SEO Introduction

This information is for those who are developing a website and want their website get listed in Search Engines (SE).

There are four ways to accomplish this:

• Using paid advertisements (banners), buying keywords

• Hire a SEO company/specialist to do it for you

• Using self serve (organic) SEO

• or a combination of the above

I will discuss different topics, rules and advice related to organic SEO. As an example I will use the search engine Google. Many SE's have different rules to get listed, or in 'SE terms': get indexed. In this guide you will find information about how to get listed in the most important SE's.

 

What is (organic) Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines. Nothing more, nothing less.
Organic SEO means creating/optimizing your web pages such that SE's will consider your page as relevant and useful (for the 'searcher'). The two main weapons in your arsenal are: Keywords and Links to your site

SEO facts:

• Self serve SEO is free (because it's 'you' who is doing this)

• Self serve SEO is not difficult to learn, but takes time and you need to have patience

• There are no SEO secrets, all SEO information you need to know is free to find on the web (and in my Basic SEO Guide)

• There are many (free) tools to test your pages if they are optimized.
  Many useful tools are published in this guide too.

• SEO of your website is never finished, you will need to adjust your pages from time to time

• Subscribe yourself to at least 2 or 3 good SEO newsletters

• Visit at least once a week one or two (SEO) forums and learn from the questions/answers posted by others.

• Never submit your site to a SE, before you are certain that all your pages are optimized

• Do NOT spam the search engines.
  If you want to know how to setup your site, please visit Google's Webmaster guidelines.

Some questions related to SEO:

What is (organic) SEO:

SEO is the art of ranking in the search engines. Nothing more, nothing less.
Organic SEO means creating/optimizing your web pages such that SE's will consider your page as relevant and useful (for the 'searcher'). The two main weapons in your arsenal are: Keywords and Links to your site

What are organic listings:

Listings which are not paid but are found (or indexed) by crawlers are called organic listings.

When will my site be listed:

Your site will be listed if at least one of your pages is indexed by the SE and the keywords the surfer is using must be part of your meta tags and/or page content.

When will my site be indexed:

If your site is optimized according to the guidelines of the Google and if there are other sites that are indexed and who are related to the subject of your site and have put a link that lead to your site, then your site will get indexed.

It is important that those other sites have a good PR (PageRank by Google).

What is PR (PageRank):

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives.

How can I see the PageRank of a webpage:

Download the Google toolbar and one of the options you can use is viewing the PR of a site or your own site/pages.