Serp Optimisation
Author: Paul Martin

Building a website in 2006 is nothing like it used to be.
Today, the majority of visitors to your site will come from
search engines. The top three - Google, Yahoo, and MSN refer
more than 90% of all search engine traffic. This is the reason
you need to make your site look as good as possible in the
search engine's eyes.

SERP optimization is a process by which one seeks to receive a
better placement in the results anyone receives when searching
for a particular keyword in Google or any other search engine.
SERP comes from Search Engine Result Page and represents the
place in which your site is listed when someone does a search
for a particular keyword. Because Google usually finds
thousands or million results for a usual search, appearing as
the first result (or at least appearing on the first result
page) can be a great advantage over your competition.

The first question that would spring in mind is what makes a
site and not another be the first in the results.
Unfortunately, there is no definite answer to this questions
and it clearly depends on the search engine (Google, Yahoo or
MSN) - type the same keyword in Google and MSN and you have big
chances of receiving different results. This is because
different search engines use different algorithms to rank pages
and while the main idea behind them is similar and made
available to the public, the details are different. These
details, one would need to make exact decisions when optimizing
his page, are kept secret and even changed from time to time, at
each tuning the search engine receives, so from this
perspective, optimizing a page is part technical expertise,
part wizardry.

There are two kinds of optimization techniques that are used in
conjunction: static optimization and dynamic optimization.
Static refers to changes made to your site. Dynamic is about
receiving links to your site.

Static optimization.

A term that's used in conjunction with SERP is keyword density.
A first step to make after deciding to optimize a page for a
specific keyword is to make the density for that keyword in
that page as high as possible which means that you have to use
it as often as possible. In highly competitive domains, a
keyword density of about 30-40% can normal. This may be good
when your page is seen by a search engine but may make it
unreadable by your visitors - having the same word every three
words has the consequence of making very awkward sentences.
Bottom line: there's a thin line between static optimization
and comprehensibility that you should be aware of when
targeting your pages for a particular search engine.

Going even further with static optimization, you should not
only use the targeted keyword in your page body but also in the
title, meta description and address. Actually, these fields are
having a bigger weight when computing your SERP. More advanced
static optimization techniques also exist but they are beyond
the scope of this article. They are usually used by specialized
SEO experts and companies like CHML Srucnoc.

Dynamic optimization.

Going to dynamic optimization, the main idea is that you should
start gathering as many links to your site as possible (as a
side note, the number of links going in your site is called
link popularity). Why? Because the relevance of a page is also
computed by taking into account these links. Every link another
site has for you is considered by search engines a 'vote' for
your page. While the main idea is simple, the details are not.
Not every vote is the same. Its weight regarding you SERP
depends on a number of parameters: number of links on that page
(a link from a page with few link is more important than one
from a page with tens or hundreds of links), rank of the page
that makes the vote (a page with higher authority will have
more weight in its votes). Another important thing to consider
is the anchor text the other pages are using when linking to
you because the search engines will consider that your page is
about that subject. What you should do then is have other sites
use the keywords you want to optimize for as the link text. The
content of the page that casts the vote is also important: a
vote from a page from the same domain of activity as your site
is more important that a vote from an unrelated page.

You may see that these rules are highly similar to the ones a
human would use to categorize pages. Thinking how you would
decide if a page is more or less relevant to a specific topic
(without using semantic rules) is the first step in
understanding how a search engine operates and how you can make
it operate in your benefit.

In the process of gathering links you should always prefer
one-way links but this is not always easy and always time
consuming. Usual free methods you can always use are directory
submissions, forum posting, press releases and article
submissions. To save time, you can use programs which were
designed exactly to help at this kind of tasks: Directory
Submitter (http://www.directorysubmitter.com), Forum Submitter
( http://www.softwar3.net/forumsubmitter). Yet another approach
is to use the services of specialized SEO companies (CHML
Srucnoc - http://www.chmlsrucnoc.net) that take care of all the
details in a professional way leaving you free to focus on ideas
for growing and enhancing your business.


About The Author: Paul Martin is a leading software developer
and the founder of CHML Srucnoc SEO http://www.chmlsrucnoc.net