Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been a new chapter for today's web era, everybody is talking about SEO. So, what is SEO? SEO in short, I could explain it as "how to make your website show on Google search result page", or even "how to make your website into no.1 spot in Google search result page". If you're very good in SEO, then you could probably earn a very good money, as many company out there hire web marketer or professional in SEO to just do all these SEO jobs.

OK, now I knew and understand what is SEO, but how? Alright, now get into business. How to make your website to show in Google search result page? Or how to make your website to be no.1 in Google search result page?

I'm at here to not guarantee all these information shared are correct, but are more a little bit like our experience. Below are few good points of reference which you could consider and take into action on how to improve your site Google friendly.

1. Google Webmaster Tools
If your site is good enough, then you don't need this step. However, for newbies who started their website in fresh, then I'd suggest you to take this step. How? Easy. First, you must register yourself a FREE Google account. Google account allow you to use many of Google free services, and one of it is Google Webmaster Tools. After you've registered a Google account, then you can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools. After that, you can submit your site to Google. You can "Add a site...", then submit your site URL to Google. After that, you'll have to verify that you are the site owner, so you'll have to add in META tag or HTML file that Google provides. Next, if verified successfully, you can have everything of your sites on your hand already. Google bots will start to crawl and index your site. Please note that I never mean that if you didn't submit your site to Google, then Google bots will not crawl and index your site, but it might takes longer. Or, I also never mean that once you've submitted your site to Google, then your site will straight away show on Google search result page or even be no.1 spot.

2. Keywords
This is crucial, as you might have to decide few keywords ever before you started your business. Choosing a keywords is also a headache, and need some skills. For instance, you're planning to run a business related to "job", so "job" keyword definitely already in your mind. However, "job" keyword has appear too frequent in Google search result, and Yahoo! as well. But, you can't sacrifice to deselect this keyword, so how? There are few other ways that you can overcome this. First, if you still wanna choose this as your main keyword, then looking at this situation, then I'd describe it as 100 pounds fight against 500 pounds world heavyweight championship. Second, you can just give up this keyword, and choose another similar but less popular keyword, example "career". Third, you can still use this "job" keyword, but you make it specific keyword, instead of broad keyword. For example, you choose the keyword "job Penang, Malaysia". So, you're actually focus on jobs in Penang, Malaysia, and not globally around the world. However, there are no right or wrong. Any site can still be no.1 spot. Let's say, you've chosen other keywords for your job business, and you successfully push your site on top with other set of keywords, by then you still can simply add in the "job" keyword, then by that time, base on your current popularity, people may also find your site on top spot when they search "job" keyword.

3. META keywords and description
Nowadays META keywords and description no longer play an important role in SEO, compared to olden days Alta Vista era. Since the rise of Google, the concept of META keywords and description has being disqualified. As the reason of, anyone could simply put all the single words in Oxford dictionary in their META keywords. But then, when people search the keyword, yes, they can get to your site, but they just can't find a suitable content related to this keyword on your site. Google take this as a definitely wrong algorithm, and with this, people might feel the search engine is very inaccurate, as the results might be totally wrong! Since then, META keywords and description are still important, but keywords just act as entry to the world of search to your site, and you just have to select few, e.g. 7, keywords for your site for initial set up. Then, META description is the one description display under the search result title. However, you may find that is not also 100% true, as Google will crawl any of your site contents which hit the keyword first.

4. Sitemap/RSS
One of the key of success for Google search engine friendly is, sitemap. Sitemap will be better than any other tools or method you use to help promoting your site. Note that in this case, the sitemap in your site is no longer the static sitemap back to the olden days, it's dynamic sitemap which will update frequently whenever you update your site contents. Remember that Google bots might unlikely to crawl and index all your site contents when your site grows tremendously, likes those news site updated every minutes, every seconds. So in this case, sitemap will be an idea for Google bots to crawl and index most of your site's contents. Why? As if you just submit URL to Google, then Google bots will have to come and visit your site "personally", by having submit your site's sitemap to Google, which means you have your sitemap in Google database, and they will just have to process it "in their home". If your site don't have a sitemap, then alternative will be RSS feeds. Same with Yahoo!, you can always submit as many of your site RSS feeds to Google or Yahoo! bots. How all these works? Because sitemap or RSS feeds are all in XML format, that's tell all.

5. External links
If you having ever search on helps or FAQ in Google Webmaster Tools how it works, people find that it says "external links" is crucial. So what is external links? Links in SEO has separated into two, which are internal links and external links. Internal links is just simply how many links and how frequent you link with your own site. For example, you have 10 links in other pages which link to your front page, so you're having 10 internal links, in depth it says you're having 10 internal links to your front page. Having internal links is good, but internal links has lower priority than external links, as external links is how many links and how frequent other sites have link your site. For instance, you have good relationship with many sites, says 5, and you all link each other in yours site, so you're having 5 external links to your site. This has some techniques out there. First, you could own many of the websites, as you can host multisites in your own server, and you just link to every each of your sites. But remembering that, Google can recognize it as same IP from the same server. Second, you can also talk to your business competitor, having link to each other, but not many of this case will happen. Third, you can make use of those search engine friendly sites, likes Wikipedia, Google services likes Google maps, forums, and others. The key of success is still back to your own site's content, if your site content are exclusively only from your site, and it's very attractive and interesting, then you have people feature or link to your site willingly.

6. Title and Body
The last point I'd like to share is title and body. Note that in this case, I'm not refer to the title and body in HTML, but rather than your site content's title and body. Title is your article's title, and this is very crucial. Body is your article's content part, this is even more crucial. In this part, it's more to the key user, or I call it the site users, and not more on developer. At this stage, we, the developer has already handover the project to the users, and it's up to their job already. We as the developer have to do our part on coding end, and when we handover to the key users, we might have to educate them on how to post an article, so that their site could continue to stay popular. On title part, it has to be KISS, keep it short and simple, or I mean short and sweet. By putting a long title, you might having Google to omit the rest of your title, which mean trim. For example, "Microsoft and Yahoo! deal done" is better than "Microsoft has finally reached its deal with Yahoo!". For the content, you can always try put in outstanding contents than other sites, though it's not an easy job, but it'll make your content unique. There are people out there purposely misspell the words, so that it make their site uniquely for that misspell keyword, but don't having it too frequent.

OK, by reading this line we qualify you that you've read all those plenty of words above, and we hope it's not wasting your time, but it's rather helps in your personal website or business. Again, I'm at here, to not guarantee all the contents I've shared above are 100% correct, it's not proven, but you can take into consideration. If you have any other better idea or suggestions, you're always welcome to share it with us, we always appreciate that.