"Search Engine Optimisation - The Final Link In The Chain Of Success For Your Web Site"

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Search Engine Optimisation - What It Can Do For Your Web Site

Search Engine Optimisation - or SEO - has grown up since the start of the internet into a specialised subject in its own right.

It simply means optimising your web site or blog so that it appears high up in the search engine results - preferably on the first page.

Search Engine Results - What You Should Know

But "high up" for what? We'll come to that in a moment. First let's clarify what we mean by "search engine results". Different search engines give you different results. If you type a term like "golf swing tips" into Google you'll get a different list of web sites displayed than if you typed the same term into Yahoo or Bing.

This is because all search engines (and Yahoo is, strictly speaking, a directory) use different algorithms to determine the most relevant pages to display for the search term. So if your page is optimised so as to capture the top position in Google, for example, it won't necessarily have the top position in Yahoo or Bing (though it does happen on occasion).

Google - The Top Search Engine

So what do you do? The most effective way round this conundrum seems to be to optimise your page for Google. The reason is that Google is by far the largest search engine and commands more search engine queries than all its competitors put together. So Google is the search engine to target, and then the others will probably list your page high up as well.

Now for what we mean by "high up". When we say a page is ranked at number one on Google we mean that it is ranked in the top position for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. A keyword is a word typed into the search box by someone searching the internet for something, e.g. "diets". A keyword phrase is the same thing except that it consists of more than one word, such as "diet for food lovers".

If you type "diets" (without the quotes) into Google you'll be presented with 20.8 million results, or pages, to choose from. The chances of getting your site to the top for this keyword are therefore remote in the extreme. But if you target the keyword phrase "diet for food lovers" then you'll be competing against just 678,000 other pages.

678,000 sounds a lot, but it's not so difficult to beat nearly all of them if you have a highly relevant page containing the keyword phrase in certain parts of it, and have it repeated sufficiently (but not too much) throughout the page. Many searchers type their term "in quotations" like this, as doing that removes a lot of irrelevant results, and if you do that with "diet for food lovers" then the number of competing sites comes down to 34,200.

Page Rank

There's one more factor that determines how easy or difficult it is to get your page listed high up in the search engines, and that is "page rank".

When your web site or blog is new and has little content, even a highly relevant, useful and informative page on it will have difficulty in being placed anywhere near the first page on Google. It does occasionally happen, depending on the search term targeted, but it is very rare.

The reason for this is that your new site won't have a very high page rank. It will probably have no rank at all for some time. How can you get a high rank for it? By securing as many incoming links as possible from other sites focussed on broadly the same topic, and preferably with a high page rank themselves.

This will cause Google to consider your page to be highly relevant for the search term it is targeting, and to increase the page rank of your site. This makes it a whole lot easier to have a page on it placed highly in Google for its target keyword phrase (or search term).

That, of course, begs another question - how can you get lots of incoming links from other, preferably high ranking, sites?

Article Directories

The answer is by submitting articles to high quality article directories, which themselves are invariably of high ranking. These articles will contain a link back to your site. This is a quite legitimate practice and one that is used by nearly all successful web site and blog owners. There is a second benefit from writing and submitting articles - you will receive targeted traffic from the article directories in the meantime.

Articles published by the article directories, if they have been keyword optimised, stand a much better chance of a high position on Google and other search engines because of the high page rank of the article directories.

Other People's Blogs

Another method of getting back links is simply to search for blogs in the same category as your web site, read them and comment on the posts in them. By convention, your post can contain a link back to your site or blog, provided your comment is thoughtful and constructive, and not just spam.

If you have a blog, you can use this method to encourage other people to post their comments on it, giving you free content (provided it's genuine and useful) and helping with your page ranking.

"Automatic Blog Content" Scam

Finally, beware of anyone selling software that claims to be able to provide you with "automatic blog content" or that involves "self-writing blogs". I've tested some of these programs myself and while it would be nice if they worked the truth is that all they do is scour the internet for material that seems to be relevant and slap it up on your blog.

The unavoidable drawback with them is that it is a machine that decides on the relevancy issue, not a human being. The result is usually a mish-mash of content that is only marginally relevant to your blog, and often written by people who have only a tenuous grasp of English, or else consisting of irrelevant videos hosted by YouTube.

I hope you are now a little wiser about Search Engine Optimisation, and why it is best left to a specialist.

Remember, for a free consultation to discuss your needs and plans, simply click where indicated just below, state your communication preference (Skype, email or standard telephone line), your time zone and the name of your company, and I will respond within one business day (bear in mind I'm on London time) and we can take it from there.

To your online success.

Philip Gegan