SEO Basics - SEO and You
I hear this almost everyday; okay well not everyday but whenever SEO is mentioned to the unknowing. Why should I worry about search engine optimization for my website? What benefits could be brought by optimizing my websites for search engines? And finally, does it take much time and resources to optimize my website for search engines?
For questions one and two you or anyone out these on the web should be worried about whether or not your site is optimized for search engines as the more optimized your site is the greater a chance you have at reaching a wider audience. With a wider audience you will experience a larger visitor base including depending on the services you render a possible increase in your customer base. When opening your business to the internet there is absolutely no excuse to not optimize your website for search engines.
If you are worried that you do not have the time or the resources to properly optimize your website you are fooling yourself. Most canned shopping cart or blogging software comes with search engine optimization settings installed by default or within access of a simple module or plug-in install. If you are not using canned software most likely your in-house solution can be easily updated to allow search friendly updates.
One method I have not covered yet but will shortly is using human friendly page linking. Human friendly commonly referred to as search friendly page linking also happens to make pages easier for spiders to find and read. Most languages including C#, JSP, PHP include options to redirect page requests for search friendly linking. If your site uses a single querystring to load page content you can possibly skip using search friendly linking but the end result will be less than friendly for human reading.
Here are my entries for easy search engine optimization:
SEO Basics – Anchor Text
SEO Basics – Alt & Title Tags
SEO Basics – Page Layout
SEO Basics - Meta & Title Tags
If your do not have time to apply search engine optimization settings and content to your site there are many companies out there that can apply them for you.