Search Engine Optimisation is a process by which you improve a website’s visibility and ranking on a search engine which simply means that whenever a user searches for a particular type or group of keywords that are associated with your site, the chances of your website being on the first few pages that the user will access are higher. This especially good if you are running a business through a website as sales are highly dependent on the number of visitors your website gets and the number of visitors your website gets is highly dependent on the position of your website in the search engine’s index. Search engines basically try to display the result that is most relevant first so one could say that search engine Optimisation is the process by which your website is made more relevant to the keywords that are frequently searched by users.
The process of Search engine Optimisation is quite simple if you what you are doing. You could either do this alone or hire somebody else to do it. Most people pick the latter choice as there are certain skills involved which not everyone has such as writing of articles but should you choose to go about this on your own, the first thing you should know is that when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is commonly known, there are the right ways of doing it and there are the wrong ways. The right ways include:
- Content and HTML editing: This is where the content or HTML of the website is edited to make it more relevant to the search of certain keywords.
- Use of Backlinks: These are links leading to a website from other sites. The presence of these in many sites is an indication of importance and relevance of your site thus the search engine will consider it worthy of a higher ranking in the search engine.
The wrong ways of Search engine optimisation are those that use means that are considered dishonest in a bid to attain higher ranking in search engines. These methods are also known as spamdexing which is a reference to the fact that these Search engine optimisation methods actually work by spamming the index of the search engines. This spamming makes the seem more prevalent on the web or even relevant which might not always be the case. Some of the bad methods of search engine optimisation include:
1. Deception: These come in different forms and may include text that is usually given the same color as the background or at times positioned off-screen but in a position that will affect the search engine’s index.
2. Cloaking: This is a method where a website gives a different page according to whether it is a human user or the search engine that is requesting the page.
3. Keyword stuffing: There is nothing wrong with applying certain keywords in the website’s content but using keywords in excess and in a manner that adds little or no value to the content is considered another form of spamdexing.
Remember, applying search engine optimisation in the right ways could get you a lot of valuable net traffic but doing it in the wrong way will get you thrown of the search engine’s index faster than you can imagine.
Farhan Fawzer is a Sri Lankan SEO Specialist and Online Marketing Consultant.