Sunday, August 3, 2008

SEO for Newbies

Website owners as well as bloggers today wants their site to be number one. Who doesn’t? But most of them failed to do so because of wrong SEO practices and worst they simple don’t know how to do it. Some will hire a company providing affordable web design service hoping that their works are SEO friendly and it will be easy for them to get high traffic. This article will focus on people who has zero knowledge on search engine optimization and also for those doing it the wrong way.

What is SEO

It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords.It is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Companies that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Website optimization for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization.

Why SEO is Important?

Well think of your site as having lots of information that you wanted to share the world and the only people that knows about it are your friends. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search - people you wanted visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.

SEO will get your site listed in major search engines, putting your site on their databases. That way people that are not intimately acquainted with who you are and what you sell will find you. The world will know about your site, what you are sharing them or what you want to sell them.

Not only that - you are also trying to get your site listed at the top of the index for a particular subject. There are millions of sites out there on every conceivable subject wanting their sites sitting on top of every major search engines. If you sell products, then it won't do you very much good if your site is on the 50th page. It would be like having a Yellow page advertisement where your business is listed in very small print at the back of the book!

Improving Page Rank

There are many ways in improving your page rank. Below are list of ways in improving your page rank.

  • Create high quality and useful content that users want and will share with others.
  • Submit your site to web directories and reference sites. Post your site’s URL to popular web directories including Open Directory Project, Yahoo, LookSmart.
  • Publicize your site to the world. Add your site’s URL to every post or communication that you participate.
  • Join forums, blogs and write newsletters informing people about your site services and offers. It will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit and find interesting content.
  • Ask other high quality websites to link to your site. Getting other good websites linking to your site provides better rankings to Google.
  • Write articles and submit them to article sites for publication.

Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance. Google Guide’s placement in Google’s search results sometimes changes when Google modifies or enhances their indexing algorithms.

Don’t try to keep up with the latest search engine optimization tricks. Instead, strive to make searching easier by educating users about Google services, capabilities, and features.

Here are links to a few high page rank directories for you to submit your site. Directory submission is the free and very good way of link building. If you submit your site to many high quality and SEO friendly directories you will get lot backlinks and high position in google. So here is list of high quality directories with PR4:

1. The Free Directory - submit
2. Homehost Directory - submit
3. YVIR Directory - submit
4. Directory Worm - submit
5. Oxxu Directory - submit
6. ESG Site Directory - submit
7. OPA Network - submit
8. Environmentpage Web Directory - submit
9. Micro Bicides - submit
10. XDSTL Directory - submit


Goodluck!