Whenever you are searching for something specific on a Search Engine, you will receive a number of different pages that may contain possible answers to what you are searching for. These are the answers to what you are searching for, returned to you on your Search Engine Result Page (SERP). There are probably a lot of results on this page. Well, more than likely you will probably find that you will open only those sites that are listed on the first 3 pages while ignoring the rest. If you are a webmaster of 1 of those sites that is being ignored you may be wondering how you can get better positioning for your web site. Well, the answer is simple: through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO refers to a process through which a web site earns high ranking amongst search results. Through this process, a web site is able to get a good position on the SERP and thus pull in a large amount of unique visitors.
So, who needs SEO? There are 4 different types of web sites. These are:
- Personal sites
- Corporate Sites
- E-commerce sites
- Sites that provide information
Both personal and corporate web sites can actually hold their own without SEO because they are targeted to specific people and the site does not want or need an audience beyond these people. However, this is not true for e-commerce and web sites that simply offer information. These web sites definitely need unique visitors who can only be found through good rankings on SERPs, which are achieved through SEO.
One thing that is important to think about here is the keywords that you choose to use. These are the words or phrases that summarize the main topic of your web site whenever a Search Engine scans the text of your web site. While scanning your web site the Search Engine will pick up the words that you use repeatedly and then match them with the words that are being searched for. If these words match up with one another, then you will get a high ranking.
So, when you select your web site’s keywords, you need to be sure to choose those words that are most likely to be used by those who are searching for a web site like yours. Once you select these words, use them abundantly within your web site’s text but be careful not to place them where they would seem awkward, or you may attract criticism or be penalized. You should strive to have a 3 to 5% keyword density on each of your web site’s pages. They should especially be used within the first 2 paragraphs of your web site, as well as in the concluding line of text. Most importantly, these keywords need to be used in your anchor text, because Search Engines like Google place a lot of importance on the anchor text of inbound links.
Of course, you will have to decide for yourself whether or not SEO is for your site. When making this decision you should remember that more than 80% of people find web sites via Search Engines and 90% of these people do not look beyond the first 30 results. This is especially important for businesses because 75% of people who use Search Engines are looking to purchase a product or a service.