily through one or the other search engine
to locate information or sources of supply. This is considered to be the
most effective and targeted channel for you as a website owner to
acquire a hot lead.
Businesses all the over the world spend a huge sum on designing,
building, maintaining and promoting their websites.
1.1 SEO plan and
objective
Online advertising and
marketing budgets have also soared. Relative to these, the investment
required for getting traffic through search engines is much lower.
However, as search engines have millions of pages in their coverage, it
is important to have a proper
approach to using this channel effectively.
The art and science of
understanding how search engines identify pages that are relevant to a
query made by a visitor and designing marketing strategies based on this
is called search engine optimization. Search engines offer the most cost
effective mechanism to acquire real and live business leads. It is found
that in most cases search engine
optimization delivers better ROI than other forms such as online
advertisements, e-mail marketing and newsletters, affiliate and pay per
click advertising, and digital campaigns and promotions.Search Engine
Search Engine
A site that indexes World Wide Web pages based on content.
Each engine works differently. They may base the results of their
searches on Meta Tags, page content, page title, or a combination of
these. The search engines get their content from spider (see below)
programs. Some popular search engines are Alta Vista, Excite, and Lycos.
(SearchHound is the newest and coolest of all. It allows you to search 8
engines at once- including its own superb
index). Contrast this with a "Directory".
Directory. A site that categorizes the World Wide Web based on input
submitted by someone. A good example of this is Yahoo. In this case, the
actual web content is never accessed. When someone searches for a
keyword, this is referenced against a database of sites that contain a
title and description for a particular site. Once
again, this site is categorized by topic and the title and description
are submitted by someone.
Spider
A program used by a search engine to index the World
Wide Web
content. Spiders are all set differently, but they all capture specific
information about a page. Some capture the title and the first 1,000
characters of content. Some capture the title and "description"
Meta Tag. Some look only for the "keyword" meta tag. Some use a
combination of all of these methods.
Hit
Any time a document is accessed from a web site. If someone
tells you they get 1,000 hits a day at their site, this may not be a
big deal. For instance, if they have 15 images on their page each
time their page is accessed it generates 16 hits (once for each
image and once for the HTML document). Ask them how they got
this information and you'll get a better idea about what they mean
by the statement. This information is generally useless for our
purposes. It usually doesn't matter how many times a particular
graphic is used.
User Session
Any time a single user logs on to a site. He can look at all the
pages of the site, but it still equals only one user session.
Page View
Any time a viewer looks at a particular page. This is more
meaningful than a hit.
Access Logs (Server Logs)
Most web servers maintain access logs. This log will contain
information about which pages have been viewed how many times,
what page referred the web surfer to your page, what time they
came in, any errors encountered if any. Ask your ISP to set this up
on your site. Most good web hosting services will offer some form
of statistical analysis.