Search Engine Optimization

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What is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy used to improve the rankings of a web pages in the organic or unpaid section of online search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Naver. SEO differs from paid search campaigns which are sometimes referred as Search Engine Advertising.

As part of a SEO strategy, webmasters use various techniques of webpage design to improve the likelihood that a page is on top of the search results with specific keywords. Most popular search engines rank webpages using a method called indexing, which determines which webpages rank highest for specific keywords.

It is estimated that the click through rate (CTR) for the natural sections of search engines is 75% compared to 25% for the paid sections [1]. For this reason, it is important for a company to work towards being at the top of a natural search. In addition, 63% of the clicks are on one of the top three search results [2]. Therefore, if a company’s links are not appearing at the top of search results, people are less likely to find the products or services that are being marketed by that company.

People often don’t make online purchase decisions by clicking through on the unpaid section of search engines. Therefore, the unpaid sections can be viewed as an important area to promote the awareness of a company’s products or services. It is essential that an organization prioritizes the online metrics that it wants to drive through its SEO strategies.

In addition to traditional web search, other areas to improve SEO include videos, images, podcasts, news, and PDFs. These different web channels can be slightly adjusted to improve the SEO performance.

SEO is also commonly used as an acronym for Search Engine Optimizers, which are consultants or service providers who aid clients in improving their webpage pagerank [3].

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Below are the 5 largest search engines on the web and their respective market shares: 

Google 83.82% 
Yahoo 5.88% 
Baidu 4.38% 
Bing 3.92% 
Ask  0.51%

[[4]] (Report generated May 21, 2011)

Techniques to improve SEO

Google’s PageRank is dependent on the following factors:

  • The age of the domain and the relevance of its content, based on the premise that stable webpages are more trustworthy
  • The number of other sites linked to the webpage

Webmasters can use these techniques to improve SEO. It is estimated that 25% of the SEO can be attributed to on-page techniques and 75% to off-page techniques (factors outside the webpage taht affect ranking). Examples of on-page and off-page techniques are listed below.

On-Page SEO:

  • Keywords
  • Title tags, Meta data and URLs
  • Content
  • Internal linking (helping the spiders find your site)
  • Blogs

Off-Page SEO:

  • Link-building
  • Getting new Links
  • Link bait
  • Blogs
  • Social media

Other Types of Search Engine Optimization

In addition to regular websites and the big three search engines, there are other types of SEO for local and mobile search, as well as social media.

Most commonly used SEO terminologies:

Google optimization

The following ranking factors were rated by our panel of 72 SEO experts. Their feedback is aggregated and averaged into the percentage scores below. For each, we’ve calculated the degree to which the experts felt this factor was important for achieving high rankings as well as the degree of variance in opinion, estimated using the standard deviation of the contributors’ answers. Thus, factors that are high in importance and low in contention are those where experts agree the most that the factor is critical to rankings.

Naver optimization

Legal precedents

In 2002, SearchKing filed suit in an Oklahoma court against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claimed that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted an unfair business practice. In May 2003, the court pronounced a summary judgment in Google's favor.[6] In March 2006, KinderStart.com, LLC filed a First Amendment complaint against Google and attempted to include potential members of the class of plaintiffs in a class action.[7] The plaintiff's web site was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site plummeted. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.

Suggested Readings

References Test

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