Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Q: Should a website focus on being "UserFriendly"? or "Search Engine Friendly"?
A: Both
Q: Is there any conflict between them?
A: 95% of the time there is no conflict at all!
Most people know that a website should be "user friendly" (see websitedesign), but many do not know that a website should be search engine friendlyas well. The reason is pretty straightforward. When a person is searchingfor a product, a service, or just looking for information on any topic, they(80%) usually go through a Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.)
TheSearch Engine results pages for any given search word, search phrase, or searchword grouping is where most companies would like their website to be. (Seescreen shot below) The question is: how to get there? The short answeris SEO.
The purpose of Search Engine Optimization or SEO is to soaccomplish design, layout, linking, and content building for a website thatit will optimally interface with the Search Engines' technology,including its algorithms, and, therefore, achieve higher rankings on the SearchEngine results pages.
Althoughindividual search engines vary on the importance of various interfacing requirements,some basics of SEO items are as follows:
- Directory and file naming
- Text positioning
- Keyword content
- Keyword density
- Site maps
- Anchor text
- Embedded links
- Page titles
- Page descriptions
- Page keywords
- Alt tags
- Site Navigation tools
- Reciprocal linking
- PDF file abstracts
- Content building
SEO can yield one of the best ROI of any business investment. It can produceliterally millions of dollars worth of on-line visibility. It is an ongoingprocess that yields its "fruit in due season"
Is SEO a guarantee-able process? Quite frankly, no, but without it you mustplan on your site being virtually invisible, and especially so if your businessis at all competitive. There are billions of pages on the web but two hundredmillion searches every day. It pays to be visible!
