Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Article
SEO can be a confusing business for most people. Even many so-called experts can find it difficult to keep a website at the top of search engines.
First… search engines are constantly changing their algorithms in an effort to bring you the most relevant website listings for your search query. Search engines also change their algorithms to stay ahead of rogue companies that quickly learn to manipulate search results.
As soon as search engines change the way they list websites, there are unscrupulous people who go to work trying to figure out how to cheat the system.
These people are using what is known as “Black Hat SEO” and if you are trying to run a legitimate website, stay away from them at all costs! Sure your website will get listed high pretty quickly using black hat techniques, but as soon as the search engines figure out what you’re doing, they’ll likely ban your website from their listings altogether (forever). And sooner or later, they will find out.
Second… There are many misnomers about what is most important when it comes to SEO. Some of the so called SEO gurus would have you believe that page rank is the most important thing when it comes to search engine listings. This is simply not true.
Page Rank (or Google PR) is an important factor when it comes to ranking a site for search engines, but the SERP (or search engine results page) is what really counts.
“Page Rank” is Google’s way of putting a number on a site’s authority. If they think your site is important, they will give you a higher PR.
But that doesn’t mean your site authority will index it for your main keywords.
There are thousands, maybe even millions, of websites that have a low page rank, but appear on the first page of the major search engines (including Google), for some of the top keywords. On the contrary, there are so many high-ranking PR web pages that are buried in “no man’s land” as far as search engines (including Google) are concerned.
Also, the other major search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Bing, and hundreds of smaller search engines) don’t really care about your “Google Page Rank” at all. They only care about giving their visitors relevant search results.
So ask yourself this… would you rather have a low Google PR of 1 or 2 and appear on the first page of search results? Or would you prefer to have a high PR of 5 or 6, and appear on page 10 of search results, where no one will ever find you…? I think the answer is obvious.
One of the websites I built for my other online business, has not had a Google PR of more than 2 for the last 4 years (since it has been active on the internet). But it has been on the first page of ALL major search engines (for my top keywords) for 3 1/2 of those 4 years. I’ll take the PR low and keep the listing high any day of the week.
What about this “Alexa Ranking” I’ve heard about?
Alexa rank is supposed to be an indication of how much traffic a website receives. The lower the number… the more visitors a website receives. If your Alexa rank is 50,000, that’s supposed to mean (of the millions of websites on the internet) that your site is the 50,000 most popular out there.
If your site has an Alexa rank of 2,000,000, then your site is only the top 2,000,000 most popular sites on the internet.
But here’s the truth… Alexa rank is NOT an accurate measurement! It only records websites that are visited by people who have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browsers (mainly SEO companies and web developers). Therefore, it does not count the actual visitors of a website.
Here’s a stat that proved this fact to me…
I currently have a dozen websites that I maintain, and I regularly check the traffic stats on all of them (as any good webmaster should).
One of my sites has an Alexa Rank of 171,246 (pretty good… right?) Another has an Alexa Rank of 4,276,996 (which is lousy) But according to my analytics stats (I cross-reference Google Analytics with AWstats and a couple of other programs, to get a more accurate stat) The one with the best Alexa rank only gets 40-50 visitors per day, but the one with the worst Alexa rank gets over 400 visitors per day.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that the site with the highest rank is being visited by some people who have the Alexa toolbar installed (and the toolbar is sending statistics to Alexa), but the site that actually performs best is being visited by real people who don’t think it’s necessary for Alexa to control their browsing habits.
Many SEO companies will use Alexa ranking to show their clients “proof” that they are making their money. (“Hey, your Alexa rank is up… so keep paying me.”) But remember this… Alexa rank is NOT an indication of how well a website is actually doing!
So what makes your website appear on the first two pages of search engines? In a word… “Relevant Content” (OK in 2 words)
Search engines only care about showing search results relevant to a person’s “keyword search query”. Search engines make money by showing their ads to as many people as possible and by getting as many people as possible to click on those sponsored listings.
If your search results are useless to your visitors, people will stop using your search engines and start using a different search engine. No visitors… no search engine revenue.
So while there are a number of important techniques you should use for a higher search listing (backlinks, internal links, proper meta tags, and keyword percentage, to name a few), remember…relevant content is! the king! And as search engines become more sophisticated, relevant content on your website will continue to become more important.
There are also many other factors that play a role in getting your website to appear at the top of search engines. It takes constant effort and continuous learning to keep up with the ever-changing search engine algorithms, and a quality SEO person (or company) will continue to learn and keep up with the changes.
But remember…there are no “secret” methods to get a high search engine listing. If you’re talking to an SEO company and they won’t tell you their methods of increasing your website’s listing (because they say it’s “proprietary information”), I recommend finding someone else to talk to about your website’s SEO. .
A quality (and honest) SEO company should have no problem telling you what methods they will use to increase your website’s exposure in search engines. So before you give someone (or any business) your money, there are a few questions to ask them first…
9 Important Questions to Ask Your SEO Firm BEFORE You Hire Them!
And yes, SEO is something you can do yourself effectively, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and most business owners have better things to spend their time on. That’s why you hire an SEO company… to do the work for you. They provide a service and you pay them for that service.