Search Engine Optimisation: What is it?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) simply put is the term given to improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings such as Google or Yahoo. Branching out from this the term also refers to title given to professionals and consultants who carry out optimisation for paying clients.
For a website to get maximum search engine exposure, a website needs to put the user at its core and contain valuable content that internet users primarily search for. A well optimised website must contain single keywords and keyword phrases that match the search query that the user enters into the search engine. Although a very highly secretive industry, search engine manufacturers such as google, yahoo and msn determine your websites search ranking by first sending out spiders which crawl through your content and links and feed the information it finds back to the search engine database where they are analysed and filed according to search importance.
What are Search Engine Listings?
Search engine placement (or rankings) can occur in one of two ways, naturally or by paid placement advertising. A search engine determines natural listings based on the web pages relevant content and usefullness to the searcher and so includes it in the search listings. In lehmans terms the keyword phrases on the site match the keywords searchers are typing into the search engine query fields. Paid placement simply means the website owner or web designer has paid a search engine to display their website when a search is performed for a number of keywords even if the website does not contain those keywords. More often than not the paid listings will also appear in the natural listings because the content of the web page will be relevant to the user.
Many people have tried to discover the secret behind how search engines rank websites but the main factor to improve any web site’s ranking is to provide the search engine with valuable keywords and content on your web pages. The art of good SEO is taking this relevant content and placing it on your web pages in such a way that it is easily picked up and analysed by the search engine spiders and most importantly have simple straight forward easy to read content for the end user ie the person who will read the information.
What are Paid Listings?
Paid listings is an advertising program supplied by all the major search engines where web pages are guaranteed to be included in a search engine’s index in exchange for payment. Your web pages will be among the top listings in a search. To get the very best out of paid listings means you should also have a well structured and optimised web site because search engines give better rankings and more weight to these kind of websites over other paid listings with poor optimisation.
There is a lot of debate about whether you should pay for a listing or spend your time getting your website optimised to a point were it displays high in the search engine listings for free. The main reason for paid listing is that your website will usually be indexed much quicker than if you left it on its own to be naturally picked up by the search engines. This is highly desirable for web sites that post new or timely information for example news or current affairs websites.
To learn about Wilson Creative’s Search Engine Optimisation Service, please visit our other SEO pages or contact us for a detailed quote.