An Introduction to the Field of Search Engine Optimisation
This article aims to give a brief overview of what search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about and the role it plays in getting your blog noticed.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engine optimisation is the process by which a website is designed or configured to make it as accessible and interpretable as possible to the algorithms search engines use to index and classify information. There are certain steps that a blog or website owner can take in order to make their content more “search friendly”. By optimising your content for maximum search engine compatibility, you’ll have a higher likelihood of getting your pages listed in search results which will in turn drive more traffic to your blog.
How important is getting your blog into search engine results?
For many blogs, search engine results will ultimately become the primary source of traffic. Some keywords are searched for significantly more often than others, meaning the potential for different topics to gain exposure through search engines will vary. Even for a mildly popular keyword search however, having your blog’s home page or its individual posts listed on the first page of Google search results essentially guarantees you a healthy flow of traffic. It may take some time to get your blog ranked highly in Google search results, but working towards this goal is too big of a traffic building opportunity to overlook.
How does a search engine work?
Search engines scour the Internet applying various algorithms or procedures to the contents of webpages in an attempt to rank or classify information based on its perceived importance and relevance. By doing this, search engines build up an “index” or list of pages found on the Internet.
The largest search engines on the Internet such as Google have an index containing many billions of pages. This index not only stores the addresses of pages found on the Internet, but also the perceived importance and relevance of a site, as calculated by the search engine’s indexing algorithms mentioned above. When a user searches for specific keywords, the search engine looks to its index to determine which pages are most relevant to the user based on the keywords that were entered.
How can I optimise my site for search engines?
In the early days of search engines, the metrics by which a site’s relevancy and ranking were determined were somewhat basic and often well known to webmasters. As a result, less scrupulous site owners would unfairly exploit their knowledge of search engines to get higher rankings. While this may have worked well for some individuals, the overall effect was that the quality of search results became diluted by higher ranking, less relevant sites. Today, search engines have gotten significantly more sophisticated and do a much better job of returning relevant results despite many unscrupulous attempts at “beating the system”.
These days, SEO has become more of an art than a science and what works one day may not work the next, as search providers continue to tweak their algorithms to provide the most relevant results. Various SEO methods have been found to work with varying levels of success. Allot of money is being made by “professionals” in the field of SEO who sell their knowledge, services and products to businesses and individuals looking to get a hand up in search results. Unfortunately, telling good SEO advice from bad SEO advice can often be difficult, so make sure you carefully scrutinize any information you come across on the topic.
This article is not intended to go into any great detail regarding specific SEO methods, although a few simple examples of site optimisation techniques have been given below to give some context to the discussion.
- Give your posts clear and concise titles that accurately describe the content they contain. The more accurate your title, the more likely it’ll appear when a user does a keyword search on the words contained in it, making your content more relevant.
- Add text descriptions to graphics or images. Most search engines can’t accurately interpret the meaning of images, so attaching an “alt” text description to an image helps.
- Check your spelling. If you spell something wrong, you’re relying on the user to spell it wrong also in their keyword search.
These are only a couple of very basic examples of SEO at work. There are countless other methods designed to make a site more search friendly. This article however is designed primarily to introduce the existence of the field of SEO, rather than the fine details of its implementation.
Before attempting to perform any given search engine optimisation technique, make sure that it’s not something that is likely to get your site blacklisted by the major search engines. Search engine algorithms often draw a fine line between search engine optimisation and attempts to unfairly exploit the system, which may result in the search algorithm omitting your website from search results.
What search engine should I primarily focus my SEO efforts on?
If you had to direct your efforts at optimising your blog towards only one search engine, the answer to which search engine you to choose would be simple: Google. Google holds an online search monopoly and at time of writing handles almost 60 percent of all online searches. To put this in perspective, the next two closest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, only handle around 18 percent and 14 percent of online search queries respectively.
Why you shouldn’t get too caught up in SEO
SEO may be an important step in enticing traffic to your blog, but try not to lose sight of the fact that your blog should ideally provide something worth reading. Getting wildly involved in SEO before you have anything worth reading is like promoting a new restaurant, having your customers turn up and then realising you never got around to purchasing any food to serve. If you have a restaurant that serves up fantastic food, you’ll only need a few customers to get things rolling. From then on in word of mouth will give your restaurant plenty of exposure without you having to actively seek it out. Always aim to provide quality content above all else. This alone will play a major role in driving your site up the search engine rankings.