Why SEO is Important

[MamawDenise]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to "search engine optimizers," an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients' sites.

Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including: pay per click advertisements, paid inclusion listings, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords.

SEO strategies may increase both the number and quality of visitors. Search engine optimization is sometimes offered as a stand-alone service, or as a part of a larger marketing effort, and can often be very effective when incorporated into the initial development and design of a site.

Search engine optimization can be very effective when used as part of a smart niche marketing strategy.

There are those that venture over into the gray and black areas as they can damage in the long run a website or domain, stick with the people who do it right the first time and you'll not only increase your Traffic but your Profits and your site will be around for a long time to come, generating more and better traffic and thus profits.

[usasportstrain]

Well stated.

[stymiee]

Thank you for pointing out the obvious.

Here's why SEO is important: because sites that are well optimized also are very usable and accessible. Most sites designers fail to take these factors into account when designing their site and as a result, not only do they rank poorly in the search engines, but they inadvertently alienate a large percentage of their users. When a user finds a site with poor usability or is inaccessible (i.e. they can't use it because of their special requirements are not supported by the website) they leave with a low opinion of the site. Search engines are just very needy when it comes to usability and accessibility and react the same way. It's hard to rank a site well when you can't understand what it is all about because it is unusable or inaccessible.

So, don't design for search engines. Design for users. Your users will be happier, and more numerable, and a nice little side effect is the search engines will love it, too.

[encodex]

Why SEO is so Important is that you got web presence as well as you can make web property on search engines for your business. And once you know how to do this, no one can hold your hands.

RahulSEO
--------------------------
Offshore Software Development (http://www.encodexindia.com/) | .NET Custom Software Development | Migrate to .NET (http://www.encodexindia.com/applicationmigration.asp)

[ecommercewebdes]

You must check to see if the ecommerce software your using is SEO friendly.
You can do this by:

1. click on the product...view the url. The url should be something like:
http://www.megastarmedia.com/products/web-design-software.php

intead of: http://www.megastarmedia.com/products/?34343sh?/8787.php

Keywords must be:
1. Title tag
2. Meta tags
3. In url
4. On page

[sourcio]

MamawDenise, why did you put in your signature "Making Money On The Web Since 95 Let us help you with SEO, Websites .Installs and More!"?

[give_me_time]

You must check to see if the ecommerce software your using is SEO friendly.
You can do this by:

1. click on the product...view the url. The url should be something like:
http://www.megastarmedia.com/products/web-design-software.php

intead of: http://www.megastarmedia.com/products/?34343sh?/8787.php

Keywords must be:
1. Title tag
2. Meta tags
3. In url
4. On page

"4. On page", can you clarify that? Every published HTML/xml element is on the page already.

[Fred333]

Great post about what seo does. It covered all the bases.

[steve421]

There is not much to say after that definition.

[stymiee]

Yes there is. That definition is very lacking. Try this one:

--------------

Before you write one line of code:

Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target.
While constructing your website you should do the following:

Use markup to indicate the content of your site

Optimize your <title> tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
Create unique Meta Tags for each page
Use header tags appropriately (H1 > H2 > H3)
Use <b> and <i> tags if appropriate

Optimize your URLs

Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
Use keywords in your URL (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)
Use dashes or underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)

Optimize your content

Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
Have unique content
Have quality content

Use search engine friendly design

Create a human sitemap
Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript or Flash menus)
Minimize outbound links
Kept your pages under 100K in size

Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)
Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site

Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you (make sure the anchor text contains keywords)
Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)

Make sure your website is complete before launching it
Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:

Create Webmaster Accounts

Google Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview?hl=en)
Yahoo! Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites)

Submit your site to all major search engines

Google (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) (Use a Google SiteMap (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview?hl=en))
Yahoo (http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request) (Use the page list option)
MSN (http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=SUNO)
Ask (Finds your site via incoming links)

Create an XML sitemap (http://www.sitemaps.org/)
Submit your site to all free directories

DMOZ (http://dmoz.org/add.html) (also powers Google Directory)
JoeAnt (http://www.joeant.com/suggest.html)

Submit your site to relevant directories

Find more at ISEDB (http://www.isedb.com/)

Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)

Put a link to your website in your forum signatures (hint hint)
Reply to relevant blog posts (Don't spam please)

If you will pay to promote your website:

Submit your site to pay directories

Yahoo (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/)
GoGuides (http://www.goguides.org/addurl.html)

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:

Continually update your website with quality, unique content
Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre
Do NOT do the following:

Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)
Use JavaScript or Flash for navigation
Spam other websites for incoming links
Launch your site before it is done
Use duplicate content

Do not point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect
Do not make a site of duplicated content from other websites

Use markup inappropriately

Style <H>eader tags to look like regular text
Hide content using 'display: hidden' (for the sake of hiding text)

Use other "black hat" techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)

Doorway/Landing pages
Cloaking
Hidden text

Additional Tips:

Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature
Be patient! High rankings don't happen overnight
Don't obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.

[RonnieGaylord]

SEO is all about strategies that help meaningful online business to bloom. Search engines keep on constantly changing their ranking algorithm. This changes the position of web pages making even top positioned pages lose their high ranking position. SEO services logically improves website ranking in search engine allowing the business person to allocate their resources in more efficient ways.

An expert and efficient SEO services provider will surely increase visibility of website. This will increase revenue and provide that needed extra competitive edge over competitors. Search engine optimization involves methods of evaluation, analysis and subsequently creating or re-creating individual web pages. SEO ensures remake of entire site, thus enabling that the web pages can be indexed by various search engines after they are discovered and evaluated by search engine.

[tonymaffoy]

My insights about SEO, I agree that it's future is becoming cloudy and stormy because many site's owner nowadays uses a blackhat approach for getting higher ranking position in SERP, in short they are cheating just to display a high ranking of their sites without following the legal optimization procedure.

I've read one article on the internet that says like this, read the whole story from the link below:

[jugad]

My insights about SEO, I agree that it's future is becoming cloudy and stormy because many site's owner nowadays uses a blackhat approach for getting higher ranking position in SERP, in short they are cheating just to display a high ranking of their sites without following the legal optimization procedure.

I've read one article on the internet that says like this, read the whole story from the link below:

There is no link. :confused:

[sbl services]

Very well written MamawDenise.
Page rank and Keyword search result is very important for a website thus SEO is very important.
I appreciate your work.Regards,
Regards,
SBL Medical Transcription services (http://www.saibposervices.com/Business_Transcription_Services.aspx)

[marc77]

Let me put some comments to the list added by stymiee to this discussion:

Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
Use keywords in your URL (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)
Use dashes or underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)
I think that this no longer works in the way as in the past, where a keyword-domain was worth a fortune.

Also there is the problem of brand recognition - people love to have one single name for a company. If you register dozens of domains just for SEO, it may not obvious in search results that this is "you".

Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript or Flash menus)
You definitively can do accessible site navigation with JavaScript... it's just about the programmer's skills ;-)

Flash... not sure how the latest developments at Google are, there was a press release that they can recognize text parts within Flash. But since you should have alternative content already when using Flash, this should not matter much.

Minimize outbound links
Why ? If they make sense to the contents...

Kept your pages under 100K in size
Another Why ? While it is surely a good intention not to create a single oversized page, but sometimes it is simply required... do you refer to 100 KB of pure text or overall site content (page, JavaScript, images) ?

[jacksan]

making the pages as easy to use and as readable to real people is the most important. If you do that first then any tweaks for the search engines are very minor.

[Bill Engvall]

Seo is very important for the success of a website as it helps you to create a presence and increases the traffic to the website, it helps in creating backlinks that will drive traffic to the website. Thanks

[marysmith]

Search engine optimization or SEO today is an art. A professional SEO expert will optimize the website from scratch and equip it with the necessary tools that enable the website to stay one step ahead of the search engines.
Your website will constantly feature on page one of the search results for terms that best describe your business. For example, if you are a florist based in California, then any web user who searches for florist, flowers, florist California will be able to see your website and chances are that he will reach you and give you good business. SEO Internet Marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to reach out to potential customers. Compare the costs of an SEO campaign with online advertising, offline advertising and media services. You will come to know what I am talking about.
There are several tactics than an SEO expert will use to get your website in the big league. It includes keyword phrases, articles, creating back links etc. The bottom line is that if you want to succeed on the internet, then SEO is a must.

[Jack_Smart]

SEO is very important, because it will help you get many visitors who are interested to your sunject, since they will search for something related to your topic.

[singko]

SEO is really important especially of internet marketers to promote their site as well as generate more traffic. SEO also used to make money.

[HoustonFurnitur]

SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software.

Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.

This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?"

Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn’t they?

Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn’t get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?

Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?

So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit ’Enter’, and immediately find a listing for your company’s web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren’t they?

Yes, they certainly are great, and the ’type-and-click’ scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn’t happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.

[nanu]

Some more points to show the importance of SEO —

* Around 78 – 84% of all website traffic comes from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.
* 41% of online buyers use Search Engine Results for shopping.
* Believe me more than 93% of searchers don’t look second page in any search engine.
* 68 – 72% search engine users blindly believe in search engine results.
* 72% of potential buyers who use search engines will purchase or request more information if they find your site in search results.

[Brain]

"4. On page", can you clarify that? Every published HTML/xml element is on the page already.

on page means that the words that you intend to target for example if i sell leather bags and i intend to target words such as quality leather bags, premium, best etc then these keywords must be present on my web page so that when i give link to the keyword lets say best leather bags then it must be directed to that keyword on my page.

[king aaron]

SEO Campaign is an integral part for a successful business online. It is the process wherein the probable customers online are able to see the products and services you are offering based on SERPs or Search Engine Result Pages. It increases the probability of reaching out on your target market. Lastly, it is your weapon amidst the millions of competitors online who also caters similar products and services.

[3oltan]

The most important reason for doing SEO for your website is to reach your target audience. Having a beautiful glossy website is of no use if nobody is visiting it. SEO increases the number of visitors to your website which in turn brings profit to your business.
A properly optimized website reduces the risk factor for your business. That's because even if for some reason the number of your buyers decreases in your own country or territory, online buyers you will continue get orders from international customers. This is one of the unique advantages of search engine optimization.

[orson.octavius]

SEO Campaign is an integral part for a successful business online. It is the process wherein the probable customers online are able to see the products and services you are offering based on SERPs or Search Engine Result Pages.

[ramirezhenry55]

SEO is both an art and science. This makes the site gain organic traffic by marketing them in the web and thus gaining organic traffic and ranking well. Its not an exact science though hence, it needs continuous effort at constant velocity since Google's alogorithm change very often.

[Brain]

My insights about SEO, I agree that it's future is becoming cloudy and stormy because many site's owner nowadays uses a blackhat approach for getting higher ranking position in SERP, in short they are cheating just to display a high ranking of their sites without following the legal optimization procedure.

I've read one article on the internet that says like this, read the whole story from the link below:


It depends. I won't say for sure that its future is cloudy as what else can you think of to optimize your site. Its all playing with the links but yes I agree that blackhat approaches have increased since the competition is increasing day by day and there must be proper effective ways to tackle those issues.

[The Old Sarge]

The more widespread a blackhat technique becomes, the harder the SEs willwork to bypass/punish it. It's a never-ending cycle. Some people always try to beat the system to gain advantage.