Why is Search Engine Optimization necessary?

We all know that Search Engines are the primary resource by way of which the users of Internet can find websites and related information. It is by way of Search Engines that business generate inquiries and do business in unexplored markets. Building a web site and putting it on the Internet does not help. It needs to be promoted and marketed such that it get’s a good listing on the Search Engines.

Well, everyone wants their web site in good listing but not many achieve it. This is mainly because many of them fail to consider how search engines work and that’s what Search Engine Optimization is all about. Basically, we have three main things to do after a web site has been designed:

[1] Search Engine Optimization

[2] Search Engine Marketing

[3] Maintaining the Good Listing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be termed as an active practice of optimizing a web site by improving its aspects such that search engines simply fall in love with it. The majority of web traffic is driven by major search engines – Yahoo!, MSN, Google and AskJeeves. Now, if your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search – people who want what you have visiting your site.

I know what you are thinking. Why can’t the Search Engine index my web site with doing any optimization? Well, let’s answer it this way. Assume that you go to a library and ask the librarian to give you a book on “travel”. Obviously, the librarian is going to come back to you asking for more information on what kind of travel – adventure, holiday’s abroad, wildlife, etc.

Now let’s go back to our electronic age librarian – search engine. The moment we put in a word like travel and hit the search button, the search engine does not ask us questions. It digs out all the information and presents it to us – though it may put in suggestions at the top or bottom of the search results. This is popularly know as “keywords” and the search engines will check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page.

Each keyword has two main aspects – keyword relevancy to the content on the page and the keyword density. If this is not maintained properly and the use of the keywords is not justified, the web site is penelized. In short, now we know that keyword optimization is part of Search Engine Optimization.

Another aspect is the use of Title tags on the web page. A title is the heading that we see on the top of our browser’s left corner window. Changing your page titles is not necessarily going to help the page to do well for your target keywords if the page has nothing to do with the topic. Keywords and Title need to be reflected in the page content and that too at proper density.

Apart, from these, SEO involves web page content writing, sitemap building, HTML link building and rewriting, meta tags generation, description tag generation, valid HTML use, etc. There is lot of work and analysis involved and it takes up lot of time. The worst part is that we cannot actually see what “ACTUAL” results we are going to achieve unless an until the search engines have re-indexed the updated web pages.

Search engine optimization can be vital to a business because 90% of all online traffic is achieved through the various search engines. Therefore, knowing how to properly market your company through search engine optimization is virtually the only way to be found on the expansive Internet.

The next time you are on the Internet, search for your own site or your own name and see the results. Do not perform the search using your own business or persoanl name. You would be knowingthat and not others. Use generic keywords by which you think people should find your web site. See for yourself where and on which page of the search engine are you listed or for that matter, are you listed at all?

To summarize, search engine optimization is the tool that can ensure that your site will be listed within relevant search results, and as close as possible to the top 10 or top 20 listings for specific keywords.

Ignoring SEO is like a shop without any sign board, display window, business name or postal address. Potential customers will walk past your shop, not even realizing you are there. In the next parts I will cover Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and then in the future would be posting tips and articles on my web site on how to perform basic SEO and SEM.