Monday, October 10, 2011

Organic SEO Basics

The term SEO (search engine optimization) is thrown around a lot today. It is used in the context of your website and is often interchanged with other terms such as SEM (search engine marketing). SEO is the key to achieving desired search results. In terms of SEO you may have heard of companies using white hat, black hat, and organic SEO techniques. While each of these techniques have the same goal (achieving a higher ranking in Google) their methodology varies substantially.

What is organic SEO?

Organic SEO is exactly what the word organic connotes: A natural method to steadily increase the amount of traffic on your website by increasing your ranking in search engines. Therefore, it is not about pay for advertising, it is about evolving and growing your website.

How do you optimize your website to achieve better results?

There are countless ways people claim will increase traffic to your website. Many are true; however, many are also speculative. The following are some of the proven techniques that I have personally used to increase both traffic and search results:

• Keyword research: Conducting keyword research to identify the search terms the visits to your site use to find your website. Knowing the search terms used by your visitors is an important starting point. It will help you better understand how your users search.

• Optimizing website content: Content is king! Having rich content with the correct keywords will help your search ranking. You must provide content that is both informative and useful for your sites visitors. Make your site as engaging as possible.

o Titles/Headers: Having keyword based headers, titles, meta tags, and URL extensions will help optimize your site and make it more efficient.
o Article Writing: One of the best methods to create rich content is to write articles and post them on both your website and submit them to article directories. This will help to establish you as an expert in your field and generate more traffic to your site at the same time.

• Back links: Creating back links is a great way to improve your search ranking. Having other large sites link to your site makes you more appealing to search engine algorithms. Back links can be quickly created from linking to:

o Social media: Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a great way to create back links to your website. However, when using social media sites, make sure that you have a reason to use the site and can effectively engage your users.
o Web directories: List your site on all major directories and industry specific directories. This will not only create more back links, it will also help establish your company's presence online.

Nolan is an experienced freelance writer and research analyst with experience in sales, marketing, merchandising, documentation, business development, social media, and information management. He has a Bachelors Degree in Media, Information, & and Technolculture, and a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario.

For more great information on SEO and writing best practices, visit http://nolanwilsonfreelance.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nolan_Wilson



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very well made article regarding SEO. Coming from ezinearticles I expected no less of quality. Well anyway even though Im not a beginner this still gives valuable information. Thanks for the post.

Anonymous said...

Interesting.. Thanks for clarifying these terms. I've been in contact with a few seo firms regarding marketing for my new business, and they all claim that they perform organic seo services. But how can I tell if they actually use ethical white hat techniques or black hat? Does inorganic seo still count as white hat? I just wanna make sure that I use legal seo services. Thanks.

MakeRank said...

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. The purpose of search engine optimization is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible.

---------------------
SEO Company India