SEO | Search Engine Positioning

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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

The methods employed to increase your search engine
rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have
probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell
you – the time has come to face your website! A high search
engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you
have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your
business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this
issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on
the Internet find websites through search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages
for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted
customers to your site who will be more than likely to make
a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine
results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your
website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information
available online to figure out how to optimize your web
pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few
simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments,
and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The
first item you should examine is the title bar on your
homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page.
Look at the words that appear there when you access your
home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on
your homepage’s title bar should include the most important
keywords or phrases, one of which would include your
company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on
the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page
of your site should contain the most important keywords and
phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very
long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or
less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title
bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to
each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website
content. Search engines generally list sites that contain
quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The
text on your site must contain the most important keywords
- the words that potential customers will be typing into
search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is
not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100
carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high
ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However,
the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning
that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your
cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able
to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not
highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case,
ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in
order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this
sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is
really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality,
they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding
them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags
in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must
access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the
browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a
window revealing the underlying code that created the page.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of
the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta
name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that
reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This
may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any
little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a
factor that is extremely important in terms of search
engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link
popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based
on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your
links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular
search engine, the search engine will then show you what
sites are linked to your site. In the case that there
aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites
that are linked up have low search engine rankings,
consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially,
this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that
they exchange links with your site. Of course, this
requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only
boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more
quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a
successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out
and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking
some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t
boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this
all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the
higher your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.