Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is a broad term used to describe the process of making a website more search engine friendly, allowing it to be spidered efficiently and returned higher in the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERP). Additionally it covers the boosting of the websites perceived authority within the indexes of the search engines, by building link popularity. The overall aim of Search Engine Optimisation is to drive as much organic traffic to a site as possible.

On the Page Optimisation

On the Page Optimisation is the aspect of Search Engine Optimisation that deals with the physical website. Basic on the page SEO will cover such issues as:

• URL – Best SEO practices tells us that every page URL should be descriptive, and use real words. For example, a dynamically generated site may exhibit a URL to a news item such as this: http://www.site.com/news.php?name=news&file=topic&t=920, which means very little to anybody, instead URLs would be configured to re-write into something more meaningful such as http://www.site.com/news/newsitem/ which is much more descriptive.
• Page Title – Page titles should be optimised to carry the most significant keyword or keywords for the page, and kept as short as possible. Most search engines give much weight to the contents of the page title when trying to judge the contents of the page.
• Content – The contents of the page needs to be seeded with targeted key phrases at a density of around 3% to 5%. Once again, most major search engines read frequently repeated phrases to discern the overall content of the page being indexed.

Off the Page Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation also deals with factors that affect the popularity of your page from external sources. Certain measurements of website authority such as Google PageRank depend solely upon the amount of external sources linking to the website being optimised. Put simply, the more incoming links that point to the websites, the higher authority it will be deemed to posses. Additionally, off the page optimisation will also involve making sure that the site is submitted correctly to search engines and other large internet directories such as the DMOZ Open Directory Project and Yahoo.

Conclusion

This has been a very basic overview of the process of search engine optimisation, designed to give the novice enough information to begin making sensible decisions. It is highly recommended that any website owner who is not 100% sure of the SEO process, should take the advice of a professional. The Search Engine Optimisation arena changes almost daily, and a bad decision or fundamental mistake could have disastrous results upon your website, even seeing it banned from the most popular search engines in some cases.

SEO is a fundamental part of any new web development project, and needs to become an ongoing campaign if it is required that a website maintains a high ranking within the search

This article was written by Mac T. Wheeler of Decurro Ltd, he is a freelance writer and owner of a website content store.