When speaking of getting ahead in search results, relevance is the name of the game. Every modern search engine has their own mathematical formulas and algorithms that try to emulate the human way of thinking, therefore you should aim to become as relevant to humans as possible. This article will tackle some of the common methods to accomplish that, along with some of the biggest mistakes in each area.

What is relevance?

In a nutshell, relevance means that the user has found what he has been looking for. If I search for, let's say, buying live fishing bait, a site that sells (as opposed to displaying mere information) live bait along with supplementary products will 'score' higher. If you are promoting your business with "live bait" as its major keyword, while you're actually selling camping supplies - your relevance is lower, as camping supplies are somewhat connected with the fishing sport. If you sell computer equipment while promoting live bait, you will be deemed "irrelevant" and unuseful. Keeping focused, fitting into the niche exactly will help you be more relevant.

Provide useful contents

Having a nice website and "selling" yourself properly isn't all - offer your visitors something useful.
If you specialize at something, write articles about it. If you sell a product, keep a steady stream of updates, interesting sales and new products. You'll have to think hard about making people want to come back, and keep coming back regularly. You should attempt to fulfill a specific need - if you manage to do that, your ranking will keep on increasing steadily.

It's surprising, but adding a couple of downloadable useful legal forms helped many law firms to upgrade their sites, changing them from a simple website into a website that one might actually find useful. No re-design was required, just opening up a "useful files" category... Having no usefulness to the visitor is a common mistake and the main reason for visitors not to return ever again. Avoid that.

Stay up-to-date

The Internet is dynamic and ever-changing. So should your website be. Relevance could, and often is, temporary - you're answering the need NOW, but what about next week? Or month? Will you remain relevant then? A good idea is to start a blog, your own personal (yet business-aimed) diary. If people are interested in you as a person, allow them to know what you think about current events in your field of expertise. Otherwise, make sure you add new things on a regular schedule (a weekly update is a worthwhile idea), and keep your public interested.

Visiting a website and seeing that it hasn't been changed over the course of six months makes one ponder, if they can schedule their next visit to the next Christmas, which is another thing to avoid.

Human-targeted promotion

A common mistake is trying to impress the search engine. Trust me, the ever-evolving search engines are sophisticated enough to know, when someone is trying to fool them (it's called "black-hat") or trying to convince them that a certain website is relevant. Search engines are trying to emulate humans, as described before. If a human should be impressed by a website, so should the search engine be. Aim your efforts at humans, and more specifically: your potential customers or your target audience.

Most search engines are capable of learning. If people consider your website relevant, your ranking will soar, and it is done by visiting your website in the first place and remaining inside it for prolonged periods of time. Those statistics, in conjunction with the original search term, help determine the relevance of a website. Try to imagine this as an inner monologue of a search engine: "If someone looks for a new printer and clicks the 3rd search result, then stays on the website for some time and ends up buying a printer, it might be that this site is more relevant than the predecessing two. If that happens again, maybe it should be ranked higher".

Staying on top of your game

The Internet is a competitive market. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and remaining relevant is a constant battle and the neverending need to improve. Publicly parade your expertise on a certain subject, and if done correctly, people would gather up to hear what you have to say. Make your visitor believe you are the best there is, and have them recommend you to other people. Relevance is somewhat connected on the way you can be better than your competition, that's why self-promotion is important here. With that been said, don't overdo or abuse it - make sure you do it with taste. Placing oneself in the shoes of a customer is a great way of figuring out if you're doing things right. If you do - then you're more relevant than whoever doesn't.

Tasteful link exchange

Link exchange is one of the latest trends when speaking about promotion. Basically, you just insert a link to someone's website, and they place yours, and you both benefit from mutual advertising. Although popular, this should be done with a measure of subtlety and good taste. If you happen to own a ranch, which you promote with your own website, placing links to sites about nearby attractions, lodging and... let's say... car rental might be a good idea.

Advertising cellphones, on the other hand, will make your visitor scratch their heads, not understanding why you would promote something that's not even remotely relevant to what you do, and the search engine will see that as well. Even if someone's more popular than you, think twice before advertising someone that's not adding to the relevance meter. Unless the New York Times are offering you a link on their homepage, think carefully before exchanging links.