In SEO knowing a search engine system and on how it works is already winning half of the battle. A good SEO company must constantly be informed on how search engine algorithm works. Knowing that these algorithms change almost constantly an SEO campaigner must outline the different criteria that were carried by the new algorithm from the old one and if these criteria are still being used at present time. Although Google has implicitly stated that their criteria is not just one but a myriad of criteria here are some that are still being utilized up to today:

Replace linked photos with linked text in other websites that will point to yours, in order for the search engine to determine the websites’ page importance which will ultimately give the page rank of the website.

Always use the keywords in your websites’ title.

Google algorithm will take a close look at your words or contents that are within the heading tags and the body tag of your HTML code respectively. Knowing this fact it is a wise decision for you to as much as possible include keywords to be placed within those tags mentioned.

The algorithm also considers the page rank of a website. In an SEO campaign link building is always an essential part. Linking pages from an outside website to your website will determine the page importance of the website which will in turn be given a page rank by Google.

Google will favor websites with at least 250 words of website related content. This is where wordsmiths or writers’ skills would be most useful. A website with more than one page due to the written content will have a better chance of having a good rank.

Update your site often. Google search engine will always look for the “age” of a website and how well and how often it is being updated.

One most important criterion is the age of the website and the links connecting to your website, the older the better, this is because older websites are proof of their survivability rate. The website and link with the longer existence is confirmation of the websites’ longevity in terms of web or internet presence.

To summarise, Google actually requires website owners or SEO companies to select the best keywords and build you links by getting other websites to link your site from theirs using keywords rather than images. Finally, SEO professionals must always keep it natural web designing as if search engines and rankings are not the primary considerations.

It is a known fact that Google is the number one search engine in the web today and having the privilege to be listed amongst its database of web pages will be an opportunity for you to acquire more conversions on your possible clients which would ultimately mean more sales, thus a good understanding on Googles’ algorithm will spell success in your SEO campaign. But why center on Google? This might be one of the questions that keep on popping in your mind, well the answer to that is quite simple really, and this is because of popularity. Google is the most prominent and most used search engine today; moreover it has ties with other search engines where Google also provides search results.

 Now that we have established to an extent Googles’ importance in the world of SEO let us take into account the fact that Google’s or any search engine for that matter constantly changes its algorithms, thus whatever algorithm is true today may not be effective tomorrow, although one this is still sure with regards to Googles’ algorithms, that they were divided in to two major group.

The first group is the on-page factors (keywords) – it is a known fact that keywords are essential in an SEO company’s search engine optimization campaign. Keyword factors in Google includes when, where and how keywords are utilized. In other words how efficient is the optimization of your website using the most relevant keywords and if the keywords are actually present in your web design or website content or in its links.

The keyword factor actually indicates a websites’ page relevance. Page relevance is the determination on how your keywords are relevant to your content as a whole. To illustrate how the algorithm keyword factor relates to page relevance we take the following discussions; Searchers enters about 2-5 word phrases in their search, which will later on, when submitted, be analyzed by Googles’ “search engine” and comparing the words in its indexes which will then display the pages that will contain the entered keywords. The Google algorithm will always interpret a keyword to be the websites’ theme if this word appears in the content more than that of any of the keywords. Using those keywords Google will also search and display other websites that has links to your website most especially if that third party website will have similar keywords with your website.

The second group is the off-page factor (link) which relies mostly on the quantity and quality of websites that contains links to your own website. Links are very important due to the fact that a link to your website is actually being considered by the Google algorithm as a vote to your website. This factor also determines the page importance. So how does it work on Google? Well the Google search engine will analyze the different website that contains links to your website and any links that is found to be pointing to your website is being considered by Google as a form of a “vote” to your website. The more web pages that link to your website will translate to Google interpreting that your website is more important which will then give an effect of bestowing higher page rank value.

Taking these factors into consideration in your SEO campaign will greatly help you in your cause.

It is a known fact that in the process of search engine optimisation, methods or techniques are not absolute; algorithms are constantly being modified if not entirely changed. Despite of these limitations one concept still remains to be a constant factor in SEO and that is on the use of keywords or key phrases. Choosing the right keyword is important; this could spell the success or failure of an SEO company’s Search Engine Optimization campaign. How does a person choose a good set of keywords or key phrases? SEO may not be an exact science and keyword choosing is not exactly subjected into a strict scientific process, but there are initial steps that can be followed to ensure that when it comes to keyword choosing such was done in a well thought-out manner and not just done in random.

Here are some tips to guide first time SEO’s in choosing their keywords:

Get inside the searchers’ head – put yourself in the position of the searcher think deep on what may be the different keywords that a searcher may use if he/she is trying to look for your products or services that you offer. By doing this you will cut down on all the possible keywords that are relevant to your website content.

Establish your identity – a company will not be complete without its business name, in your SEO campaign the business name will play a vital role as it will be the very first consideration when you will start thinking of keywords that is relevant to your website’s content. In addition, you also have to establish the definite products or services that you are offering and when you integrate them into keywords it would be advisable to use the generic term for your products or services.

Identify the basic need that your company is going to provide for – most businesses are created because of the presence of the need for such products or services, therefore in your search for keywords to be used in your SEO campaign you have to take the need you are providing for and turn it into a keyword or a keyphrase. For example your company provides or sells tropical fruits then you might want to consider keywords such as “fruit basket” or “tropical fruits”.

Accept the fact that searchers may commit typographical errors – it is not that we are encouraging you to make use of more misspelled terms than correct ones in your SEO campaign, but we must accept the fact that errors in typing is commonly committed, therefore in order to cover that error in your SEO campaign you have to analyse your company name and other pertinent keywords and write down a list of possible incorrect word that may emanate from your keyword.

Use your business location as a keyword – Since the internet is a global public access of information we have to take into consideration the geographical location of your business. Unless your business caters to the global community, you have to add in your list of keywords your business location in your SEO plan. You do not want to waste your SEO energy in customers living in the Philippines if your business can only cater to customers residing within the U.K.

As I have said SEO is not an exact science but following these tips will not make you lose anything but rather you might gain an increase in rank or two.

In every SEO campaign the basic, but most significant component of your website are keywords. Success in your SEO campaign may be achieved by having a good sense of keyword choice. We have to remember that Search Engine Optimisation is not a complete and exact science, it is dynamic and most of all there is no formal field of study that focuses on SEO, therefore we have to take things into the proper perspective and understanding that keyword choice initially depends on the SEO company that will campaign your cause. But of course the final approval on the choice of keywords will still come from you, the business owner because you will be the one who will choose the keywords, key terms or key phrases that you would like your company to be known for. So choosing the right powerful keyword will greatly help your SEO campaign.

But why do we have to really carefully scrutinize and choose the keywords for our website? What can we actually benefit from it aside from the vague fact that it will help us in our SEO campaign? Here are some benefits listed for you to dispel the cloud of doubts on the usefulness and power of correct keyword choice.

The right keyword will attract the right customers. It is a known fact that when we choose the keywords for our website it is much preferred to use keywords or phrases that pertains or is closely if not exactly related to our sites’ main content, and if these closely-knitted words are used in your SEO campaign you will in turn get to attract the right or actual customers. For example your website is about your catering business of course you will be choosing keywords like “catering” or “food service” and not “how to prepare” or “eat”, what would be the effects if you chose the latter keyword or key phrase? Well not only will you be attracting a myriad of searchers you will also mislead these searchers.

Expect more click-through. This is due to the fact that your keywords are actually closely if not exactly  associated with your website content.

Right customers equals conversions. Of course one of the main reasons why we actually would like to make sure that we have the right customers’ visiting our website is because we want potential conversions to be transformed to actual conversions or sales.

Having a well thought-out keywords will give you and your Search engine optimisation team a degree of confidence, this is because it will give you or your SEO company content writers familiarity in the keywords and how they should be integrated in your websites’ content.

Search Engines. Everybody uses them these days. Everybody knows the most popular ones like Google, MSN and Yahoo Search. According to statistics, almost 90% of internet users use these search engines to find information either in terms of products, services, pictures or information pertaining to their local area.

A search engine is like a library where books (web pages, images or information) are indexed for the end-user. All you have to do, is find the website address of a search engine, populate the ‘search’ column and hey presto, your little web genie will throw up information that is related to your search request.

Now you might say: “Yes, we know that! What’s new?”

I’ll agree that there’s nothing new about search engines, now that we’re in the New Millennium, but that’s just one part of the story when it comes to the users.

My intent is to delve into the workings of a search engine, as SEO is of great interest to people who are getting acquainted with the idea of using the Internet to make their living. And in understanding how a search engine works, will set a foundation in understanding the concept of ‘search engine optimization’.

So, long before the process where a customer begins searching for a particular keyword, the first step is that the search engine retrieves information by means of a computer program called a ‘Web Crawler’ that searches for web pages on the World Wide Web in a meticulous and methodical manner. Most of the web pages that are found are indexed, which is the next step.

Now, once a page is found, it is stored and indexed at the search engine’s database for future queries that are made. The search engine’s web crawler (alphabetically, of course) sorts these pages by extracting words are extracted from the titles, headings or special words, in the case of blogs known as meta-tags. In some cases, the search engine stores almost the entire or a part of the source page

Now, if a website doesn’t contain the keywords that were indexed at the search engine database, due to change in content. So, in order to provide accurate search results for a user, the web crawler regularly checks for updated information on the sites as well as new sites that might provide relevant and recent results.

And, so that’s how your little web-genie throws up accurate and relevant information according to your keyword query.

So, what does this have to do with search engine optimization?

Now, since the concept of a search engine is a commercial one, so in order to provide a service, one must generate revenue to pay its staff as well as generate profits.

Some search engines, normally, are open to paid advertising where websites pay to be listed higher up in the ranking when a user requests for information using keywords that match the content on that site. Other search engines place ads on their page so that when a user clicks on the ad, they get a cut in driving traffic to those particular websites.

Search Engine Optimisation works much like Public Relations in the real world, helping its clients to get visibility without necessarily paying for it but focusing on the important aspects such as content relevancy and quality, presentation and ‘staying connected’ to networks that are related to the industry that they cater to.

In short, it will help you make the top-ten list in a particular keyword search by a user while keeping your advertising expenditure at a minimum.  Just like PR companies are a vital cog-in-the wheel, when it comes to moderating and creating a brand image for its clients, Search Engine Optimisation fulfills that purpose in the ‘virtual world’.

Since web site’s usability has to take precedence over all aspects of web design it is imperative for first time web designers to be able to identify factors that could make a site usable. Although the aspect of making a site usable is quite tiresome for some web designers its importance should never be discounted, besides if you are running an extensive SEO campaign and you would really want to achieve that number one rank in google then you have to take all web design aspects into perspective.

Here are some guidelines that would help first time designers in making a fully usable web design or web site.

Always be consistent in your web design – consistency in web design would mean incorporating colors and design techniques all over your website design. This would enable users to easily familiarize themselves with the web site environment and thus would enable them to learn the interface only once. Of course we do not want our users to wonder if they were redirected to another website due to the inconsistencies in the web design.

Make use of simple designs – most of the time users prefer simple over complex web designs, this is because of the fact that complex web design actually creates more clutter that increases the “noise” on your web page. To remove these “noise” trim your site and include only those that are important.

Always be on the lookout for errors – Always make sure that your web design is error free. You do not want your web site visitors stare at a bunch of codes instead of an image or an animation. Always make certain that you have entered valid codes and have actually validated them.

Make your web design universally supported – make sure that your web design is supported by all web browser or at least 95% of the existing web browsers. Remember not all clients are using the same type of browsers so it would be prudent for you to test your web design in all browser types.

Include feedback – It has been said that “we should always take constructive criticisms”. Whoever spoke those words is sure of what he is saying. The web is actually viewed as a community and it is that community’s feedback that we want in order to improve on our design.

Now that you have been designing web pages you wonder, how do I make my web page more interactive? How do I keep my clients within my website in order to help my SEO campaign? Well you can always hire a good SEO company for them to make good website contents or if you really intend to make your clients have fun while surfing your website then why not make it come alive? 

There are several ways to make your web design become alive. These techniques of course require you to learn additional scripting languages, but believe me learning these additional scripting language or web design techniques is worth it.

Web design interactivity can be achieved using two methods, client side scripting and server side scripting. The former deals with interactivity that is done before requests are submitted onto the server, an example of that is animation and client side form validation while the latter will function when the data or request is already at the server and such will be interpreted or executed by the server itself.

On the client side, the most popular way to make your web page interactive is by using JavaScript.  JavaScript’s purpose is to bring HTML to life and make the web page dynamic. You can use JavaScript to turn a static web page into an application such as games. JavaScript can also be used to make a web page interact with the user by using forms and controls. It is also possible to add visual effects to your web design through animation.

Another way of making your web page more interactive is by using flash animation via action script. Flash action script is considered to be an object oriented programming language that was designed for the purpose of displaying animation. It’s main purpose is to display different web page environments that allows a user to interact, examples are games, tutorials and order forms. Action scripts respond to keyboard and mouse inputs thus aptly named also as event driven language.

For server side scripting the most popular scripting language is PHP. PHP stands for Hypertext Pre Processor. PHP is a free and open source scripting language meaning it can be used without the necessary pay for the license kind of arrangement. It is also a fast and cross platform language which means it can work in any operating system.

Below I have written a short walk through of “Harry” who is a typical person who may discover Website monetisation.

Consider Harry, who is a budding blogger, and of course, while working on building a blog, sooner or later he comes across keywords like pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, affiliate programs,  banner advertising, lead generation, content syndication and so on and so forth.

Why do these methods matter so much?

It’s obvious that Harry isn’t working for charity but is doing what he does best in order to make money using the website / blog he owns to showcase his products / services. It’s even more obvious that once his site is launched, potential consumers / clients or even just people who are plain curious will view the contents of his website / blog in order to find out if it suits their needs. Now how they reach his website or blog is another story (one that is a part of SEO Marketing Strategies that is common these day), but once they do, it is considered a ‘hit’. And that’s where this concept of inserting advertisements of particular companies through text, pictures or video on Harry’s blog or website will generate revenue.

Broadly, all these terms mentioned above are advertising methods that are a part of this ‘Website Monetisation’strategy. So, very simply, if you have a blog for your writing or a website which showcases a product or service, you can use any of the methods mentioned above to actually generate revenue while you have visitors to your site.

But before that, here’s a caveat that you should keep in mind before you assume that this is a magical get-rich-quick scheme that will change your lifestyle in a jiffy. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but in finding the method that really works for you requires patience, willingness to experiment and the ability to approach this by a trial-and-error manner.

So, what I’m going to do is discuss are the two most popular methods that would serve as an introduction to this concept of internet advertising:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Google Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter are the biggest networks in the internet advertising model of pay-per-click advertising. How it works is if you own a website or a blog, this advertising model requires you to host an advertisement related to the content that you have on your website or blog. What this means is that if you write about sports on a blog, sports-related products will be displayed on your website once you choose to host these advertisements. Now, you are only paid if the visitors to your site click the advertisement and view the information related to the product or service that it offers. So, the more visitors click on the advertisement, you stand to make more money as well. Now, the system does not count the ‘clicks’ that you make for whatever reason on your website.

Affiliate Programs
There are a large number of affiliate programs that you can register your website or blog with. Now, this would also can be related to the product or service that you offer on your blog or website as well. Now, when visitors reach your website, you have to direct them to other related websites, through various methods, of course. Now some of these methods by which you can drive traffic to another site ‘affiliated’ with yours s through display advertising, email marketing or posting reviews of these ‘affiliate’ sites on your website or blog. If a visitor becomes a customer at an affiliated site, you receive a cut from the revenue generated. This is how affiliate programs work.

Now that I have discussed a couple of methods that show you how to monetise your blog or website, I’m sure you can find and try a couple of others as well. I know Harry is!

Web design will not be complete without the incorporation of images to make your design a little bit more presentable and down right exciting. Remember keeping clients surfing our site will be a good thing for our SEO campaign. A web page that contains purely text could prove to be boring and repulsive. As web designers and owners of web sites we do not want that unless you would like to create a web page that would make your visitors fall asleep. So in order for us to make our visitors to keep coming back we need to place several presentation design features such as adding of graphics or images. The question is can we just place any pictures we have lying around our hard disk or any storage media? Well I hear a resounding no to those questions, so here are some guidelines for us if we plan to incorporate images in our web design.

Utilise graphic file formats that are supported – although there are several graphic file formats that exists not all of them are used in web design. The three commonly used file format for web design are .GIF or the Graphics Interchange Format, .PNG or the Portable Network Graphics and .JPEG or the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Should you require images for your web pages make sure to provide the images in any of these formats.

Always see to it that file size is at minimum – we know that any image or documents that are to be viewed through the internet are suppose to be downloaded by the client computer first. It is for this reason that images must always be at a minimum file size in order to facilitate the displaying of such images that were incorporated in your web design.

Always keep back-up identification – have you ever experienced images that were not displayed due to slow connection or any other reasons? This occurrence is not rare, so to help your clients understand your web page much better even if images were not loaded an alternate text that would describe the image should always be included. This method is also very useful for your SEO campaign as the texts may be the keywords for the spiders to gather.

Choose the graphics to be included prudently – the common misconception of more graphics the better should not be practiced. When communication with your web design company about image incorporation in your web design always bear in mind that the use of images should not be overdone because it may result to so much clutter in your web design. Limit your use of graphics to those that are important in conveying message to your clients.

These are just some thoughts for you to keep in mind should you decide to make your web page more exciting using graphics or images. Now that you know, its time for you to locate those images in the deep abyss called your hard disk.

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO in the computer jargon is a combination of a diverse set of processes that is executed for the purpose of increasing the targeted traffic that enters or visits your website emanating from search engines. Quite a mouthful of words when stated verbally isn’t it? Well let’s try to understand the concept of Search Engine Optimisation shall we?

As stated above SEO is a diverse set of processes, therefore it involves not one single procedure to be executed unlike in web design or web programming where the focus is just to write the code for your web application in SEO it’s a combination of several processes that when taken individually it would not accomplish your goal on SEO.

What are these processes that we are talking about here then?
HTML Coding – since we are dealing with the internet naturally we will be dealing with websites thus a strong background on the lingua franca of the internet which is HTML is a must for every aspiring SEO company or individual contractors.  For what purpose will you use your HTML knowledge in SEO? Well, since Search Engine Optimization’s success partially lies in the keywords as well as the “age” of your website you will need to restructure, change or edit your HTML texts every now and then to keep your website design current or up-to-date. This will also include updating your site’s web design.
“Talking” to the Search Engine – One of the most common and cheap way of attaining search engine visibility is by communicating to the search engines.

Do we mean a literal communication by calling up the search engines’ tech support? Well, you can do that but it will not serve you any purpose. When we say communication here we mean allowing the search engine to “find” our website. Let me explain this in a nutshell, search engines have website miners or commonly known as robots or spiders these are not actual spiders but are software application whose purpose is to gather your website’s texts for analysis through what is commonly known as the central engine, so that is the part of the search engine communicating with your website. How then would you communicate back to the search engine? By adding in your html code keywords that are placed within your meta tag under the keyword attribute. You now then supply the keywords that the spiders will be looking for and hopefully ranking in their search results after analysis through the “central engine”.

Paying for listing and linking – This is the more aggressive process in search engine optimization and also the most expensive. Here you will have to pay the search engine company to list you in their search result. So most of the process here can be done by contacting the marketing team of the search engine companies like google and yahoo!. Another process is to pay for linking, have you tried advertising over the radio or television? Well, the concept is also the same, you pay the company the offers pay per click or PPC to advertise your site by providing links to your site from other websites that hosts the company’s advertisements. Example of this is by enrolling to the google adwords where you pay google for every click made to the link leading to your website, in this manner you are expanding the scope of your presence over the web, for a price.

So basically these are the idea of the processes involved in Search Engine Optimisation or SEO and the ultimate goal of these? Well as mentioned to gain ranking and first page presence in a search engine result. Let’s be honest who here will view search results from page 3 to the last page? That’s what I thought.