Importance of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a requirement for successful operation of a commercial website that should be intuitively obvious to everyone who uses the web or is involved in website design. Unfortunately, it is not so. In the majority of the cases, website design lacks attention to even the basics of Search Engine Optimization making it a major cause of failure.

Search engine Optimization

What exactly is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?  Every site needs to be optimized to deliver the best results from searches in popular search engines, and this needs a lot of attention to several basic details in the website design. Search Engine Optimization is all about ensuring that the website design is made in such a way as to ensure that these requirements are met.

Importance of search engine optimization

Let’s say that you wanted to place an entry in a popular directory such as the Yellow Pages. How would you go about it? To start with, you would obviously want it to be placed in the right section in the directory. If you were selling television sets, you wouldn’t want your entry to appear in the section on bakeries! Secondly, you would want your entry to be prominent so that readers can easily spot it. Surely you wouldn’t want your entry stacked away in small print in one corner where people never cast their eyes. Assuming that your entry appears prominently in the appropriate section, how would it be if the title ran something like this (remember you’re selling television sets): ‘Contact us for all your requirements” (what requirements?), or “We offer great sound quality”(You are selling television sets not audio equipment, so that even if sound quality is important it is not the first consideration). There’s nothing wrong with these opening lines or titles. The only thing is that they do not convey precisely what you are selling. How does that matter? Well, in the case of an entry in a directory or an ad in print media, it may not matter too much, but as we shall see shortly, the rules of the game change drastically when it comes to the Internet and website design.

You have to shout to be heard above the noise

Before we look at that aspect in greater detail, let us consider one more issue. Suppose you trade directory has thousands of pages only for television sets, what do you do? I know you’re laughing inwardly, because where in the world is a trade directory that contains thousands of pages just for one particular item? Fortunately, that is simply not true of a trade directory, and you need not bother about that eventuality at all. Unfortunately, however, that’s precisely what happens with the Internet, and you have to bother about it when you make your website design. Let’s see how.

Unlike a trade directory, an Internet search that one uses for finding stuff on the Internet throws up millions of pages for each search entered.  The Internet is not classified into various items, products or other groups; it’s just one large world out there that contains everything, and the only way you access what you want is through search engines.  Thus when search engines throw up millions of entries in response to a particular search term, it is the equivalent of having thousands (unfortunately in the case of the Internet it is actually millions) of pages in you directory. So you see, what seemed funny a few minutes back isn’t all that unthinkable when it comes to the Internet and website design. In fact, the last few years have drastically changed the way people look for things, and advertisers publicize their wares. This is what makes search engine optimization a critical issue in your website design.

That’s where Search engine Optimization comes in. The process obviously involves using the right keywords in your website design. That isn’t all. The website design should be such that the content in your web page should contain a lot of relevant words, so that your page comes up on top of a search. The title of a web page is also important in your website design. If you aren’t using the right title, Meta tags, and keywords in your website design, and do not index it to different search engines, you are just wasting your money in putting up and maintaining your site. That’s why search engine optimization is as important as and your website design and content. That last sentence needs a little correction. Important as the website design and content are, search engine optimization is actually more important them.