Search engine optimization considers how search engines work and how people search. SEO tries to achieve the best search engine result by editing the content and html codes so that search engines will rank the page higher based on the selected keywords and tags. There are many optimization methods discovered and devised by the SEO experts. In parallel, the search engines are also forever adjusting and optimizing the search criteria to better serve the searching community who is the search engine’s customers. To have better understanding of search engine algorithm, here is the link to download Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Google also has a very informative page on Search Engine Optimization.

[Added on 14 April 2009]

SEO Technique

SEO is not an easy process. It involves many tedious tasks. The simplest among all is to focus on certain related keywords on your page. You need to include the keywords in the title, the first few paragraphs and also on the meta tag of the article.

Another popular topic on SEO is the page ranking on the search engines organic search results. Organic here means that the search result is displayed by the search engine based on the ranking determined by the predefined algorithm. It is not something that is purchased.

Hyperlink analysis is also covered in SEO. It involves the analysis of the links from and to the particular page. Some factors considered are the relevancy of the links and the quality of the pages linked. It is worth paying attention not to link to pages considered as link spam sites and also link farm sites.

Most search engines are using crawlers to index the sites. Crawlers refer to automatic programs sent by search engines to search for new sites and index the pages. There are certain criteria used the search engines to index the pages as not all pages will be indexed with the same weight.

White Hat vs Black Hat

There are generally two categories of SEO techniques. White hat refers to techniques recommended by search engines as part of good design. Black hat refers to techniques the search engines do not approve. White hat confirms to the search engines guidelines, involves no deception and tend to produce long-term results and effects. Black hat will eventually be discovered by the search engines and either banned temporarily or permanents by the search engines when they are discovered.

White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines. It helps to make content that is easily accessible to the spiders, not trying to trick the algorithm of the search engines. White hat SEO is in many ways similar or even close to web development that promotes accessibility.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. There are many methods which are best not mentioned here. When you think that your content and page structure do not look normal, it is high chance that you might have inadvertently employed black hat techniques. Either you modify your content and structure or risk being banned by the search engines. I guess the answer is very obvious here.

[/Added 14 April 2009]

In Conclusion

It is a good idea to use tools to do search engine optimization.There are many freely available tools on the internet. Here are four sites that provide optimization tools. SEO Tools provides many useful tools and tutorials for your SEO needs. Using the tools provided you can optimize your keywords based on search analytics, link analysis and ranking checkers. If you are the techie type, SEO Chat provides a very comprehensive list of tools that include everything related to adsense, Alexa, meta, robots and many other things. 136 SEO Tools as the name implies has a collection of 136 SEO tools. SEOToolSet has a collection of useful tools including SEO toolbar and other tools.

Additionally, Ultimate SEO Tool by Googleranking provides analysis of your frequently used keywords against Google rankings. You will be able to see how you fare based on Google search criteria. Another useful tool is SEO Tool by SEOBugs. It provides analysis on various aspects of your website based on certain criterias and also provides suggestions on how to better improve the SEO.

While everyone focuses a lot on how to do SEO correctly, we also need to be aware of what not to do. This article on Top 10 SEO Mistakes offers a very intuitive insight on common sense things that we need to avoid. Most of the time people just rush through to produce articles especially in blogoshpere when consistency in timing for in article production is a constant weekly if not daily pressure. Bloggers just forget about the quality and commit most of the mistakes producing adverse effect on the search engine optimization.

The best SEO tip I can offer here is just to avoid all the mistakes presented in the article. By doing this, you are already half-way through to win the race to the top of search engine organic or natural search results.

Good luck to your SEO effort. You are always welcome to share your best tips and sites on this topic.

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