What is Search Engine Optimization

Onsite SEO is going by the wayside and not being used by the search engines much anymore but if done it may still benefit you to use it on your pages.

The search engines have a "formula" to determine keyword relevancy on each page of your web site. The technical term is an "algorithm", which each  engine has its own unique algorithm that it uses to rank pages.

It generally consists of your page title, overall body content, the number of quality of links pointing back to your site, and how long people stay on your site.

It's important to understand that every engine is different in what they use in their formula. Some may look at inbound links (number of people linking to you), others may place more emphasis on your body content. These days, meta tag content is becoming less and less important but still should be done.

Meta tags are hidden descriptions that appear at the beginning on each page of your HTML code, inside your head tag. Even though this is invisible to your visitor's eyes, search engine spiders can read them.

They normally consist of a title, description, and keyword tag and they look like this:

The title and description of your page will be what the search engine results show. If you don't have anything in the meta description the engines will use phrases from your page for the description.

You may not want the engines using any description for your page since you want to entice people to click on your page in the search results. They usually only use phrases and may not really convey to the person all the information on that page.

Whatever website builder you are using for your pages, you should be able to add the page meta information under Page Settings or possible Page Properties.

Body Area of Page

The SE's are using your page contents to target your actual theme and pulling out keywords related to the main theme. So when you are writing your content try to stay on the actual keywords you have for the theme.

Finding Relevant Keywords

While you write your page and you seem to be using the same keyword over and over again, try using the ~ (tilde) and your main keyword in a search.

The search engines many times don't look at a word and "think" of the same things that you may.

For example: search engine optimization

If you search on Google for ~search engine optimization, relevant words that come up are: main keyword, SEO, search engine, search and search engine optimization optimisation.

By finding the relevant words for your keyword theme, you will be able to interchange your main keyword and not have to over use it.

Yes, the search engines have "grown up" over time with the search engine optimization process and even though many of them do not use the meta tags to "discover" what the page is about it does not hurt to learn the basics of SEO.

Here are the beginners tips of search engine optimization