SEO - Search Engine Optimization - is the science to present, to publish text or content of any kind including graphical content in a way easy to read and process by search engine bots for proper indexing and for successful SERPS - search engine rankings of an individual page.

Onpage SE optimization

SEO consists of various parts in onpage optimization:

1. meta tags - title, description and for minor search engines also keyword tags
2. h1, h2, h3 titles in content
3. bold text ( may be also italic text ? )
4. descriptive precise alt tags for all images

Proper SEO techniques can never be published as an absolute set of rules. Search engines are in dynamic rapid evolution process and improve year after year to compensate for all attempts to cheat search engines or to counteract any attempts to optain higher than normal rankings in search engine index.

Hence instead of telling you exactly what to do - I may layout a few key areas you need to study and understand on your own. As a publisher you should use search engines with precise keywords, then look at the results presented by all search engines important to you and understand the relationship of your keywords used and the search results presented in return to your search.

I recently purchased an SEO eBook - some 47 US$ - well worth the money for one simple chapter alone. To research the web and to analyze search engines takes time, lots of time, hundreds of hours or more of most careful observation - lots of common sense combined with real knowledge about SE and the Internet. Hence sometimes you may have to invest in expensive software or books to save time and to compensate for your lack of time or lack of experience or both.

That one chapter was a clear careful result of a professional observation of search results vs on page optimization by publishers.

Search engine rankings depend on both. The above listed 4 onpage optimizations. These 4 points ALL are an absolute minimum and MUST for each and every page of your entire site. Each page should be different from any other page. Each title, each meta description, each image alt tag should be unique on your entire site!!

The additional off-page optimization has to do with backlinks, with social bookmark links, with directory entries in high reputation directories and with backlinks coming from high reputation websites directly relevant to your page topic or site topic.

Until last year - after Google implemented the PR system, millions of site owners and webmasters immediately started to cheat that system of backlinks by purchasing/selling links, by link exchange systems and link farming. Google of course adapted to such criminal practices of cheating search engine results and punished heavily all link selling / trading / farming sites. Many of those sites dropped so drastically in PR and SERPS that most of their traffic is permanently lost. Cheating never pays off. Honesty always leads to success!

Backlinks - offpage SEO

Backlinks can be obtained by 2 major honest methods:

• register your site or matching important subsections of your site in relevant reputable directories. this method is done by you, may require lots of time and may need to be repeated again as directories appear and disappear continuously.
• obtaining organic natural backlinks form other site owners or blog owners who have successfully used your published material and as a result of gratitude or happiness about your own work link back to your page or site or quote a small paragraph and link back. This method is a natural method occuring as a result of many years of continuous publishing of unique content helpful and valuable to others.

Backlinks only are of any value if the links come from a site with high reputation and high Google PR. The minimum PR considered by Google for the computation of your own site / page PR is unpublished and a trade secret by Google. Most likely any site or page with a PR less than 3 may remain unconsidered and thus worthless to your own site. However keep in mind that pages / sites linking to you having a PR of 1 or 2 today, may have a PR of 4 or higher in a few years from now IF that site owner / publisher is serious about hsi work and keeps on publishing and thus increasing his own site popularity. Hence in a few years from NOW, your site PR may steadily increase simply as a result of sites linking to you doing the same as you do - work harder, work better and keep producing unique quality content!

Meanwhile with increased popularity of social bookmarks - those links from social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us ( Yahoo ), Digg, stumble and others also seem to be considered by major search engines.

These above off-page optimization can partially be directly influenced by you - directory submission - and partially are a result of site-age while maintaining top quality productivity to increase global satisfaction among more and more readers of your site.

The result of off-page optimization - backlinks from reputable sites or directories - may be seen when looking at sites / pages appearing in search results having no apparent onpage optimization and still being placed in top SERPS - even Nr 1.

From the eBook I purchase I quote the one example "click here". A Google search will show you that the Nr 1 page has no such text in their entire meta tags at all, yet still ranks #1. The result is the number of sites linking with such anchor text to that site.

The onpage optimization also may vary depending on niche, on topic / keywords and number of competing pages for a particular keyword. To see the top requirements to be #1 in a highest competition keyword. As highest competition keyword I would consider keywords with definitely more than 100'000'000 pages returned by a Google search !

To rank #1 or at least top 10 in such a single top competition single keyword usually requires BOTH - online optimization PLUS a huge number of relevant backlinks. Hence such extreme popularity usually is the result of MANY, many years of reputable quality work until you become an authority in a particular keyword.

Let's look at a few example. Search in Google and study the search results to understand the kind of onpage optimization required to optain a top 10 or better top 3 SERPS.

Here a few high traffic, high competition keywords that show you all you need to study and understand your own SEO efforts required to succeed:

• love - about 1,870,000,000 competing pages
• god - about 447,000,000 competing pages
• roses - about 108,000,000
• flowers - about 278,000,000

Looking at above Google results - at least the top 20-30 results - will show you that all those highest competition top results usually have a few factors in common. These TOP SEO factors include in addition to OFF-page optimization:

• 1 single keyword only appears in most results in title
• 1 single keyword only appears in description
• most top sites have a domain name containing that keyword as part of the entire domain name string
• 1 single keyword additionally may occur in the URL ( path/file name ) of the resulting page

The older a site - the more natural backlinks accumulate and the less onpage optimization is needed to obtain a top 10 SERPS!

Semantics in search results

Another SEO factor to consider now and for all future is Google's capability to use semantics technology successfully in their current search index.

Search in Google the keyword SEO and to see that Google highlights the word SEO as well as its full definition Search engine optimization in its results. Hence modern technology associates all relevant keywords into computing the final SERPS of a search. Another example of semantics technology used in creating search results is the keyword blossoming flowers. Google result will show highlighted results with the following words being highlighted / considered in creating the search results:

1. flowers
2. blossoming
3. blooming
4. blossom

Above number 2-4 all meaning the same - hence all 3 - blossom, blossoming, blooming are considered in your content to create the final SERPS. Such modern semantics technologies leaves you more freedom in describing a topic by using all commonly correct names or definitions instead of one single keyword only. There are many topics in life that can be described exactly using different words resulting in the very same meaning.

Web publishing requires knowledge of good style, grammar and correct words to create best SERPS in addition to age of site to obtain generic backlinks liftign you more and more toward top SERPS in single keywords.

Hence - young publishers should forget about getting instant high PR, but keep focusing years and years on learning to improve quality of unique content and keep on publishing more and more day after day year after year.

Web publishing is a modern way to share valuable information, to distribute on a global level valuable knowledge, to make available most valuable free online tutorials about all kind of topics important to millions of readers for professional benefit as well as for personal, medical or spiritual benefit. Web publishing is a most serious profession just as to publish a major technical or medical magazine or newspaper would be. Hence webpublisher is for experienced skilled professionals with years or better decades of professional experience. Results or return on investment in form of advertisement revenue such as AdSense or other advertising may start to pay more and more for all efforts made to share value with all world. However before expecting ROI you first need to be willing and capable to invest ten thousands of working hours into creation of unique content. Years of investing in learning all topics of Internet, web design, server administration and search engine behavior are needed to be really successful and make a descent living from a web site.

If you have been working hard in your life, if you spent a fortune in time, efforts and investment to learn and to improve your professional qualifications, then you surely also will succeed as a publisher in Internet ! Success always is the result of real and hard work. Anyattempt to bypass honest hard work sooner or later always may lead to failure and eventually to a ban by search engines.

Love and bliss

hans

Previous posts and follow-up articles on successful web publishing

To read all follow ups and previous articles of the free online web publisher tutorial just read the posts published in the topic category Internet - see top of my blog - to find previous articles around search engine optimization - see category SEO and to read more about being successful in general view the topic Love - as love is the key to success in work. Work is nothing else but the expression of love toward a wider audience, or even toward all.

You may also find many useful information, tips and links in my webmaster resource pages

Technorati tag: SEO

One of the current presidential candidates defined outsourcing as "when we lose jobs to other countries". That of course is a totally wrong view of reality. We never lose jobs as a result of outsourcing. Jobs are outsourced because we refused to do that kind of jobs for the competitive salary available for those jobs! Outsourcing is done by the industry as a result of local employees asking too much salary or as a result of local employees refusing to do dirty jobs, dangerous work or boring work.

It is the local labor force that is the cause for outsourcing. outsourcing is done for purely economic reasons. For reasons of finding other people doing the very same job cheaper. If all local workforce is willing to do all work that occurs in life, including boring jobs, dirty or dangerous jobs. When all citizens of a country is willing to do all work at a price affordable by the global market.

Hence to preserve local job or employment opportunities as much as possible, we all have to understand that there are global limits about how expensive products can be to remain affordable. As a result we have to be willing and ready to:

• do all the dirty, dangerous and boring mass production work as part of our all duty toward entire planet and our entire nation
• do be willing to work at prices affordable to all
• be willing to adapt our qualifications to the need of industry and needs created by society
• accept that all are of equal value and no one on earth is worth less to do those jobs we consider boring or dangerous
• if we as a nation want a particular industry - then we should perform all tasks, all work independent of wages, danger or pollution involved ourselves in our own country
• whatever pollution or waste an industry creates also will need to be completely recycled in the country that waste or pollution was produced

No industry moves into a strange, unknown and sometimes risky foreign, exotic country if a truly reasonable solution remains available in its own home-country. It is the greed - greed from employees for ever increasing salaries as well as the greed of investors for ever increasing profits that creates the imbalance between payment potential and payment requests within its home-plant that ultimately creates the need of the management to search for cheaper locations to outsource some or all work into a cheaper and still affordable country.

The options created by ever increasing wage demands by local work force results in:

We pay as demanded by employees or labor union

but

Part of the jobs have to be exported / outsourced into cheaper production countries to create the profitability needed to pay for increasing local wages

As an industrial nation we have a duty toward the entire remainder of the planet. We have to keep the dirty work within our own boundaries, we have to dispose and recycle all trash, all waste, all pollution in our own country where it was originally produced. If we enjoy the high paying, challenging jobs of an industry, then we also have to accept to complete all unqualified, dirty, boring or dangerous jobs as well. The shadow side of an industry is part of the sunny side of each industry.

That only can be achieved if 100% of all native workforce spends some time, some years in all those unpleasant and low paying positions along mass production production lines, assembly lines, dirty chemical jobs, etc. If heavily underpaid labor in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Haiti, China or any other low cost country can do such jobs, then we too may have to learn to develop that deepest humbleness to do whatever is needed - to do whatever needs to be done.

The proven readiness to do all jobs ourselves prevents the need for "illegal" employees that ONLY are finding jobs because most of us are "too good"n to do such jobs at those wages paid for such jobs done. The proven readiness to do absolutely all work at whatever salary is offered by a particular industry, when needed and how needed will assure that almost all currently outsourced jobs can or could be done in our own country.

Such is valid for all those "first world countries" like the many central European countries and USA that currently outsource to India, China, South East Asia and many other countries.

No politician can change our attitude. The only to have the power to change that current situation of outsourcing resulting of loss of jobs is within each and all of us. We have to change our attitude, we have to learn to work again for real money to preserve the sunny side of life. If and as long as we reject the shadow side of industries, we also shall lose the sunny side of that very industry !!!

It is our own true love for all mankind, for all planet that only can create the readiness within to work at lower wages when lower wages only are affordable by potential customers. We all are customers - we all have to lower our demands and increase our giving to create a balance between love given and love received. That law is valid for spiritual love as much as for industrial exchange or two way flow of goods, services or finances.

Love and bliss

hans