Basic SEO – The Functions of a Professional Application

Basic SEO can still put a website into the top ten of the search engines. This article describes the functions carried out by professional SEO applications.

Although it is possible with experience; skill and training to optimize a website for the search engines, a professional application can perform the basic SEO functions much more efficiently and it is possible to tune values and immediately see the effect on the visibility on the Internet.

The first task of any optimization process

Before any search engine optimization can occur then the primary keyword phrase must be chosen. The choice is critical as it must not only be relevant to the purpose of the website but also something that people will type in when searching for the product or service. The careful selection is very difficult to carry out manually (even with keyword tools like the one provided by Google). The SEO application can test the phrase against the top websites of the competitors to determine what will produce the best results.

Basic features checked by an SEO application

Keyword use in title

Although it may seem very basic SEO to put the keyword phrase in the title, it can be seen that not all top ten results actually do this. An optimizer can compare the use of the phrase and determine whether the keyword density is higher or lower than the competition and give advice which may include adding extra words to reduce the density.

Global link popularity

Another critical task is to determine how many other websites link to the target website. Each one of these is seen as a vote of popularity to the search engines and so pushes it up the list. An SEO application can obtain the list of all sites that link and help to build that list. It is good to not simply build up shared two-way links. Some search engines now dismiss links unless they are one way.

Link texts of inbound links

Its not just about the number of links, however. The text in those links will be checked to see how relevant it is. This is why it is difficult to create artificial links unless there is access to many other relevant sites that are also high in the search engine results.

Age of website in SEO

The relevant age of the website can be compared with the competitor’s sites. Older established sites will generally rank higher.

Keyword use in the main source of the website

A basic score is also created by a search for the use of the keyword phrase, and its constituent words throughout the different parts of the source page text. The particular components include body text; Header 1 (H1) keyword use; H2-H6; domain name; page URL; IMG ALT attributes; same domain link texts; outbound links; meta description; meta keywords; first sentence; and HTML comments.

All of these have specific rules around how they contribute to the page ranking and it is actually very easy to have a keyword density that is far too high.

Carrying out this manually is very labor-intensive and so the use of a basic SEO application makes the task much quicker and easier.

Links from social networks

Search engines are raising the priority of the links from social networks. SEO applications can check all the social networks to see how popular the target website is.

Search engine access by server speed

Another function of the application can be to check the server speed. The major search engines want the user to have a good experience and so rate the access speed.

Basic number of visitors to site

The more popular the site already then the higher the ranking determined by SEO.

Advanced optimization carried out by SEO.

In general, the issues described above are the basic requirements that SEO can measure and fine tune to gain the highest ranking on the search engines. However, there are many other not so basic functions than can give the final push up the list ahead of the competitors.

For example, the optimizer can take into account the number of trailing slashes in URL; whether the site source code HTML is valid to W3C standards; if the pages are compatible with particular search engines; the readability level of web page and many other factors that could affect your top-ranking such as spam or real phrases that could be determined as spam.

It can be seen from the above that even basic SEO can be an overwhelmingly time-consuming and difficult process if not done using the assistance of an SEO application. There are a lot of applications that can help with many of the tasks above but few that can carry out all of them. The best ones are not cheap but considering what they can do, they are extremely good value for money.

The top applications provide free trials of the basic SEO features and an indication of what would be provided when the software is paid for. The best example of this is iBusiness Promoter, however, readers may also like to check out: Conductor Searchlight and PowerMapper Sortsite.

Google provides many tools for basic SEO such as WebsiteOptimizer but really these require a lot of previous understanding which programs like iBusiness Promoter do not need.

The list above describes the basic SEO functions that could still possibly be performed manually but which are carried out far more efficiently with a professional application. Although this may cost money there is often a free trial and even a guarantee which is well worth considering especially if the website is part of a business that needs to be at the top of the search engines.