Blog Post 3 - BUS572-3

Third Session

This week´s topic is about Search Engine Optimization. One of the concepts that I found interesting in this chapter is optimizing images. The key point here is to optimize the images with the relevant keywords because the search engine cannot read images. It needs to understand what the image is about. Giving a good title to the image would help visitors to get a better sense of what the website is about. The title should describe the image and give good information about the image. Giving the correct title to the image can help the website getting higher rank in the search engine.

There are different ways to optimize images with key phrases for SEO:

• Use descriptive filenames.

• Use specific alt tags and title attributes for the images.

• Meta information can be supplied in the image file. Make sure this information is relevant.

• Use descriptive captions, and keep relevant copy close to the relevant image.

• Make sure the header tags and images are relevant to each other.

The second concept is how to get more links for a website. Having valuable content on the website that visitors want to read will help getting more links to the website. Using relevant tools and documents on the website will increase the number of links for the website. For example, creating a calculator that calculates body mass index can increase the number of links for a website that sells diet books. Creating games is another way to generate links. Other ways to generate links are widgets, browser extensions and other software that visitors use. In order to identify target sites for link request, you should first know your competitors and those who are linking to them. Secondly, you should find noncompeting sites that have high rank for your key words.

Source here

The skill that I have learned this week is how to use A/B testing. A/B testing is a way to test changes on a website and determine whether these changes will increase the conversion rate or not. For example if you have different set of keywords and you are not certain which would give your website the higher rank, you can use A/B testing method and find out which keywords will give your website the higher rank in the search engine.

The knowledge I have gained after this session is how optimizing images can lead to higher ranking of the website. Giving the title that is relevant to the keywords and describe the image properly are the key points. I have also learned how you can get more links for your website by putting useful content or documents on it and by using tools and creating games. These all increases your website's ranking if used correctly.