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May 13, 2012

What is SEO and How it Works


By on 10:14 PM

The phrase SEO is buzzing all around on the web. And it inspired me to explain it for you in my language (Simple and Exclusive).

 

The web is expanding at a fast pace and so as the need for web services. And one of the essential web service is SEO. The most common SEO and link building services are Meta tags optimization, social bookmarking, directory listing etc. SEO is a some kind of process that helps online businesses to create an online presence and buzz. You can upload your videos on you tube and optimize it to get you tube views.

SEO is Search Engine Optimization. The phrase SEO in itself seems to be a misnomer because it is not the search engine which is being optimized. It is the process of applying techniques to a website in order to achieve high rankings in search engine results pages. The techniques may be applied on the site or off the site.

How SEO Works?

As you may know web is a collection of millions of web pages. The web pages contains information in the form of text, graphics, video etc. There are 2 ways to find the information on the web.

1. You know the URL of the page that contains this information. This is virtually impossible to know about all the pages on the web.

2. To find it through the search engines which are there for you to find the desired information.

I guess you may have used Google for finding some kind of information. When you type some word in Google then it looks for it in it's database for the pages that are most relevant to your word and displays them for  you.

Now the question is how Search Engines do it all?

And so accurate and fast!

Search engines crawls the web to find all the pages for it's database. This is done with the help of a software called Spider or Crawler. The process is known as spidering.

And unlike human beings search engines has an affinity for text content. The like it in Title tag of pages, header tags and off the site in link's anchor text.

They do'nt like images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories.

So text is the key to rank well in search engines.

Search engines uses an algorithm to rank pages. It is a kind of formula to find the relevant pages corresponding to some keywords.

You must thinking that I know about SEO and how it can benefit my online business. So I should have SEO done for my site.

But wait before you make your decision?

Here is the real truth...

SEO is not as esay as most SEO companies explains it to you. I try to explain it by taking an analogy. Imagine SEO as a competition where you have to constantly fight with:

1. Your competitors as they are also doing SEO on their site to improve ranking and traffic. So you need to be better than what they are doing.

2. The changing search engine alogirthms and constanly making it more complex. And you have to keep on guessing the search engine criteria to do well.

For example take an analogy of any entrance exam ( For ex. IIT entrance exam if you live in India) where millions of students appear in the eam but only few of them are selected. They all prepare at reputed coaching centres but still could not get selected because they rank lower than others.

In search engines too, same analogy applies. Generally top 10 results are considered to be better in SEO. So you need to be better than the top 10 competitors in order to push them down.

5 Factors That Search Engines Uses to Rank Your Sites:

1. Words: In technical terms they are called keywords and are the main ingredient for search engine algorithm. So use the keyword rich fresh and original content in order to do well in search engines.

2. Title: Each web page has a tItle and it is in the coding. Search engines gives weightage to title because they often summarise the content of a web page.

3. Links: Links are like the recommendation for your site. More the better.

4. Anchor Text: Google puts value to the word used in links. A link with keyword in anchor puts your site up in rankings for that keyword.

5. Reputation: The sites having good quality and fresh content will have a higher rankings in search engines.

SEO is not a science because the search engines algorithms are updated regularly.

It's like a competition where only the consistent performer wins the race.

Subodh Raghav

Subodh is a tech savvy guy who is blessed with the art of Blogging,He love to Blog day in and day out,He is a Software Engineer and a Certified Web Enthusiast.

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