Search Engine Optimization Tips Part I

Search engine optimization that will henceforth be referred to as SEO, is regarded by many as being a magical or mysterious way of getting your website listed on the search engines. There is actually nothing mysterious or magical about it, and it does not get your website listed on search engines.

Let me explain about the last statement first. The search engines that count do not list your web site. Let's take Google as the most important search engine on the internet, which it is, and even Yahoo cannot deny that. When Google crawls your website, it follows the navigation that you provide it with. It checks your home page and then every individual page that your navigation leads it to. If there are pages you don't want search engines to see, you can prevent that. I will show you how later.

Basically, the point is that Google lists individual web pages, not web sites. SEO, therefore, can be applied to each page of your site separately, and each page is listed in Google indices separately. The term 'indices' refers to each individual index for each search term used by a Google user who is searching for information. Each of your web pages will be listed differently for each search term.

You can test that by searching Google first for 'search engine' and then 'search engines'. You will find different results for each search. You must determine exactly what search term, or 'keyword', you want each page in your web site to be found for, and optimize it for that exact search term.