The term search engine optimization comes from the English “search engines optimization” - “optimization for search engines”. This direction in recent years has been increasingly developed on the RuNet and represents one of the main and most effective methods responsible for the success of any Internet project.

Effect– stable high positions in search engines.

Correcting errors in site navigation and editing program code is work on the internal factors of the site that affect both the convenience of the site for users and its “friendliness” in relation to search engine robots.

Content growth– adding new pages containing information useful to target visitors.

Placing links on thematic resources differs from a chaotic exchange of links in that links are published only on sites whose visitors may be truly interested in the information posted on the pages of your site.

The use of “white hat” optimization, as a rule, leads not only to an increase in the site in the first positions, but also to an increase in site visitors by several tens of times.

What problems does search engine optimization solve?

Search engines are the most important tool for navigating the Internet today. With their help, they search for information on the Internet, compare, analyze, ask for advice, look for like-minded people, acquaintances, and even the meaning of life. If previously catalogs were a more popular tool for navigating the Internet, today their volume and ramifications, growing along with the increase in volumes of information, have grown so much that they have either become overly complex for the user or contain very little information. At the same time, the quality of search engines has improved significantly over the past few years. Therefore, it is not surprising that users switched en masse to search engines.

By becoming the most popular sites on the Internet, search engines have gained an additional size effect. Now these are not only the most visited sites, but also the most famous. As a result, when a user goes online for the first time, he first goes to the site that he already knows from friends, from the press or from offline advertising, that is, to a search engine.

This state of affairs will continue for a long time, since a significant proportion of users are not very familiar with computers in general, and the number of such users in our country is apparently growing. Not too savvy Internet users use the search bar of the machine as the navigation bar of the browser. Many users do not distinguish between the concepts of “Internet” and “search engine” at all. This can be clearly seen by the number of search queries containing the site address.

That’s why this is so important for many companies optimization site, how the process of achieving first places in search results in search engines for company-targeted queries. Why is it important to take one of the first places? Because users, on average, view one page of search results and rarely go to sites that only have links on the second page and beyond.

Why is there a second page! A study of user transitions from Yandex search results, conducted several years ago by SpyLOG and Ashmanov and Partners, showed that the share of transitions that can be expected on the seventh line tends to zero, that is, sites that are below sixth place in the search results , – also “overboard”. Above the search results there are advertising lines, which are increasing in number over time. They also reduce the number of clicks that sites get in search results, because for users these are also search results.

By the way, for North American sites the share of transitions from search engines from all transitions is on average 60%, and for corporate sites it is even higher. That is, more than half of all visitors receive the average website from a search engine. On the Russian-language Internet, the share of search traffic is lower, but still very large and constantly growing.

That is why optimization today is a large, branched market of services, in which there are significantly more players than in the online advertising market. And the volume of this service market in Russia in 2008 is estimated at $200 million, which is only three times less than the advertising market. How could it be otherwise, if the effectiveness of this marketing method is in no way lower than other advertising tools on the Internet!

Optimization is a set of techniques and methods that allow you to reach the top lines in search results. All optimization techniques are open and described on numerous forums, specialized optimizer sites and in countless articles. It is very important that there are no “secret” optimization methods. Everything here is transparent and has long been known. The greatest importance in the speed of obtaining optimization results is the experience of the optimizer, that is, the ability to quickly assess the situation and choose the right methods of work, however, even a beginner, armed with patience and perseverance, can achieve excellent results.

WHEN STARTING THE OPTIMIZATION PROCESS, BE CLEARLY UNDERSTANDING THE FOLLOWING POINTS.

1. This is a process of trial and error. Despite the fact that there are fairly accurate “recipes for success,” in each specific case they may not work, and the likelihood of their working is lower, the more fellow optimizers are working on the same search words and in the same market sector. It is necessary to try all optimization methods to achieve results.

2. Optimization is a long process. Even if you quickly make changes to the site, the search robot will not update information about the site in the database immediately, but at best in a few days, or rather even in a week. That is why the optimization process usually drags on for many months and all the results come very gradually.

3. Optimization is a very painstaking process, where many factors must be taken into account: the features of each search engine, the features of the market in which the company operates, the activity of competitors and the actions they take, and so on. Moreover, all these factors must be taken into account constantly, and not just once at launch.

4. Optimization is an unstable process. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, and the market landscape is also changing due to competitors and the optimization efforts they take. Therefore, the successes that the company achieved a few days (weeks) ago may turn into nothing today. Hence, optimization must be done constantly.

5. Search engines resist SEO efforts because they degrade search quality. Search engines strictly and unilaterally regulate acceptable behavior of optimizers and unceremoniously remove from search results (search results) sites that, in their opinion, do not comply with these rules. Moreover, these rules are not published and are constantly changing, so any optimization action tomorrow may be “outside the law.”

Why do search engines fight SEOs?

As a result of the actions of optimizers, search results change. Random results disappear from the search or go downhill - links to forums, links to pages that have long disappeared. This undoubtedly makes the search better: its accuracy increases. However, at the same time, the completeness in the results sharply decreases, that is, the search engine’s coverage of various topics related to search query. For example, the query “car” includes a whole range of different interests: buying a new or used car, rental, repair, device, spare parts, history, abstract, types, etc., etc. At the same time, search engines are all as one they issue either sale (new, used) or rental cars. In rare cases, we also come across the sale of spare parts. Thus, more than half of the possible interests of users were dropped from the search results (on the first few pages), meaning many users do not receive the information they need and will be forced to clarify them repeatedly. Compare the search results for the same word on the Yandex search engine (Figure 5.9) or Google with the search results of Nigma (Figure 5.8) - a machine that clusters search results by different topics - you will see how few different topics come to the top search pages of the “big” search engines.

Hello, friends!

Starting with this article, we begin to dive into the world of website promotion and will analyze the first point, which you should understand not as something complex and technical, but as something completely simple and approach this issue without any special problems.

In this material, I will answer the question “What is SEO” in simple words and will analyze the basic principles of this concept, which should be taken into account when promoting your website.

Let's start with the very definition of the concept.

SEO is an abbreviation of the English phrase Search engine optimization, which is popularly translated as optimization for search engines or search engine optimization. All definitions are correct.

Based on this concept, we must understand that this is essentially just developing the site to a state that search engines will like. The fact is that search engines are not people, and therefore they cannot determine at a glance whether a site is useful or not. Therefore, it is necessary to bring our site to certain parameters that will help them understand this. And all the actions that provide for this are called SEO optimization.

This includes many factors and methods, which I will discuss below.

SEO in the current environment

Over time, the situation in the world of website creation and promotion is becoming more and more complex. This is due to several factors:

• Every day many websites are created and search engines need to choose really useful websites;
• Many websites are created specifically for business promotion, since visitors from search engines are the cheapest targeted traffic (relatively).

Due to these factors, there are a lot of people who are trying to promote their sites to the TOP (highest search positions) to get the most traffic. But the more sites there are, the more work search engines have to do to determine the usefulness of the site and compare them with each other. After all, not every site is useful, and according to some criteria, search engines must give preference to one resource over another.

If we don’t know the basic principles of SEO optimization, then how will we be better than others? This is the whole essence of the definition discussed in the article. We must know the basic principles in order to make our website more effective, thereby making it easier and faster to promote it.

If we simply talk about an effective website, then at the moment an effective resource for search engines is one that:

1. Useful to people, that is, it contains valuable and useful information;
2. Looks like the site from the inside.

To briefly describe the essence of this point, current SEO comes down to making the site as useful as possible for people and as clear as possible for search engines, so that they can understand that the site is really good.

Previously, everything was not as difficult as it is now. Search engines were not so advanced and could not rank sites effectively. Nowadays the requirements for websites are very high. Everything is done to ensure that in the search we are shown only the best resources that solve our problems.

In order for our site to be at the top of the search results, it is necessary to carry out optimization work that will make the site the best among its competitors. These works are divided into several types. We move towards them smoothly.

Kinds

1. In terms of prohibition;
2. In terms of the type of optimization.

Regarding the first point, SEO is divided into:

1. White;
2. Black.

White - SEO, which does not contradict any rules of the search engines themselves. In this matter, as in any other matter, there are rules and restrictions, violating which you may not achieve the desired result or reduce all efforts to nothing.

Black - opposite direction the first, which implies prohibited methods of website optimization. These are various cheats, manipulations, deceptive actions - buying external links, cheating behavioral factors, social signals, and so on. Ultimately, this is a big risk of knocking your own site out of the game and getting banned from search engines.

Of course, with proper use of black search engine optimization, you can significantly increase the effect of website promotion, thereby overtaking your competitors. But, if you are not an intelligent specialist in this field, then this approach is strictly prohibited for you.

Now we can consider the second direction and talk about types of optimization, of which there are 2:

1. Internal optimization;
2. External optimization.

The site cannot be considered as something abstract or just an object that we see with our eyes. In fact, this is like an enterprise that needs a properly configured internal and external policy.

Website promotion works as efficiently as possible or only works at all with an integrated approach. Therefore, it is necessary to bring the resource to such an internal state that will make it clear to search engines that the resource really looks like a website and you can give it an advantage over competitors. The same applies to external optimization.

To put it simply:

• Internal optimization - work inside the resource so that it is as similar as possible to the site and is as relevant (corresponding) to the requests for which promotion is taking place;
• External optimization - work that is carried out to improve external indicators. In the world of optimization, this factor is responsible for working on the link mass (backlinks). I also include here the constant attraction of visitors.

More details about each type of optimization below.

Internal optimization includes working with:

• Page meta tags - each page must have relevant data (title, description, keywords), which help search engines understand what the page is about;
• Working with content - filling and properly optimizing content so that it answers a specific question;
• Interlinking is internal work on connecting pages to each other in order to allow visitors to move to other pages while being on the same page. A very important thing that we will consider in detail in one of the articles;
• Site structure - correct and convenient for the visitor arrangement of all elements on the site;
• Usability - ease of use of the site by your visitors;
• The code of the pages and the site as a whole - the resource must have a competent and clean code so that search engines can easily read the content on the pages. This fact is also important, since search engine robots see our site as source code.

We all know the phrase “Content is king.” It's clear. In principle, filling the site with quality content should be fine. But search engines also look at other things that should let them know whether the content on a site is truly valuable. Correct internal optimization helps to understand this partly.

External optimization is more modest, but working with it is no less difficult.

• Increasing the link mass to the site - one of the indicators of the usefulness of the site is the growth of backlinks to the resource. That is, the number of links that other sites have placed on us. This shows that the content is good and is being shared with others. Therefore, it is necessary to work on these indicators;
• Attracting visitors - in order to increase the site’s audience and develop an overall rating for the site, you need to attract visitors, based on whose actions search engines will form an opinion about the project.

After we have answered the question “What is SEO” and examined the main types of optimization, we can move on to a slightly different question and consider the aspects of SEO that affect website promotion. You need to work on them constantly.

Factors influencing promotion

At this point, I want to expand a little on the issue of indicators that search engines evaluate when analyzing your site. Based on their assessment, they give you good or bad positions in the search results.

You need to be 100% familiar with these indicators if you are or are already doing SEO. You will need to work on each of them.

I suggest looking at everything using the diagram below as an example.

We consider the length of the entire strip to be 100%, and the green filled state is the value of each indicator in the promotion. Let's go over each one.

• Content - it is clear that it occupies quite a high importance in promotion. And this is not strange, because in essence, a site is content. The more of it and the better quality it is, the more valuable the resource is and the higher the effect;
• Links are external links that point to your website. The value is not so great, but it still needs to be used to add the effect to all indicators;
• Social signals - this indicator determines the interestingness of your content and how it is shared on social networks and how it is distributed. Therefore, you must definitely use social media in your arsenal;
• Services and add-ons - this factor also gives a small plus. It implies the presence of some kind of service or some kind of feature that helps you do something (for example, analyze) directly on your website. For an online store, this could be an online calculator, as an option. You can also come up with something for an information resource. Alternatively, you can attach a function for checking site performance;
• Frequency and speed are a particularly important factor for an information resource. The faster and more often the site is filled, the faster the effect will be in the end. Why now I focus only on quickly filling my blog with content, and put other tasks on the back burner;
• PF - behavioral factors. It is one of the most basic indicators of the usefulness of a resource. This includes many factors - time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, returns to the site, bounce rate. It is logical that the better all these indicators, the more useful the site as a whole. We need to work steadily on this factor. At the moment, this is a fundamental factor in assessing the usefulness of a resource;
• The technical side is partly internal optimization. As you can see, it plays quite a good role. You also need to pay attention to this;
• Usability and engagement - I propose to consider these indicators separately. Usability is the ease of use of a site by visitors. Behavioral factors depend on the convenience of the site. Engagement is an indicator of the quality, value and novelty of content. The more the content involves the visitor in studying it, the better, since it is unlikely that anyone will be involved in uninteresting and not useful content.

This chart should give you a basic understanding of which site metrics you need to improve first. But remember that by improving only one thing, you will not achieve the desired result. Promotion works most effectively with an integrated approach.

In addition, search engines do not work according to linear laws, and if one of the indicators of your site is zero, then it can multiply all other indicators by the same zero, making promotion not so effective.

This is where I will end this article. The result was quite detailed and informative material. I hope that I have fully answered the question “What is SEO” and even more. I look forward to your comments on this matter. I will answer and help everyone. If suddenly there is something to add, then I look forward to your wishes. We'll take everything into account.

And the main conclusion of all the above material is as follows: "We make websites as useful and understandable as possible for people, as well as for search engines". In general, we make our sites look like sites and use all the factors that I discussed above.

In the following articles we will consider each factor and indicator considered separately. We will also improve them, thereby making our sites better and promoting them. There will be a lot of interesting things. Wait!

That's all. See you in new materials.

Best regards, Konstantin Khmelev.

Over time, you come to understand the need to study the basics of SEO, because no matter how interesting and useful the materials and articles you publish are, for search engines they are just text and in order to give it importance and significance, SEO optimization is necessary.

The concept of SEO is very broad, it is by no means a few clever tricks that allow sites to get into the first places of the top 10 search results, SEO is a whole science that is constantly evolving, and since it directly depends on search engine algorithms, as the algorithms change, so do the the methods she uses.

In this article, I will try to explain in a simple and accessible language for novice bloggers and web masters the basics of search engine optimization and promotion called SEO, and indicate the main directions of this rather difficult to understand set of measures necessary to achieve good positions for the pages of your site.

SEO for beginners: the basics of optimization and promotion for beginners

What is SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO (English) Search Engine Optimization) or simply search engine optimization is a set of methods and methods designed to engage and enhance all positive (both internal and external) factors that are taken into account by search engine algorithms to determine the positions of each page in search results for the right words (search queries).

You may have a very reasonable question: why can’t search engines determine the significance and quality of content (internal content) without using any SEO tricks and tricks?
The answer to this question is very simple: search engines are just machines and no matter how complex and sophisticated algorithms they are stuffed with, they will remain so, with a template perception of all the indexed content of our sites. That is why we have to play by their rules and adapt to these patterns using the recommendations of both the search engines themselves and SEO practitioners who, through numerous experiments, learn those factors that search engines are silent about.

White and black hat SEO

Not all search engine optimization techniques are considered legal and approved by search engines; those that are prohibited include black hat SEO.
These techniques include:

• Text and links that are invisible to visitors and intended for search engines. For example: white text on a white background.
• Cloaking and JavaScript redirects: search bots see one page content, but users see something completely different or are redirected to another page
• Doorways: pages stuffed with keywords

The use of black hat optimization methods is extremely undesirable and sooner or later becomes the reason (lowering the positions of pages in search results), falling under and even banning the entire domain.

What does the concept of SEO include?

When we talk about SEO as a way to achieve better positions in search results, we usually mean two parts:

1. Internal optimization (on-page SEO) of a website or a specific page
2. and external promotion (off-page SEO).

Typically, the best results are achieved by simultaneously using optimization and feeding promoted pages with external incoming links, although in some special cases only and is sufficient.

Internal website optimization

External website promotion

External search promotion- the very last stage of search engine optimization. External promotion usually means receiving incoming links from other sites () to promoted pages. As a rule, the more pages of different sites link to yours, the more significant it becomes in the eyes of search engines. The most important aspects of off-page SEO are:

• Selecting text for placing links
• Selecting the right donors (referring sites). They are usually selected from thematically similar (those that search engines trust) resources.

External links to promoted pages can be obtained in several ways, both paid and free. It should be noted that search engines have a very negative attitude towards paid search engines, but unfortunately, sometimes it is impossible to do without them. The most optimal means for obtaining them are.
Free methods Obtaining backlinks is more labor-intensive and takes much longer than buying them. These methods include:

• Posting articles in (there are very few truly worthy Russian-language directories)
• Mutual exchange of links (post links) with sites of similar topics (the main thing here is to know when to stop and under no circumstances participate in exchange systems).
• Placement is the most effective way to receive direct thematic links, which will not only increase your rankings, but will also bring visitors to your site. The number of them will be directly proportional to the usefulness of your article.

Lecture 5. Information retrieval optimization: recommendations

Information search processusually of an empirical nature. In this case, the user’s behavior, as the organizing beginning of managing the search process, is motivated by:

• information need,
• the variety of strategies, technologies and tools provided by the system.

To evaluate adequacy of query expressionand the completeness of the result obtained, the user can:

• find additional information,
• organize the search process so that part of the search results can be used to confirm or deny the adequacy of another part.

Operational objects directly involved in user interaction with the search engine aredocument search image And search query image.

Search document image - description of a document, expressed by means of information retrieval language and characterizing the main semantic content or any other features of this document necessary for searching it on request.

Information retrieval technologies- P Search tools and technologies used to fulfill information needs. They are determined by the type of problem the librarian solves: the ratio of his knowledge and ignorance about the object under study. In addition, the process of interaction between the librarian and the system is determined by the level of his knowledge of the functionality.system as a tool and knowledge of the content of the resource (completeness of information presentation, reliability of the source, etc.).

The procedure for finding the necessary information must be divided into four main stages:

1. Organization of search

1. definition of knowledge area;
2. selection of data type and sources;

2. Implementation of the search process

1. organizing a search based on the initial fragments of a word,
2. the formulation of the “search image”,
3. final refinement search

It is generally accepted to organize a search based on the initial fragments of a word (search with truncation on the right). For example, instead of the word “library” you can enter its fragment « library*". In this case, documents will be found that contain not only the word « library", but also"library", "librarian", " library science”, etc. In each individual case, the librarian must clearly understand what needs to be found (“search image formulation”), since in the option proposed to him, a much larger number of documents will be found than when specifying the word in full (without truncation). In the resulting array of information, you can conduct a clarifying search and, as a result, obtain more relevant and relevant data.

3. Search results evaluation

The search result must meet the following requirements:

• uniqueness,
• completeness,
• consistency

Different search types define different functionality requirements search engine in terms of outcome assessment. However, for the casesubject searchthe proof of completeness is a priori: the search result itself confirms the existence (or absence) of an object that has the desired properties. In this case the resultthematic searchis multiple and requires subsequent systematization - another procedural step for ordering the resulting set of objects according to the values ​​of a basis that is not explicitly defined. In its turn,problematic searchalready presupposes a two-level systematization.

Complication, specification and detail of the request, in case of an unsatisfactory answer, are carried out by modifying the search image, that isreformulationrequest and conduct a second search in the same data array that was obtained as a result of the initial search. It is advisable to double-check the same request in different search engines (for example, a combination of Google and Yandex).

4. Processing search results

• selection of the most useful information;
• choice of information processing method
• search for patterns, formal rules and structural connections in the collected information;
• creative interpretation of the results obtained;
• integration of the extracted “knowledge”.

The development of the search process is carried out by modifying the POS expression, by reformulating the query and conducting a second search in the same data array or in a subarray obtained as a result of the initial search.

Methods for processing search results

Based on the nature of the transformations (in the context of further use of processing results), methods for processing search results can be divided into two groups:

• Structural and format transformations;
• Information-analytical (logical-semantic, structural-semantic transformations).

Search engines are used directly for searching, the number of which amounts to several hundred in the world. They focus on certain types of queries or a combination of them (bibliographic, address, factual, thematic, etc.). In addition, there are full-text, mixed and other search engines.

Bibliography