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Simple Search Engine Optimization
By admin | April 24, 2007
Now that you have a good-looking Web site designed and developed, you might be wondering why no one has visited it. Welcome to the virtual world. Major search engines cannot index your Web site if they do not know it exists. Therefore, no one will visit your web pages. Nevertheless, you might wonder, how is one indexed? There are a number of strategies that you might try, and in the interest of time, I am going to offer you information and a few suggestions to make your life easier.
Most Internet traffic is delivered to a website via a search engine so it is imperative that the engines are notified of the existence of your site. You can visit each web site one by one to submit or suggest your listing addition, acquire an application or program to submit the listing for you, or hire another agency or individual to do the submissions for you. If you purchase software or hire someone, the cost can vary from as little as $10 all the way up to several hundred or thousands.
Of course, those on low or no budgets must do the submitting themselves so it is recommended you submit to the best on the Net. The best search engine, of course, being Google. To recap, you must suggest or submit your website to search engines and directory websites in order to be discovered by interested searchers. The submission process is simple and usually free of charge for most search engines. The submission includes supplying the title, a description, and the uniform resource location (URL) which is the address. Here are a few additional facts regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM):
- Google is the No. 1 search engine on the Internet, this engines is reported to currently index some four billion web pages.
- 85 percent of Internet traffic uses a search engine to locate sites of interest.
- No one can guarantee you the top position on Google search. (In the likely event someone claims they can this)
- Quality content and back links improve every website position and ranking.
- Page Rank is Google’s 0-10 ranking system, which denotes quality.
Of course, those with little time and a few dollars should hire an SEO or SEM professional to handle this task. Many SEO jobs can be filled in-house. An optimization expert should possess adequate knowledge of typical search terms in association with a website subject or topic. These are commonly referred to as keywords and phrases. Think of this as a sort of “key” which unlocks the door to acquiring unique traffic from an engine or directory. However, before going out and hiring a marketing consultant or Search Engine Optimization company, here are the basics of optimizing every website owner should know.
First, the difference between a search engine and a directory is the human element. Directory listings are validated and edited by humans. Search engines, on the other hand, are listings compiled by an automated program and results are returned in accordance with a proprietary algorithm, which is usually a secret mathematical equation. This equation is used to score a website according to certain criteria and next return search results based on the total scoring. Those web sites with the higher scores are returned in order highest to lowest for a user requested search terms.
Another important portion of an optimization project is acquiring quality back links via a link building campaign. Each incoming link to your web site equates to a vote of confidence and transfers a proportionate amount of page rank to the other site. The more one-way non-reciprocal links to your site, the better your ranking position. If you can manage to rank high on Google, many other search engines will also place your web site in an advantageous position. The reason being is that many other engines use data from Google database for their own results. Clearly, Google is the hurdle to jump once you conquer this feat, the competition will take note and move you up in position.
Finally, content is king and queen on the Internet in respect to quality. For this reason, publishing subject and topic relevant web content - especially in the form of easy to read original article or blog post - is the absolute pathway to success on the super information highway affectionately known as the World Wide Web.
Topics: Marketing |