When starting an online business, blog, website or otherwise, you are bound to hear the magical phrase Search Engine Optimization numerous times but do you even know what it means? Maybe you understand the basic tenets of Search Engine Optimization but have not really grasped the underlying principles. Well that is where I come in. Sit back and relax as I offer you a crash course in Search Engine Optimization that will help you understand why it is important to get your website, business, etc, to rank at the top of search results in the future as an astounding 90% of all web traffic comes from Search Engines.
Lets face it, technology has taken over the world in more ways than one and has effectively changed the way people accomplish daily tasks. In previous years if you needed the answer to a question you would have to ask around until you got the answer whereas now you merely need to go to Google, Yahoo, Bing or another Search Engine and simply type in your question and in "0.243242 seconds" the answer "magically appears before you in the form of a website that mentions your question and supplies an answer. In previous years if you were in need of a specific product or service you would drum through the phone book until you found what felt like the right business to call. Again, today you need only to type the product or service into a Search Engine and Voila...instant results. Although everyone appreciates the luxuries that search engines have provided us...very few understand the principles behind it that allow it to occur.
The main powerhouse is Google so we will focus primarily on them in. Lets start with the basics-SEO or Search Engine Optimization in a nutshell is the process of making a website more visible within a particular search results. When you search for a term, the resulting page is a list of generally ten "results" per page that match your search topic. Although you would naturally assume that the Search Engine just magically knew what websites to show you or that it is based merely on relevancy to your search term...this is wrong. In fact, there are extremely complicated and secret algorithms that these Search Engines use to decide which websites to show you in the list it brings up. Google specific algorithm is known as "Page Rank" and was named after Google Co-Founder David Page. This algorithm takes into consideration multiple parameters ranging from the age of a site, the sites reputation among other sites (how many times that site is used as a reference on other sites", the specific "keywords" that are used within that website specific page that are highly relevant to your search term, as well as literally dozens of other factors.
Although no one knows exactly how Google or others quantify which websites rank the highest, through the art of deduction researchers have gotten a pretty good idea of what makes Google "happy" and willing to rank a particular website higher than another. This is extremely important to understand and take advantage of as there are literally billions of websites on the internet and by having a poorly Search Engine Optimized site your website will literally get lost in a sea of websites. The highest ranking website for a specific keyword does not necessarily have the best product or service, but what they do have is the most optimized site in the eyes of Google.
Whether you pay a marketing service to Search Engine Optimize your site or you crack open some research books on the topic, it is extremely pertinent that you get your website optimized as it could literally mean the difference between having ten visitors a day and $0 in revenue or having 10,000 visitors a day and $1000s in revenue. When you rank within the first page of a search result you exponentially better your odds of receiving traffic as opposed to having a site that permanently dwells on page 15 or 15,000 of a search result as that way, regardless of the superiority of your product, website, or service offered-you essentially do not exist in the eyes of the consumer or web surfer.
Author: C Manny Mullins Website URL: http://www.asksearch.me/ is the publisher of articles of interest. Resource information for Marketing Memberships. This information is copyrighted.
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