It is said that there is no low priority aspect when it comes to optimizing a website, everything counts. You need everything done right, from keywords to linking and programming structure. All of those things affect the overall ranking of your website. Also, don’t forget the content! Therefore, let’s talk about the critical aspects of website optimization, the aspects that one should look into thoroughly.

The first thing you need to sort out is your website accessibility. There are a few key points you need to keep an eye on or the search engines may penalize your website. Start with basic things, like the link functionality. If you already have broken links, search engines may degrade your ranking, not to mention the people browsing your website. They will feel frustrated if the links they click on are not working.

After checking for broken links, you need to check the validity of your HTML and CSS. People may say that this is not an important part, but actually it is very important. If your website doesn’t follow some rules set by the W3C guidelines, search engines may crawl your site and find errors. They may misinterpret some of the things which will eventually affect your rankings.

You also need to maintain high functionality of your website. There is a saying in SEO, the simpler the better. Too many Java scripts, element block content and select boxes may cause search engines to miss some pages. Be sure to directly link the relevant pages on your website, since crawlers follow links.

Another thing to keep an eye on is the file size. Search bots, spiders, crawlers, call them what you like, have a limit. They can and will only index pages and their content up to 150K. They will index your page if it exceeds that amount, but they may not index it completely. This means that some of your most important content on a certain page will not be indexed. Not to mention that having files of a smaller size on your pages will also allow your pages to open faster. This helps the visitors greatly. You need to keep your site optimized, since both search engines and people will find hard to index or read a slow page.

Technical Aspects

The first part of technical aspects is, and always was, the URL. In addition to the URL, there are also title tags and meta data that are of importance. Those are all things that describe your website both to search engines and to visitors. Highly relevant URL and title tags can mean a lot for your website, especially if you use keywords. Combining an important keyword with the titles, URL, content and, of course meta data will lead to a high ranking eventually.

You should aim for the URL to be descriptive and relevant, and at the same time short. That can be hard, but there are a few things you should consider before deciding on a domain. For other pages URL can be modified, but it is much harder to modify a domain URL. You can choose one of the three forms of URL.

• Keyword
• Brand
• Business name

Keyword is probably the best option of all, but almost every word in the dictionary is already taken, so that may be difficult. Brand name is something like Digg or Amazon, that is also good but you need to work hard in order to promote a brand name. Business name is for those that already have a store and wish to open a website for their products and clients. This means that you can have both keyword and brand in your URL.

Title tags are also very important. The best idea is to have a keyword in the title, but at the same time to make it full of information. If you are writing about the new iPad, using just that name will get you nowhere. The best example for a good title would be: “iPad – A new gadget from Apple”. Doing that you provide both visitors and search engines with what they need, information.

Meta tags are the last part. Some time ago, meta tags were the only thing we needed in order to make a website rank high. You just needed to stuff your meta tags with keywords and you can place yourself in top rankings. That is not the case now. Actually, it isn’t the case for over 10 years. Although meta tags will not be used to calculate your rankings they are used for description. Most search engines, like Google will use the snippet from your meta description tag and place it under the link. That description may have the biggest influence on someone to click on your link and visit your website.

Every single part mentioned in this article is very important for optimization of your website. We are not living in the 90’s when you could just stuff your meta with keywords and enjoy the number one rank. SEO has become very complicated, but if done properly it will show you its benefits.

The website optimization has some important key points that shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes to the search ranking.

SEO is an ongoing process in which you try to get your website to rank high in the search engines. There are a few strategies that can be used, and each strategy has its benefits and its flaws. The best strategy would be to implement every good method that can be done, but that can sometimes consume an enormous amount of time and energy. The most important thing is to make sure that your website has good content. Having quality content on your website will make others want to link to you. On the other hand, there is no purpose in building a great site without optimizing it. What is the purpose of a great website if no one will see it?

If you expect quick results you are stepping into the wrong territory. SEO is a long process, both in its application and results. The most important thing is to be patient and apply SEO step by step.

As mentioned above, having unique content is essential. Your content and the proposal you are making to your visitors needs to be special, different from what has already been offered on the web. This is a hard task, but if you want to succeed, it is a must as well.

An online community is also something you must be a part of. Whether you will build your community or join some niche related community or do both doesn’t matter, as long as you are a part of a community.

Friendly linking is very important. No matter how great your content is, if it is not formatted well or if it has a lot of ads breaking the content nobody will link to your website. Therefore, concentrate on building links and placing some ads that will promote your website. Other things will come at a later date when you already have popularity. Make your website friendly and people will want to link to you.

Monetization plan is something you must have if you want to earn money from your website. If you don’t have a monetization plan sooner or later the costs for hosting and servers will start draining on your budget.

Market awareness is something every site owner needs too. There is no point in you creating a website if you are not aware of the competition. Competing for a high competitive keyword is sometimes impossible, so if you are still planning on going for that maybe you should concentrate on a marketing budget. That way you can buy links, or hire a consultant that will bring more high PR sites with links to your website.

What every SEO consultant will tell you when creating an SEO strategy for your website, is to focus on quality rather than quantity. Although quantity will bring you some PR, most likely very fast, in the long run it will be considered as spam and it won’t bring you a high rating. On the other hand a few well placed quality articles may be worth thousands of links pointing to your website. Stay focused on quality since one quality link from an .edu or .gov site will be worth over 30,000 links from a blog community that has a page rank 2 or 3.

The last part of building a website is deciding on whether to use the services of a professional SEO company or to go with your home based SEO. There are benefits and flaws of both. While working from home you will save money and you will learn a lot about SEO and online marketing. In the end you will have a complete control, which means that you will be responsible. Whether you will succeed or fail will be up to you, so it will come down to either death or glory, but it is yours and yours alone.

On the other hand, having a professional SEO consultant has great advantages. You will be placing your website into the hands of professionals that do SEO for living, which means that they have great knowledge and experience. Most of the SEO companies already have a good relationship with many high PR websites which can mean a lot in boosting to your ranking via links. They already have a great link building knowledge and they can easily identify linkable content. They will fix any problems your website might have and they will save you a lot of time.

The best thing to do is to acquire the knowledge needed, but still hire a SEO professional. By doing that you will cover every aspect needed. If you understand SEO you can be more involved and you can still have complete control. That way you will be responsible for the course of your website’s SEO, while the professional company will be doing most of the work. You will be able to rely on them for a quick and professional service that will bring high quality links to your website.

If you do hire SEO professionals to do the optimization for your website, you need to be mindful of some things. Never use a company that guarantees high ranking. A company that is promising high ranking in no time is most likely a company of spammers that use black hat SEO which can get you banned by the search engines. You also need to look for the optimization method that the company is planning to use. Keep in mind that you want your website to be friendly to both visitors and search engines. You will gain nothing if they optimize it just for your high rankings.

The SEO strategy has many important points one should look into before engaging into the website optimization process.

When we are talking about SEO most people will automatically think of keywords, and they are right. There are other aspects of SEO however, but keywords are the most important part. Just think about it, when you run a search what did you use in order to search for something? You used a keyword.

Therefore, the whole search engine optimization is based on keywords. If you want somebody to find you, you need to provide keywords for them to be able to do that. It is as simple as that, but what is not so simple is finding the right keywords. It can even be the hardest part sometimes. The first part of finding the right keywords is the keyword research.

Keyword research – How to

If you want to rank well, the keyword research is the most important part of SEO. Without proper keywords you might be placed low in the rankings or even worse, search engines may misinterpret your content and rank you for wrong keywords. There are a few steps you need to take in order to thoroughly research the keywords and their worth for your website.

The basic step is something that everybody will tell you, and it is something you have to do on your own – brainstorming. You need to look at your website content and figure out which words are most likely to be used in a search. Exploring those keywords is a must and to do that you can use keyword search tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool. This tool offers information on how much a certain search has been done in the past month or over the year and it will also give you some alternative keywords you can use. You can use similar tools to analyze the worth of those keywords as well.

The next step is analyzing the keyword terms. This is really an important step because it measures the level, quality, and quantity of search for that phrase. In order to measure a worth and significance of a keyword there are a few steps you need to take.

First is the conversion rate. Conversion rate is the percentage of people who search a certain phrase and actually buy a product or click on ads on your website. Second is the predicted traffic, a rough estimate of the people that will conduct a search on your keyword each month. Then there is customer value, which represents an average amount earned per customer that used the keyword you are targeting. The last, but very important is competition. Your competitors are very important and you need to measure how competitive is your keyword and will it be difficult to rank high.

When you analyze all of these elements you can find the right keyword to target. It is best to keep two or three keywords per page in the beginning. Having too many keywords may be contra productive. It is best to keep as many pages as possible with not too many keywords presented on those pages. Later on, when you are building links it will be easier to link your pages, i.e. content of each page and relevance. Do not stuff all the links on one page.

Long tail keywords

For all of you new in the business, a long tail keyword is a keyword phrase that consists of several words, in example: “where to buy a Stihl chainsaw”. I know what most of you are thinking, why use long tail when plain “Stihl chainsaw” will do the trick? There are two reasons for that.  First, it is much easier to rank high for a long tail keyword. Second, people that use long tail keywords to look for something are more likely to make a purchase. That shows that they know what they are looking for.

In this part you need to think harder in order to find specific long tail keywords related to your website. This is where you need human opinion and not just keyword tools. You need to target highly convertible keywords that are related to your niche. You can separate your niche into smaller groups that can help you find the proper long tail keyword you are looking for. You need to remember that long tail keywords are the key to monetization of a website. We already said that people who know what they are searching for are more likely to make a purchase.

In the end all of this is very important, and you can’t skip a single part of it if you want your keywords and your website to rank well. Proper keyword research is necessary. You need to find less competitive keywords that have high relevance but decent amount of traffic.

By doing the keyword research properly and by finding the right long tail keywords you will be able to optimize your site correctly and gain more visitors and potential buyers.

Do you know what traffic worthy website is? We are talking about SEO here, so building traffic worthy website is one thing that most people overlook. People mostly focus on SEO aspects, but they forget the most important thing, the quality of their website.

If you aim to rank high on some terms you might accomplish that with good SEO, but you will eventually lose to the competition if you do not have the quality content on your website. Number one ranking in search engines will be meaningless if the competitor’s website offers more than yours. Therefore, let’s focus on building traffic worthy website.

The goals of any search engine when compiling ranks are usability of a website, functionality and quality of information provided on that website. You have to understand that getting a high rank is one thing, but keeping that rank over a longer period of time is something completely different. By giving the search engines what they need from the start, you can achieve that goal.

Usability of a website

Usability of a website is defined by ease of use when looking at the design, functionality, navigation and architecture of your website. Here are a few things you need to concentrate on to make a website with high usability:

Design

The website’s design, its graphic elements and layout have the biggest influences on its overall usability. The biggest mistake people make when designing a site is making it look flashy. While the site may look grand on the first look the usability may be compromised. Visibility and contrast are the two very important factors, since they decide how easily a visitor can interact and view text and content on the website. To make your website even more usable you need to separate every unique section like advertising, menu, navigation, search bars and content.

Navigation

Well constructed navigation that can easily connect to the deepest pages on your website is crucial. Navigation is one of the basic and primary functions on a website. Well constructed navigation with highlighted keywords that show what a visitor will see on the next page is a must for a quality website.

Information Architecture

Well composed hierarchy of a website will greatly enhance its usability. By providing topics and categories you will help the visitors find what they are looking for on your website much easier. People want to find what they are looking for easily, so a bad architecture can cost you visitors.

Functionality

You need to make sure that everything on your website functions properly and with no errors. Your tools, scripts and images need to be viewed correctly no matter what browser the visitor uses. Many people still use Internet Explorer 6, so if you make a website to function only for Mozilla you will lose quite a number of visitors.

Content

The website’s content is very important, not only for quality but also for usability, and people tend to overlook it. You need to make the headlines descriptive as possible, also the accuracy of the information provided and quality of the content will greatly enhance the usability and will help you get more links.

Usability of a website is the key to making your website worth traffic. High usability will ensure more links, and your visitors will be satisfied, which means higher conversion rates. You don’t want to put your visitors in a position when they have to think what they need to do on your website.

One of the things you need to keep an eye on is the overall appearance of your website. Yes, you need to make it easy for surfing, but a low budget look may hurt the image of your website. Therefore, hiring a professional designer is always the best option. In most cases people judge your website in the first 10 seconds, and we all know how much a first impression is worth. Your site needs to have a professional look and you can get that by focusing on:

• Defined navigation
• Elegant color scheme
• Attractive lines and shading
• High quality photos
• Design that creates intuitive flow of information

Design of your website doesn’t directly influence the ranking in the search engines, however it can do a lot for your website. A professional design can bring you more links, it can keep visitors coming over and over again, it also builds trust and of course usability. All in all, a professional design will affect your rankings as well.

The last but the most important part is the content itself. Your website will never be ranked high, no matter how good the design, links or other aspects of SEO are, unless you have high quality content since the authority search engines will always reserve the high ranks for websites that offer quality content with relevancy. Until you have that sorted don’t even try to work on other aspects of optimization.

If you wish to build traffic worthy website, attract more visitors and keep them you need to cover all the aspects of website optimization.

There are two sides of SEO, the first part is website optimization the second part is website promotion. Once you get your website up and running and you optimize your pages you need to start promoting it. Just building links won’t help you achieve a thing, since search engines can recognize a link spam. You need to do a natural (organic) link building if you want to achieve success.

Building organic links means writing articles, maintaining blogs and making press releases. That will help you rank higher, but that is not the only goal here. Visits you get from a search engine are less than 50% of traffic, so that means that other 50% or more comes from those links. By following one or several link building methods, you will be building your audience as well.

Community Building

Community building is the first phase in growing your websites popularity. You need to create a user base that will overtime become a solid community. This is not an easy task at all, however if you can do it, you will always have returning users. You can achieve this by building a forum or blog or any other multi user interface. That is a hard task but the benefits are great.

Press Release

Press releases are a great way to obtain links. Press releases for your website and its activity need to have catchy titles that describe the release itself. Good structure of a press release is necessary. There are even SEO websites that focus on optimizing press releases. Make sure to check them out.

Link Building

The best way to build your links if you are starting out in an already established niche is by monitoring and analyzing the links of your competitors. You don’t need to do your research when somebody else has already done it for you. There are several ways to inspect backlinks of a competitor’s website.

The easiest way of doing this is by using some of the applications and programs the SEO specialists have developed. Of course, don’t just submit to any website offering links, you are aiming for organic traffic after all.

Building Reputation

Building reputation and at the same time popularity is the most important part of owning a website. It does take a lot of time, but in the end it is worth the effort. Your income will depend mostly on your reputation and popularity. The best place to start is by building a unique personality of your website. Every niche is explored and used, so the only way you are going to separate yourself from the competition is by creating something different when it comes to your site, by giving it personality.

Letting the people know more about your website and gaining popularity, and at the same time developing personality, requires a lot of personal effort. This means that you are need to use forums, blogs, chat rooms and other social media websites in order to inform people about your website.

Always use the same picture, same avatar, and same signature for all of those. Be honest with the people and give honest and useful advices. Interaction with people is crucial in the beginning. This is the best way of gaining organic traffic.

Targeted Keywords

The last part about gaining popularity is getting your name out in every way possible. We already covered all the basics, but now we are returning to the roots of SEO, keyword targeting. It is difficult to find a short term or short keyword phrase that has low competition. For those kinds of words you will have hard time ranking in the search engines first 20. So, what can you do?

You need to target long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are easier to rank for, competition is smaller and they tend to bring more organic traffic. A person that knows what he wants will type in a long tail keyword, and that person is more likely to make a purchase or convert. Another great aspect of long tail keywords is that you get to establish yourself as an expert in a sub niche.

Every niche is covered, but every niche has sub niches. Therefore, if you tap your website into one of those sub niches you may build up popularity and authority. That is what search engines like and they will give you a high ranking. That is also what people like. If they see you as an expert in a certain field or niche they are more likely to visit your website and revisit it later.

In the end, gaining popularity for your website and keeping it is an ongoing process like most parts of SEO. Building a website and maintaining it over a few years is a lot of work, but if done properly it can be very profitable. You need to remember, if you want your website to be around in a few years, you have to work on its content, authority, personality and eventually popularity.

Stay focused on the most important aspects of website optimization and you will be on a good path to make your website popular.

Maybe the best way to understand SEO and to start optimizing your website properly is to get a good understanding of how search engines operate. By now you certainly know what SEO is and how it may help your website attract more traffic. To expand that knowledge even further you will need to know the way search engines index and rank your pages.

There is a very short list of actions that search engines do in order to index a website:

Crawling

Crawling the web is the first thing search engines do. They have automated spiders that use hyperlink structure to crawl the web, pages and documents the WWW (World Wide Web) consist of.

Indexing

The second step is indexing. Once a page has been “crawled” the content of the page can be indexed. That means that the content will be stored in a giant database. This may sound easy but it is not. When you type in a specific search in a search engine you get the results in a fraction of a second, so that means that the database is highly managed.

Processing the queries

This is where the third part comes in – the queries procession. When you request information using a search engine, the engine looks up and retrieves all related data to your search. Therefore, if you typed “website optimization” into the search engine it will give you all the results matching those words. It will give you a broad result however, because it will match all of those words separately. If you were to run a search on “search engine process”, with quotes, you would find more relative results as the engine will display the results only for the matching keyword.

Ranking

Ranking is the last step and an actual result of this whole process. After the engine has found your match it will run an algorithm that will determine the ranking of your search results. The engine does that in order to give you the most relevant results for your search, so that means the first result is more likely to be relevant than the 23rd.

Closer Look at Search Engines

There are of course other aspects that go deeper into the world of search engines. You need to follow that trail in order to get the insight into the work of search engines. There are two things that a search engine counts in order to rank a page when you make a search. Those are relevance and popularity.

Relevance is actually counting. That is what it comes down to. When you run a search, the engine will go through the document and inspect it for the matching keywords. The more keywords appear on a page the more relevant the engine will find the page to be. There are other aspects to it as well, so simple keywords stuffing will not do the trick, and in fact it may turn to be lethal for your website.

Popularity is measured by citation of a document retrieved that matched the search you made. Search engines calculate the popularity by cross-referencing the content with other sites and pages pointing to it. What it comes down to is that search engines look if the search performed matches some important parts of the document, heading, titles and the body. They also perform a link analysis to see who is linking to the site and what do they say about the site, and more importantly, are they trustworthy.

This means that search engines operate on a totally different level than they did before, taking much more thing into consideration in order to figure out the relevance and popularity. The two important things search engines look is quantity and quality of links, the second one being more important. If there are thousands of links pointing to your website in the eyes of the search engines your site is popular. However, if you add trustworthy sites that link to yours, you will gain higher ranking from one such link than from hundreds of others.

Page rank

A high page rank means that the site is considered trustworthy by search engines. As mentioned before, one link from a highly ranked site can be worth thousand links from other low ranked sites. The important thing is that the page rank can be passed on.

Page ranking isn’t everything for a search engine however, since there are low ranked pages that are highly ranked in search engines’ queries. What this means is that the search engines rely on many other aspects and they are becoming even cleverer every day. The best example of this is the smart algorithm for the search engines that picks up synonyms and homonyms of a word. If you type something like “paper figures”, the search engine may give you results for origami, which is probably what you were looking for. Search engines are using their smart programs to identify synonyms for the content of the page you are searching for. That means that even though a webpage didn’t try to rank for those keywords, search engine’s algorithm will collect the data and translate it.

Search engines are evolving and algorithms are changing. No matter what kind of research you do, you will have to keep up with the ever-changing search engines’ operations in order to follow the latest trends and use them to your advantage.

Learning more about how the search engines operate is of the essence when it comes to search engine optimization process.