Introduction to SEO and what it involves
What is the importance of search for websites and how can SEO save valuable dollars in advertising expenses?
It is estimated that the world wide online advertising spend was $33 billion in 2004. The success of any website is proportional to the number of visitors to the site. Any site, no matter how well designed or developed is a failure if it does not attract a sufficient number of visitors to make it commercially viable. Statistics show that traffic from search engines accounts for as much as 70% of the average traffic for websites in 2004. SEO can help webmasters and site owners vastly increase traffic from search engines without increasing advertising expenses. Depending upon their line of business, websites pay as much as $50 per visitor on paid search engine listings, therefore free traffic through SEO efforts could actually be more valuable than you imagine.
Moreover most SEO efforts have a long lasting impact on the site traffic as apposed to paid listings that go off the air as soon as the budget is exhausted. Believe it or not, 100 visitors for a keyword such as New York lawyers or New Jersey lawyers could actually be worth $5000 in cost per click search engine listings such as on Google Adwords or Overture (Yahoo Search Services).
Which Search Engine should I concentrate on while performing SEO Activities?
There are hundreds of search engines, but only a handful cater to the bulk of the billions of searches conducted monthly on various search engines. It is therefore only required that you focus your SEO efforts on the following search engines which cater to more then 80% of all search undertaken on the internet.
The approximate share of Google, Yahoo and MSN in the total worldwide search is:
Google-46.2% of overall search
Yahoo-22.4% of overall search
MSN-12.6% of overall search
This does not mean that it is a waste of time targeting other search engines, but the fact is that by targeting the top 3 search engines, you are effectively addressing 80% of the over all world wide search. The remaining 20% of the world wide search is catered to by dozens of smaller players, the largest of who is AOL (with 5.4%) of the search market. Another fact is that many of the smaller search engines use website information drawn from the larger engines. Therefore the chances are that you would already figure in most of the smaller search engines if your site is listed in the big 3. While saying this, the importance of directories cannot be ruled out, especially DMOZ. It is wise to get listed in as many directories as possible, as they are looked at favorably by most search engines. A DMOZ directory listing should be a priority, as it gets a website automatically indexed by Google.
Who can or should perform SEO activities
SEO activities relate to internal efforts related to the website such as optimization and maintenance of design, HTML changes and content layout as well as external efforts which relate to link building, submission to search engines and directories as well as creating partnerships for increasing in-bound links to the site. The person responsible for undertaking SEO should have access and capability to handle design aspects of the site related to:
•Changes in HTML (page titles, page headers, meta tags and text in the webpages)
•Changes in the site layout of pages
The person will also require undertaking the following activities:
•Ability to browse the internet and search for link partners
•Ability to locate directories, free listing areas and forums for adding the site details
Why it is a good idea to undertake SEO activities by yourself?
Since search engines follow a definite programmed way of working and ranking websites, SEO techniques and skills can be learnt and practiced by anyone. There are several compelling reasons why you should not outsource your SEO activities to search marketing or SEO companies:
•More often than not, SEO companies charge large fixed monthly charges for undertaking SEO activities. Undertaking SEO activities yourself help you to build your knowledge base for the future and your own efforts are free.
•It is difficult to monitor what or how much SEO activity is going into the website since it takes time for the results to show in most search engines. As a result you could be paying an SEO company for little to no work.
• Many SEO companies ask customers to pay on an on-going basis for the positive search engine ranking results to persist over time. This often leads websites to be bound to pay or face the eventuality of a loss in ranking/traffic.
•SEO companies may resort to undesirable or banned SEO techniques that could get the website black listed by major search engines. It is safer to trust your own judgment regarding which site you should link to and which SEO technique you should adopt.
•SEO is not a complex science that can only be mastered by a selected few. Using the correct study resources anybody can learn and incorporate SEO techniques for optimizing websites.
•Many SEO companies require their customers to furnish the website FTP details to allow changes to be made in the site HTML. This could lead to unwanted or incorrect alterations to the website, or even deletion of crucial files or folders.
•It has been seen often that SEO activities outsourced to companies make a poor ROI (return on investment). SEO companies may charge as much as $300 for optimizing a website for a single keyword/month. In this amount of money you could purchase up to 3000 click-through in a pay per click listing on Google Adwords or Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing).
What are the areas of operation for Search Engine Optimization Professionals
SEO encompasses several areas of operation for SEO professionals. Some of these had been mentioned earlier as well:
•SEO professional Discuss with the clients about client objectives by keeping in mind the budget.
•Search engine optimization professional understands the business model of the website
•Website domain name (SEO professionals decide the domain name)
•Webpage names and file/directory names(SEO professional decide the page names and file names)
•Search engine optimization professional decides Page titles, headers, sub-headers
•SEO professional choose relevant keywords throughout the website
•Making alterations to the copy matter of the website done by SEO professional
•Search engine optimization professional makes changes to the flow and layout of the website & optimizing internal links
•Making design changes by SEO professional
•Search engine optimization professional makes the site search engine readable by working with meta tags & robots.txt files
•Search engine optimization professional monitor the changes to the website in the SERPs of major search engines
•Developing strategies for increasing in-bound traffic
•SEO professional monitors changes to search engine algorithms
•Studying competing websites and learning from their SEO efforts
•Search engine optimization professional handles customer inquiries and problems
•Search engine optimization professional provides timely ranking reports to the customer
What is the importance of search for websites and how can SEO save valuable dollars in advertising expenses?
It is estimated that the world wide online advertising spend was $33 billion in 2004. The success of any website is proportional to the number of visitors to the site. Any site, no matter how well designed or developed is a failure if it does not attract a sufficient number of visitors to make it commercially viable. Statistics show that traffic from search engines accounts for as much as 70% of the average traffic for websites in 2004. SEO can help webmasters and site owners vastly increase traffic from search engines without increasing advertising expenses. Depending upon their line of business, websites pay as much as $50 per visitor on paid search engine listings, therefore free traffic through SEO efforts could actually be more valuable than you imagine.
Moreover most SEO efforts have a long lasting impact on the site traffic as apposed to paid listings that go off the air as soon as the budget is exhausted. Believe it or not, 100 visitors for a keyword such as New York lawyers or New Jersey lawyers could actually be worth $5000 in cost per click search engine listings such as on Google Adwords or Overture (Yahoo Search Services).
Which Search Engine should I concentrate on while performing SEO Activities?
There are hundreds of search engines, but only a handful cater to the bulk of the billions of searches conducted monthly on various search engines. It is therefore only required that you focus your SEO efforts on the following search engines which cater to more then 80% of all search undertaken on the internet.
The approximate share of Google, Yahoo and MSN in the total worldwide search is:
Google-46.2% of overall search
Yahoo-22.4% of overall search
MSN-12.6% of overall search
This does not mean that it is a waste of time targeting other search engines, but the fact is that by targeting the top 3 search engines, you are effectively addressing 80% of the over all world wide search. The remaining 20% of the world wide search is catered to by dozens of smaller players, the largest of who is AOL (with 5.4%) of the search market. Another fact is that many of the smaller search engines use website information drawn from the larger engines. Therefore the chances are that you would already figure in most of the smaller search engines if your site is listed in the big 3. While saying this, the importance of directories cannot be ruled out, especially DMOZ. It is wise to get listed in as many directories as possible, as they are looked at favorably by most search engines. A DMOZ directory listing should be a priority, as it gets a website automatically indexed by Google.
Who can or should perform SEO activities
SEO activities relate to internal efforts related to the website such as optimization and maintenance of design, HTML changes and content layout as well as external efforts which relate to link building, submission to search engines and directories as well as creating partnerships for increasing in-bound links to the site. The person responsible for undertaking SEO should have access and capability to handle design aspects of the site related to:
•Changes in HTML (page titles, page headers, meta tags and text in the webpages)
•Changes in the site layout of pages
The person will also require undertaking the following activities:
•Ability to browse the internet and search for link partners
•Ability to locate directories, free listing areas and forums for adding the site details
Why it is a good idea to undertake SEO activities by yourself?
Since search engines follow a definite programmed way of working and ranking websites, SEO techniques and skills can be learnt and practiced by anyone. There are several compelling reasons why you should not outsource your SEO activities to search marketing or SEO companies:
•More often than not, SEO companies charge large fixed monthly charges for undertaking SEO activities. Undertaking SEO activities yourself help you to build your knowledge base for the future and your own efforts are free.
•It is difficult to monitor what or how much SEO activity is going into the website since it takes time for the results to show in most search engines. As a result you could be paying an SEO company for little to no work.
• Many SEO companies ask customers to pay on an on-going basis for the positive search engine ranking results to persist over time. This often leads websites to be bound to pay or face the eventuality of a loss in ranking/traffic.
•SEO companies may resort to undesirable or banned SEO techniques that could get the website black listed by major search engines. It is safer to trust your own judgment regarding which site you should link to and which SEO technique you should adopt.
•SEO is not a complex science that can only be mastered by a selected few. Using the correct study resources anybody can learn and incorporate SEO techniques for optimizing websites.
•Many SEO companies require their customers to furnish the website FTP details to allow changes to be made in the site HTML. This could lead to unwanted or incorrect alterations to the website, or even deletion of crucial files or folders.
•It has been seen often that SEO activities outsourced to companies make a poor ROI (return on investment). SEO companies may charge as much as $300 for optimizing a website for a single keyword/month. In this amount of money you could purchase up to 3000 click-through in a pay per click listing on Google Adwords or Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing).
What are the areas of operation for Search Engine Optimization Professionals
SEO encompasses several areas of operation for SEO professionals. Some of these had been mentioned earlier as well:
•SEO professional Discuss with the clients about client objectives by keeping in mind the budget.
•Search engine optimization professional understands the business model of the website
•Website domain name (SEO professionals decide the domain name)
•Webpage names and file/directory names(SEO professional decide the page names and file names)
•Search engine optimization professional decides Page titles, headers, sub-headers
•SEO professional choose relevant keywords throughout the website
•Making alterations to the copy matter of the website done by SEO professional
•Search engine optimization professional makes changes to the flow and layout of the website & optimizing internal links
•Making design changes by SEO professional
•Search engine optimization professional makes the site search engine readable by working with meta tags & robots.txt files
•Search engine optimization professional monitor the changes to the website in the SERPs of major search engines
•Developing strategies for increasing in-bound traffic
•SEO professional monitors changes to search engine algorithms
•Studying competing websites and learning from their SEO efforts
•Search engine optimization professional handles customer inquiries and problems
•Search engine optimization professional provides timely ranking reports to the customer
