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Search Engine Optimization Demystified

Part 1 – The Players Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Altavista, MSN Search, and others, have become indispensable as personal and business tools for finding what we all need on the World Wide Web. As web site owners, we know that to take advantage of this reality we must optimize our web sites for search engines. However, there is a lot of confusion, misunderstanding, myth, and even fraud in this area. To demystify this topic, and provide the tools to make intelligent, well-informed decisions for our web sites, it is useful to identify the main players, understand how search engines actually work and follow the money. By understanding the motives involved, one can get a big picture understanding of the issues. In business there is no bigger motivator than money.

There are two main players in the search engine optimization field – the Search Engine companies (like Google), and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies (they are numerous, no big names stand out).

Search Engine Companies:How do search engine companies (Google) make their money?Primarily with paid advertising.Why would advertisers use a search engine\’s web site to promote their product?Eyeballs… lots of them!How does a search engine company get those eyeballs?By providing a tool (the search facility) that works really well, giving reliable, useful, relevant, and current results on keyword searches. It is in the best interest of a Search Engine company to index as many sites as possible, as often as possible, and to have a ranking mechanism that will provide accurate results for key word searches on those web sites.

This bears repeating: yes Search Engines want to list your site in their index! Furthermore, they want to rank it as accurately as possible. There is no need to trick the search engines into finding or ranking your web site. In fact, several practices commonly employed to fool search engines into ranking a site higher than it should be can have quite the opposite result. Search Engine companies actively research such techniques and develop ways to counter them in the interests of maintaining the accuracy and integrity of their search results. So if the Search Engine companies want to rank your site well, why does getting good results seem so difficult and mysterious?

There are three major reasons for this: The exact ranking algorithm used by Search Engine companies is a closely guarded secret. So we, as web site owners or developers, cannot know precisely how to cater to it. In addition, different search engine companies may use different algorithms and they upgrade these algorithms regularly. The result of any web site optimization effort is always a trade off between maximizing your results for a particular set of terms and narrowing your potential scope. In other words, one cannot have both; every key word possible for your product or service, and a specific set of key words optimized to the fullest. The total amount of traffic to a web site is not solely determined by search engine optimization. Traditional marketing can significantly affect results and these would be difficult to separate from results derived from SEO. Confusing the issue further are the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Companies.

It is in the interests of the SEO company to \”appear\” to be able to increase traffic to a web site in ways not available to a web site owner and seemingly being able to exceed the capabilities of web site designers and developers. In short, keeping the methods they use as a mystery is to their advantage.

We at Back2Front – The Web Site People, have worked with clients who have opted to use SEO companies in addition to the optimization we provide as part of our management service. We have also heard reports from new clients who have tried these services before coming to us. In both scenarios we have seen that there is rarely a perception of a good return on investment. Why is this?

Web site optimization for search engines should be done as an integral part of the development of the web site. The way the site is built, coded, and written affects the results – often dramatically. Most SEO companies (since they usually do not build web sites) come in after the fact, and may have no control over how the site was built. Trying to optimize a web site with key word adjustments on a poorly built site is like trying to shore up the foundations of a building with more coats of paint.

Optimization is an ongoing process, something that should be looked at regularly as part of the management of a web site. As new competition comes online and your business develops, changes should be made to your site\’s SEO to compensate. Most SEO companies do not have the necessary long-term association with their clients to accomplish this.

Expectations of web site owners (partly driven by the SEO company\’s promises) are often unrealistic. Search engine optimization companies often charge $500 or more for their service. For this kind of money, expectations are understandably high. But know this: if an SEO company promises number one placement of your web site on Google, don\’t deal with them. Such a claim is misleading at best and down right fraudulent at worst. Just for fun you could ask them: \”number one for what search term?\” If their answer is your domain name, i.e., \”back2front.ca,\” well duh! Of course they can guarantee that! You will get that regardless, since domain names must, by definition, be unique. If they say they can get you number one for some good search terms, for example, \”web design,\” then ask, \”what do I get as compensation if I do not get number one?\” Hope they say money, because it\’s a sure bet they will be paying! Think about this: this is a company guaranteeing results from a third party they do not have any control over.

With this kind of misleading information, it is no wonder that SEO is mysterious for many people. But search engine companies like Google do make public the criteria used in their algorithms and provide basic web master guidelines for successful search engine optimization. If you are curious, go check it out… http://www.google.ca

In the second part of this 3 part series of articles I will explore how the search engines actually work. ReadSearch Engines Demystified Part 2.

www.back2front.ca

by Candace Carter, Back2Front-The Web Site People, 2009

Search engine optimization is a marketing strategy that many websites are employing to make their sites’ ranking go up during searches. Actually, search engine optimization employs many methods to ensure that the website has constant traffic.

Search Engine Optimization for Search Engines:

Before anything else, it is better to understand how search engine optimization works. Initially, webmasters would present a URL or a web page to the search engines operating in the Internet. From then, the search engine would try to gather relevant links and information regarding the website or URL. The information and other relevant data that these crawlers would get from the website are what the search engines would use to catalog or index the site. The relevance of the site and the rate of which it is visited has an effect on its ranking during search engine results.

Initially, search engine optimization first turned out to be a highly maneuverable business where webmasters would put irrelevant meta tags and keyword on their site to rank higher and to attract traffic. These black hat methods were soon found out by search engines and nowadays meta tags have lost their relevance in search engine optimization. Many revisions were done with search engines in order to avoid webmasters’ tactics and tricks used by search engine optimization firms which have no relevant information at all for those searching for serious ideas and materials.

Some search engines have also refused to be used by SEO companies and their blatant inappropriate ways of marketing their clients. Search engines are repeatedly banning search engine optimization companies and their clients who are noted to use black hat techniques to raise their rankings. Consistent banning of sites and SEO companies who optimize these sites can ruin a site’s integrity and bring about lesser traffic since search engines are usually what most people use to scour the Internet. Not appearing in search engine results will create a vacuum for your company and you will have to create another site if you are continuously banned from search engines.

SEO companies who repeatedly go against the search engine rules will ultimately lose clients because search engines might automatically block off their clients without any reason other than that this certain SEO company has a reputation of using black hat techniques to manipulate higher rankings for their clients. Search engine optimization can be easily manipulated just by submitting content which are rich in keywords and key phrases but have less relevance. Spamdexing is also one way of immersing the Internet with irrelevant information designed to raise rankings.

These methods are frowned upon by search engines and your site may be banned for a period of time if you or your SEO company indulge in underhand techniques. Other black hat ways that some search engine optimization firms use to raise a site’s ranking is to insert a hidden text in the site itself which human browsers can not see or detect but robotic spiders or crawlers can easily find and include in their indexing. Search engine optimization does not actually have a lot of fixed rules and regulations regarding what to do and what not do when optimizing a site.

Search Engine Optimization Methods To Raise Rankings:

There are actually many methods of search engine optimization which is why there is actually no need for black hat techniques and other underhand techniques to raise rankings. The varied ways of optimizing a site is to have relevant keyword rich content, having articles title rich in keywords, have images and pictures scaled down to a size that does not require long waiting time to load. Other methods for search engine optimization are website redeveloping, putting links and submission to search engines.

Choosing a Search Engine Optimization Company:

Many SEO companies deal with marketing a site using white hat methods, which is to say that they do things aboveboard and without offending any of the search engines. You would just have to make your choice well when you are in the market for a company to do your search engine optimization work.

One of the ways to check and see if the SEO company you wish to contract with has no underhand dealings is to get recommendations from older sites that have used the search engine optimization methods of the said company. More recent sites might not have had results yet regarding ranking and traffic so it is better to evaluate the SEO company through sites which are already more than two months old. You will also benefit by learning a little about ways of search engine optimization so you will be aware of any underhand techniques employed by the SEO company.