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SEO

POSTED 26th June 09, by Dan Williams.

"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." Wikipedia, 2009

I have recently been looking into SEO and trying to learn how to improve the sites I make to benefit the client as well as to gain a bit of personal satisfaction. Although my knowledge is quite basic and I have barely touched the surface on all of the techniques used to create a well optimized website, I feel I am learning some good techniques and habits which will make me a better developer.

Although it is not an exact art form(or so I'm told), the area in which I am trying to concentrate my efforts is in the actual content from page to page of the sites. The Key is to use as many 'keywords' and 'phrases' as possible so that when the site is crawled, these will be picked up and, with a bit of luck, will lead to increased traffic and search results. In turn, this will hopefully result in increasing sales, enquiries or followers depending on the type of site being optimized.
After all, this is why we optimize our sites, to increase the 'content specific' traffic onto the sites.

There are many strict guidelines and rules to follow when optimizing a site, although following them still does not guarantee a good ranking. However, there are methods that are used, not by us may I add, to gain ranking and visitors via unethical means, these are referred to as 'black hat techniques'.
These can cause a lot of damage to a site if found, including being banned from Search Engines all together, which does not take an idiot to see, is not the greatest thing for a company or organization.

There are also many other things that can help direct traffic to a site, the main one of these being Google AdWords. That is this 'weeks' task - to experiment a little with creating a Pay Per Click (PPC) advert and hopefully direct more traffic to the site!

TAGS: ADWORDS, GOOGLE, OPTIMIZATION, SEARCH ENGINES, SEO