Site optimization - think outside of the box!

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Site Optimization


What is site optimization?

Site optimization is a process of optimizing your Web site's performance on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In terms of recognition, having a website at the top of the list on the first search page, particularly with Google, virtually guarantees traffic to your site from targeted visitors. To be seen at all on the search engines a website can be no further back than page three. Statistics show that 90% of visitors will search page one and go no further. 9% go on to page 2 with the remaining 1% willing to go to page 3 and beyond.

Site optimization is often considered the more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because site optimization does help in the promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge – at least familiarity with basic HTML. Site optimization is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines deal with text. Generally, site optimization can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

You can have the most beautiful site imaginable but without site optimization it’s very unlikely that your site will ever be found, even by people that are looking for your specific or service. Making your website search engine friendly consists of both on site and off site optimization processes. Site optimization is the process of figuring out which search phrases, or “keywords”, potential customers might use to find what you are offering, and then doing whatever is necessary to move to the top of the search results so that these searchers visit your site. Site optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

On site optimization includes:


While on site optimization is crucially important, it only makes up half of the formula for getting consistently high search engine rankings.

Off site optimization includes:


In other words site optimization, website SEO, or just simply "SEO" is the process of writing and designing your web pages so that the search engines as well as your target audience understands what your web page as well as your entire website is all about.



Do I need site optimization?

Well… it depends. Site optimization is used by companies that want to get prospects through their Web site and convert them into new clients. If you have a full practice and don't want new clients, site optimization is not necessary!

However, if you are looking to build your practice, site optimization is a great resource that will only become more and more relevant in the future.

Google and the other search engines have algorithms that decide which sites should be ranked at the top for certain keywords. They send out robots (or "spiders") to crawl all the sites on the World Wide Web to gather information. Your Web site is usually crawled once every few months. Thus an site optimization campaign takes at least a few months to be effective and sometimes six months to a year to get your Web site up to the top of the rankings. Because of this, most site optimization providers have a minimum of a 3-6 month contract.

If you have the budget to pay a professional for this service, make sure to investigate very carefully and get examples of their work. If a company offers you a guaranteed top spot on Google, be weary. True site optimization professionals will tell you the truth: that getting a high search ranking for a competitive key word phrase will take months of diligent work and planning, and involves many factors that you cannot control due to competition for the elusive top spot.

The pricing usually starts around $500/month and goes up from there. Pricing depends on your competition and location. Your site optimization provider will give you performance reports that will allow you to see who is coming to your Web site, where they went on the site, what search engines are crawling your site, and other useful pieces of information that allow you to track the success of the site optimization campaign.

Just keep in mind that whether you offer services or sell products online, to stay competitive, it’s crucial that your site is set up properly so it will be listed and ranked high. No matter how compelling your website may be, if your customers can’t find you, they can’t buy from you that’s why you need a strong site optimization campaign.

Although site optimization helps to increase the traffic to one's site, site optimization is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the site optimization techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not because you pay.

Site optimization helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Site optimization benefits

Of course there will be benefits! if it’s done properly site optimization can bring benefits. Site optimization benefits may be summarized as:


On site optimization

Here are a few tips on on site optimization that make the difference :


With the efficient assistance of a professional site optimization company, you receive long-term positive results and your business website will maintain high ranks in search engines.

Off site optimization

Off site optimization cannot be ignored in the search engine optimization process. It is also one of the bases on how search engines rank the websites. So do not focus only on on site optimization but also focus on how you can improve the off site optimization of your website.

An incoming link means additional value for your site. Whenever a visitor views the site where you have linked with, the percentage of the probable clients for your site increases. This is for the reason that there is a strong possibility that you will also get the visitors from that site to view yours through clicking to your link. So it is given that you should make a good site optimization strategy and apply it to your site to improve your off site optimization.

Here are a few off site optimization techniques :


On site optimization or off site optimization?

On site optimization refers to the factors that you can control on your web site: text, links, keyword density, etc. If the search engines are looking at on site factors at all (which they are) and looking for relevancy then it naturally follows that there is a percentage of your content that can consist of the targeted keywords and indicate to the engines that your site is relevant for a given phrase.

Off site optimization refers to the ranking factors that are usually out of your control (quality back-links). Almost all search engines rank the websites mainly on their on site values like content, keywords, design and the like. However, some websites depend on the significance of links, specifically incoming links, when they are breaking off the tie search engine ranking. Yes, the quality of links in your website is a factor in off site optimization. A website should have the finest, relative link on its place.

Some webmasters focus only on on site optimization. They optimize the text of their web pages, they try to get the right keyword density, optimize the web page title, etc. but they don't care about back-links.

Other webmasters think that links from other web sites are the only way to get high search engine rankings. They spend several thousand dollars to buy links from other sites without fully optimizing their web page content.

You can achieve good results with both methods. However, you'll get even better results if you combine both on site and off site optimization.

Site Optimization Strategies

Obviously, this generalization may or may not apply specifically to your site, but the simple fact is that the thing most readers dislike about most websites is that it takes too long for the pages to load.

In other words, your readership is trying to tell you something about how to structure your site for maximum reader satisfaction:

Optimize your pages

  1. Perform Keyword Research - Before you even begin to build your Website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Keyword research is also crucial for your site's usability. Write your site's content using the keywords for which users search, and you'll literally be speaking the same language as your visitors – keyword research is a crucial site optimization technique.
  2. Pages should have at least 200 Words - Quite simply, search engines love content (search engine spiders are text driven) - the more content on a page, the easier it is for search engines to work out what that page is actually about. It's also good to avoid low-content pages from a usability perspective. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of searchable textual information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed content.
  3. Page Size - If 200 words is the minimum length for page content, 100kb is the maximum! In order to fix this problem you need to fix or narrow your HTML code as much as you can. A clean HTML code means a good site optimization!
  4. Web site title - Making sure that you have the right web site titles for your pages is extremely important for site optimization. The keywords you place in your title are important in order to ensure that your topic is understood by Google. One of the primary factors for ranking is if the title is on-topic with the search results. Not only is it important for robots to index and understand the topic of the page either. It is important for click-through rates in the search results.
  5. Heading tags - Heading tags are a must factor for site optimization. When you are laying out your site’s content you have to be sure that you are creating the content flow in such a way that the heading tags are based on prominence. The most prominent of course being the h1 tag, which says this is what this block of copy is about. Making sure you understand heading tag structure is very important. You only want to have one (or two) h1 tags per a page. It is important to not just throw anything into an h1 tag and hope you rank for it.
  6. Opening Paragraph Describes Page Content - Search engines love content, but many engines are especially fond of the first 25 words on each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page (or the site, if it's the homepage), you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area, this is very very important for a successful site optimization campaign.
  7. Internal Linking - Internal Linking - Making sure that your internal linking helps robots (and visitors!) to find the content on your site is huge. Using relevant copy throughout your site will tell the robots (and visitors!) more effectively what to expect on the corresponding page. You do want to make sure that on pages you don’t want to rank in Google that you add a no-follow tag to ensure that the ranking flow of your site corresponds with your site’s topic and interests. No one is going to be searching Google to find out what your terms of service or privacy policy are.
  8. Avoid Frames - Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren't as commonplace as they once were, they're still out there. Using frames is commonly seen to be detrimental to your search engine ranking, as most search engines can't follow links between frames. Put simply, say no to frames!
  9. Provide Quality Content - Content - As cliché as it sounds this is the number one for any site optimization strategy, it is impossibly important to ensure that you have content worth viewing. Without this one simply step to ensure that there is a reason for someone to be on your site, everything else is useless. There are a lot of great sites to find inspiration for writing great content that works.
  10. You should definitely remove or optimize :
    • Separator bar graphics
    • Oversized icons
    • The ubiquitous image map
    • Un-optimized banner graphics
    • Pictures of words
  11. Structure your site for speed - Probably the best metaphor for a site design is a pyramid. Place a blisteringly fast, spectacularly well-optimized page at the "top" of your site. You can always increase page size/load time gradually, with each successive level of depth in your site, particularly if you warn your readers about each successive increase in load time.
    Certainly, there's no guarantee that your readers will start at your main page. But many will, and many more will end up at your main page if you give them a chance to. Make getting to a well-optimized, speed-enhanced main page an easy thing for your readers to do.
  12. Site optimization That's Built to Last - Good site optimization work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change. Educating you about site optimization best practices and arming you with a roadmap for success allows you to keep your website optimized long after we've done our job, ultimately saving your company money.
  13. Appropriate site optimization Techniques Can Make the Difference - Internet users largely depend on search engines to acquire information about online outlets offering particular products or services. Surfers use a variety of keywords or phrases to run the search. Therefore your website has to be search engine friendly in that it should contain the relevant keywords and phrases that can highlight your products. Site optimization services ensure that your website contains the right keywords and other components necessary for it to rank high in the search engines. High ranking websites receive more number of visitors who will eventually become your customers.

Site Optimization Tips

When you begin a site optimization campaign , there are a few basic issues that you should have in place, we have posted a few of these basic issues that may be helpful to you: