A Deeper Look Into SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But, before we even start on optimization of any kind, we will first need to understand how search engines actually work.

Search engines use "spiders" to "crawl" the World Wide Web for websites, URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and webpage key words, amongst other details and information. These "spiders" will return to the search engine database after crawling and submit the results of their "crawling" for indexing. Do take note that search engine indexing takes some time, and does not happen overnight.

Search engines measure the quality and popularity of each site mainly by the number of back-links (back-links are actually links to your site that are displayed by other sites) to your site. Classified according to website content, the quality and popularity of each individual website and some other factors, search engines will rank the website for each keyword searched. Following that, a Page Ranking will then be assigned to your website or webpage.

Now that we have a clearer idea of how search engines get information about websites, let's go deeper into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are two key facets of SEO; On-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is very elementary and foundational, and is achieved by optimizing the webpage title, keywords, webpage description and contents of your webpage so that when search engines read the source of the webpage, they will assume that the webpage is what the keywords are really describing.

Off-page SEO is usually done outside of the webpage - primarily on external websites. It is usually the creation of links on external websites (with similar keywords) that are themselves optimized for search engines. When search engines index links and keywords that direct to your website or page, they will assume that these links are in relation to your website, thereby raising your Page Ranking.

Although both on-page and off-page facets of SEO are important, on-page is less so. This is because search engines assign Page Ranking based highly on back-links. But in order to get as high a Page Rank as possible, it would be advisable to optimize your website or page for both. Popular websites like Ablewise.com, which enjoy tremendous traffic, all have both on-page and off-page facets fully optimized.

The author writes occasional articles of interest in finance, advertising and IT related topics.