A PRACTICAL INVESTIGATION OF ON-PAGE AND OFF PAGE SEACH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES IN BUILDING NETWORK TRAFFIC

1.0 Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as "Black Hat" SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove their listings.

There are two types of search engine optimization.

?Onpage Optimization
?Offpage Optimization

1.1 On-Page Optimization

On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup Language but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines, for example Microsoft Word or PDF formats. On-page optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text. It may also involve reducing redundant HTML codes (aka cruft) produced by Web page authoring tools and restructuring the site to produce better linked and focussed page content.

Many search engines now discount the weight given to on-page factors because they give too much scope for abuse by SEO experts. In theory the visible parts of a web-page are less prone to manipulation as they have to make sense to readers. However doorway pages with redirections and clever use of style sheets enable different content to be served to search engines and end users.

(1) Content Optimization

You should concentrate on your user and easy readability, but you always have to have an eye on the search engines as well. For users it is clear what a certain page should contain and for keywords to written in the headline, but for search engines it is better to repeat the important keywords several times. So you have to strike the right balance:

Concentrate on your users first
That is what the website is about. You don't sell your products or services to search engines but to people. And if they don't get what you are saying or find it hard to read through your website they very likely would hit the back button of their browser and visit your competition.

Then modify for search engines
If you got your text together go over it again and try to get some more keywords and phrases in where they fit and make sense. There is no certain amount or percentage that is best, just make sure to just use them a couple of times. The best ways to avoid using them too often are to use different words and phrases and to create some lists. Lists are always good to bring in some keywords.

(2) TITLE-Tag

Website title
It is displayed at the top of your browser and it is also used as the title of your website in the SERPs. Therefore you should take your time and think about the best title for your page.

Important aspects of the title-tag:

Give every page of your website its own title and don't use one title for the whole website
It should contain no more than around 10-12 words.
Think of it as a short ad copy, because that's basically it when users see them on the SERPs.

(3) META-Tags

META-Tags are not as important any more as they used to be. That is basically because people started using them to spam search engines especially the keyword-tag was heavily used for that. Nevertheless there are still some important META-Tags you should use:

The description-tag is probably the most important META-Tag. It is displayed in the SERPs and you should select it as carefully as the title-tag.

Important aspects of the description-tag:
- Give every page of your website its own description and don't use one description for the whole website.
- The description -tag is one of the few meta-tags that still positively influences your website's ranking, so its good to use your most important keywords in it.
- It should contain not more than around 25-30 words.
- Think of it as a short ad copy, because that's basically what users see on the SERPs.

The robots-tag is used to tell the search engines (e.g. spiders or robots) what they shall do with your website. Possible entries are index, follow, noindex and nofollow " whereas index/noindex tells the search engine whether to index the page or not noindex/nofollow tells them to follow the links or not.

The meta tag section of Guardian newspaper is shown below:

www.ngrguardiannews.com - Guardian Newspapers

(4) Headlines & text decoration

Headlines shouldn't only be used to structure your content and keep it easy to read, but also for SEO reasons. Search engines tend to give headlines between

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