What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation is defined as a process of refining a web page so that it will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Following a good path of search engine optimisation is different from search engine spam. A web page being optimised should be not be packed with obvious repetition to a level where by it may be deemed as search engine abuse.
If a web page is detected as search engine spam, it can be penalised to lose ranking or removed from search engine indexes. This means that the website will not show up in SERPs or be indexed by search engine spiders such as Google until it is added back to the search engine index.
Factors that affect SEO
Search engine optimisation can be broken down into web page optimisation and web site optimisation.
The factors within each category should be paid equal attention as they are inter-related so as to achieve proper website optimisation.
Factors that improve ranking of a webpage in SERPs are:
Key terms (or keywords) for the given page
Title tag
Meta tags
The content or body text
Image file names
Alternative or ALT text for images
Text surrounding images
H1-H6 tags
Navigation links
Keyword density
HTML code validation
Absolute vs relative URLs
Tables used in the body text
Factors that can improving the ranking of the website as a whole are:
Having a Sitemap
Inbound links
Outbound links (more accurately the ratio between inbound and outbound links)
Reciprocal linking and link building
Search engine friendly URLs
The domain name – does it include key terms?
404 Error page
301 Redirection
Robots.txt file
Search engine submission
Visitor analysis using tools such as Google Analytics