SEO: Why is no one visiting my fantabulos website?

Imagine this scenario.  You create a website and put it online.  You put together a lot of content and add lots of interesting images, but for some reason your website tracker is indicating that no one has visited your website.  This is where search engine optimization should have been considered.  But what is search engine optimization and how does it work?  Let me explain.

What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is a way to get a website to the top results of a search engine based on specific inputted keywords.  If you type in “bacon” as a keyword on www.Google.com,  you will notice that the first two results are Wikipedia’s definition of bacon and www.IHeartBacon.com.  This is because both of those websites have strong search engine optimization.

What is Google PageRank and how does it work?
Google uses several variables to determine which websites should have a higher PageRank than others.  Google PageRank is an algorithm that the company uses to determine how credible a website is.  The PageRank scale is zero to ten.  The higher the PageRank, the higher the chances of your website showing up based on the top of search engine results. 

The first variable to consider is how long ago your domain name was registered.  If a domain name was registered in 2002, it has a much better chance of getting a higher PageRank than a domain name that was registered several days ago.  Websites that have been around for longer tend to be given a slight advantage than recently registered domain names.  So if your website is new, don’t worry just give it some time and try to work on all other aspects of SEO.

Another variable Google considers in assigning PageRank is the number of incoming links your website has.  If a lot of websites link to you, then you will receive a higher PageRank.  The more credible the website that links to you, the higher the PageRank you should expect to receive.  For example, the Digg.com homepage has a PageRank of 8/10 so if your website lands on the homepage, not only will you receive a large burst of traffic but the chances of your PageRank increasing will be higher.

Different SEO Strategies
According to Amit Chowdhry editor of Pulse2 there are different kinds of websites that exist and each require a different SEO strategy. 

Static websites that sell products usually generate sales by buying keywords from Google’s AdWords program.  This is Google’s way of buying search engine optimization.  If your website sells bacon, then you can buy certain keywords from Google so that your website shows up in noticeable areas of the search engine results.

Bloggers usually prefer to have organic and referral traffic rather than sponsored search engine optimization.  Organic traffic is when people search for keywords and find their websites without the need for buying sponsored links.  Referral traffic is when other websites send traffic to your website.  Some of the most popular referral traffic websites that send large amounts of traffic to a website includes Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit. 

Keyword Research
To find out how many people searched for a specific keyword on Google, visit the Google AdWords: Keyword Tool.  Using this tool, I foud out that about 1.5 million people searched for the word “bacon” in January.  If I buy a sponsored link for the “bacon” keyword, that would make sure that those 1.5 million notice people notice my website link.

Site Structure
The last variable to consider in order for search engines is how you organize your website.  Google also considers the domain name and blog post story titles when people search for keywords.  If the word bacon is in my domain name and/or blog post, it has a higher chance of showing up on the top of search engine results.  A website called bacon.com would have a higher chance of being found than salad.com if someone search for “bacon” on Google. 

If someone searches for “Deepti Dewan” on Google, the chance that this website being found is high because it is part of the domain name: http://deeptidewan.wordpress.com.   

An extra step to organize your site for a search engine is through the use of meta tags.  Meta tags is a way to classify and describe what keywords are related to your website.   It is recommended to add a meta tag description of your website in order to let people know what your website is about if they happen to see the link for it in a search result.  Search Engine Watch has a pretty good tutorial about how meta tags work.

At a 101 level, you have just learned what search engine optimization is and some techniques on how to improve it.  For additional guidance, refer to the following links:

- SEO Guide Book
- SEOMoz Free SEO tools
- SEO Basics Knol by Aaron Wall
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Google SEO Starter Guide