Search Engine Optimization and Alexa Rankings

During our course we have been encouraged to optimize our websites for search engines in an attempt to get them further up the Alexa rankings. I'm fully aware that everything I just wrote may be confusing to some so this series of blogs will aim to explain what SEO is and how you can optimize your own website.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of improving the visibility of your website via the natural or unpaid (i.e. Google's algorithms) search results. It can be done in a number of ways, chiefly editing the content or the sites HTML to introduce keywords that may attract users to your site. The initials SEO can also refer to 'Search Engine Optimizers', so people whose job it is to move a website up the search engines rankings for a corporation. This is extremely important to a company because, let's say you're a travel agent offering cheap package holidays. To get to the top you could change the content so that it's more likely to be your website people find, you can edit the keywords in the HTML which will bump you up the rankings enormously (if you have your own website of course, trying to change them on blogger is a no no). It's not about being the best, it's about being the most visible to customers. Another way you can draw hits to your site is to link back, this is on your own blog and on other sites. Leaving your website any old place is a bit dodgy and not necessarily the best thing to do anyway but leaving it with a constructive comment on similar blogs and linking your blogs from sites like Facebook and Twitter can only help your ranking.

You can take the example of this blog. When I first started this course my blog like everyone elses but I blogged regularly (also important), posted my entries on my Twitter and sometimes Facebook and appear to have done quite well in the rankings amongst my fellow students.

This series of blogs will continue pretty sporadically over the next few weeks with tips as I find them and little stories of what I've done so far to help me.

Until next time. Stay Classy Internet.