SEO Agency India
SEO Agency India provides leading-edge leisure travel industry technology services featuring inventory management, a full spectrum of electronic distribution products, and other IT solutions. SEO Agency India processes more than 300 million e-commerce transactions annually and facilitates the sale of more than three million vacation package reservations for its clients. Its team is comprised of more than 200 innovative professionals at its Milwaukee headquarters. Visit www.triseptsolutions.com to learn more about the world leader in Web-based leisure travel distribution technology.SEO: Optimizing Web Pages for Search Engines
In these times of sophisticated Internet search engines, it's no longer enough to just have a website. You need to ensure your site will consistently achieve high rankings when "Googled". Over 75% of consumers use Yahoo, MSN, Google or another search engine to research vacation options. That's why it's critical that your site content become search engine-friendly by implementing a variety of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. As Internet users continue to become savvier and their search queries more sharply defined, by properly optimizing your pages, your site will place higher in the search listings and stay ahead of your competition. This white paper will explain: 1) 2) 3) 4) The basics of SEO Benchmarking what is it and why you should do it Tips for research keywords & writing search engine-friendly contentHow to submit sites to search engines and measure results
So, what does it take to get "Googled"?A simple search engine optimization project is not hard to implement. However, staying current on the latest trends, maintaining optimization and reviewing the success of your SEO campaigns takes considerable time and effort. If you're going to do it yourself, start with a simple strategy and proceed from there as your knowledge and comfort level grows. Afterall, a little optimization is better than none at all.
Pay-per-click
SEO needs long-term commitment, but yields long-term resultsTackling SEO in-house is not necessarily the best option for all website owners. A successful SEO campaign is an ongoing project, not a one-time task. It takes time and resources to stay optimized and many site managers have their hands full with other aspects of the business. It may be more advantageous to contract SEO services from a reputable search marketing agency. Outsourcing relieves a site owner of the burden of researching, testing, implementing and maintaining a large scale SEO project.
First things first Before undertaking any part of an SEO overhaul, a website should undergo a thorough analysis for the purpose of benchmarking. A snapshot with current number of visitors, page views, unique visitors, and keyword ranking serves as a gauge by which to measure any improvements gained as a result of any SEO effort. Do your research There are many good sources of information to keep up with the latest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) including online forums, newsletters and conferences. Best SEO websites: SearchEngineNews newsletter by Planet Ocean ClickZ's SearchEngineWatch Best SEO conference: The Search Engine Strategies Conference is located in various cities and countries throughout the year. The conference includes sessions for all levels (basic to advanced) and allows direct contact with some of the search industry leaders. In the end, an SEO strategy can be as complicated and technical or as easy and clean as you want. Ask questions. Read a white paper, like the one
you're holding now. Learning the ins and outs of search engine optimization takes time, just like Spanish, Italian or any other new language.
Breaking it down: SEO Components
Search Engine Optimization is a skill that can be learned, just like any other. Successful SEO strategies are built by utilizing these basic ideas: Content - Otherwise known as body copy, content is what the search engine spiders crawl over when attempting to match the keywords searched to offer additional relevant information. Common mistake: Jamming too many complex topics into a single page. This just confuses the search engine as it searches for content relevant to the search criteria. The solution: Design your site to have a unique page or section for each specific subject. Search engine spiders can recognize keywords that have been embedded in a page, so be sure to pepper keywords into page titles and tags, paragraph headlines and links. Design - A flashy website may look impressive, but don't let design get in the way of function or an effective SEO strategy. Common mistake: Too much Flash and graphics. Search engines can't recognize keywords as phrases in a Flash or graphic format. The solution: Keep the design simple. Successfully optimized sites avoid slow-to-load graphics. Simple text-based designs attract search engine spiders because they can process the relevant content much faster. Tags - Often ignored, meta tagging is one of the more important components of SEO. Page titles, meta titles, and keyword sets should be created with keyword phrase-heavy content that compels users to click through from the search results page. Title Tag - A title tag for any web page appears in the blue field at the top of the browser window. The title is usually the first element search engine spiders encounter, thereby making it an important factor when giving your site a ranking. An improperly composed title tag could be a major reason why your site's ranking is not as high as you think it ought to be.Title tag
Writing a title tag Say your business sells vacations to Hawaii. How should your title tag read? Good: Hawaii Vacations This page title tag is okay, but is limited in scope for both users and search engines. Better: Hawaii Vacation Packages This is a bit stronger, but there's still room for improvement. Hawaii Vacation Packages ABC Vacations, Luxury Vacations to Hawaii This one is the winner because it includes relatable terms, is still to the point, and conveys more relevant information to a potential customer. TIP Each page of your site should have a title tag that accurately reflects the page content. Best:
Benchmarking your site
Benchmarking is about identifying your site's strengths and measuring growth. It's also about understanding your site's weaknesses and taking steps to correct them. Benchmarking exercises can include: Evaluating the look and size of your organization's home page and measuring: Page views Unique visits Total visits Ranking in search listings Other qualities of measurement include: Page content and relevance Consistency of content Keywords and phrases Lastly, an important part of benchmarking is getting a snapshot of the competitive landscape. In order to be successful, you must understand your competition. Looking at websites that offer services or products like yours will provide ideas for things to emulate as well as avoid. A good place to find these competitors is at the top of the search listings.Once a complete set of metrics has been established for your site, the data gained from optimization can be reported and studied for continuing changes or improvements in the future.
Researching Keywords
Keyword research - choosing the most relevant keyword phrases is one of the most important parts of any SEO campaign. You can spend a lot of time optimizing your pages for better ranking, but it's a wasted effort if the right keyword phrases are not targeted. High search engine rankings due to poor keyword selection may still not bring you relevant traffic. So, identify your target audience and research what keywords they might be typing in the search engines to discover your site. Below are some tools you may find useful. Keyword Research Tools 1) Wordtracker® http://www.wordtracker.com - Wordtracker® provides a wide variety of ways to explore top-performing keywords.2) Webmaster Toolkit http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com - Enter the word or phrase you wish to be found under. The Webmaster tool will also suggest additional words and phrases for you to consider using.
3) Overture Keyword Selection Tool http://www.overture.com - If you're not sure what search terms your customers may be using, enter a term related to your site and Overture will show you how many times that term was used as a search query.
TIPS 1) Carefully target the search keywords 2) Keep key phrases relevant and targeted to what a specific web page is about. 3) Avoid placing keywords in JPG, GIF or other graphic formats. Because search engines do not read information contained in graphics, important
words or phrases will be ignored. Although use of graphics may be more visually sophisticated, it's more important for people to find your page. Find appropriate ways to ensure keywords and phrases remain in a textbased format.
Writing for Search Engines
Most web users know how to use Internet search engines to help them find what they're looking for. The most-used search engines are:
Search engines have become invaluable tools for web users simply because they're able to instantly sift through millions of web pages. The matches they find are then returned to the user with the most relevant pages at the top of the list. Because search engines respond directly to the keywords or phrase they're given, an internal algorithm drives the engine to find the relevant pages. Thus, it's critical that your web pages contain enough of the keywords and phrases that your customers are using to find pages like yours. Placement of keywords Search engines perform their tasks similar to how the human brain performs basic functions. Someone browsing in a bookstore will most likely start searching for a book by looking at the title. Search engines do the same thing, and that's why it's so important that the title of each page contain only the most relevant information pertaining to the content of that particular page. EXAMPLE: Let's say a person conducts a Google search on the keywords "book family beach vacations". The search engine logically pushes pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag to the top of the listing. The following result, offers a description relevant to the keyword search. Next, the engine checks to see if the search keywords relevant to the topic appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few
paragraphs of text. If they are found there, that page stays at the top of the ranking list. Because the title tag and body copy matched the keywords searched, the keywords appear bolded. Also, some of the keyword-rich content will display on the search engine results page, allowing the user to read an informative description of your product or service. Here are the Google results for "book family beach vacations":
Keyword Frequency The other way search engines measure relevancy is the number of times the keywords appear within the page content or body copy. As part of the retrieval process, a search engine analyzes how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Pages with a higher frequency of relevant keywords outrank other pages to the top of the search listing that is returned to the user. Of course, all this happens in the blink of an eye, and that's why it's so important to think like the search engines "think" when writing content for your pages.
Example of keyword-rich site copy:
Title tag
Keyword-rich body copy
Don't overdo it A word of caution is in order, however. Going overboard with keyword or key phrase placement in page texts can have the opposite effect. If the search engine detects an abnormal amount of keywords, it may actually reject that page from the final search queue. This is known as search engine "spamming" or keyword "stuffing." For example, repeating a word hundreds of times on a page is a tactic that the search engine may already be trained to recognize.Submitting to Search Engines
Search engine submission, or search engine registration, is the practice of listing your site with the major search engines. Most people with web pages submit their sites to search engines hoping to be as high as possible in the rankings, and hopefully on the first page. However, just as it isn't enough to simply have a web page, it's also not enough to just submit your site to the search engine. All a submission really means is that the search engine has been made aware of your page.Unless your page is properly optimized, there's little hope of achieving any consistent or lasting results. That's where search engine marketing (SEM) comes in. SEM describes the overall strategy of using search engines to market a website. That strategy includes submission, optimization, managing paid listings and more. Appearing high in the search engine rankings can be achieved if optimization, submission and all other factors are carefully considered. By approaching improvements to your site in this manner, the audience you seek will be able to find you.
Metrics & Reporting
After your pages have been successfully optimized, it's natural to want to track the results. This is where having carefully documented benchmarks comes in handy. The original benchmarks created during the site analysis can be used to measure all future performance. Checking regular monthly or quarterly reports from a service such as HitBox or WebTrends help you track your success from day one. You can then use that data to continuously make improvements and upgrades to your keywords and page content.Be patient
It's important to remember that good SEO results take time. In other words, don't expect immediate changes in your rankings. It may take weeks or even months for your SEO efforts to show results. But once those changes start to happen, you should continue to rank well, especially if you practice a system of regular monitoring and page updates.
