It’s common to see people advertise search engine optimization (SEO) secrets. Many people claim to have the ‘secret formula’ or the ‘proven method’ of internet marketing that will give you instant success. However, to fully understand how many of these claims are dubious, it’s good to understand what SEO really is.
The ultimate goal of search engine optimization is for an existing website to be present at the top of search engine results (for example, Google.com) when someone searches for a key phrase related to that website or business. . For example, SEO is good if you own a small flower shop in Austin, Texas, and you want your website to be found by people searching for ‘Flower shop in Austin, Texas’.
However, search engine companies use complex algorithms to determine which websites are most relevant to individual key phrases (such as ‘Flower shop in Austin, Texas’). These results cannot be bought or ‘influenced’ by any amount of cash. Google’s ultimate goal is to provide users with the best possible search results, and therefore they use their own criteria, which are unknown to the public, to rank websites in the order they see fit. While it is not possible to buy top rankings, it is possible to influence the way Google views your website and therefore the rankings.
Google uses a variety of elements to decide what a website is about and how credible the information is. These are the two main factors that determine how Google displays your website:
What is the website about?
A website can be designed to be explicit about what it is about. Like a textbook, a website can be designed so that the cover, title, chapter headings, and images indicate the purpose of the information within the book. By making technical and content modifications to a website tailored to the image you want to display, both on the back and on the front, the next time Google visits your site, it will re-evaluate the website’s purpose. For example, if you were to change the name of your flower shop website from “The Rose Bouquet in Austin Texas” to “Rose Bouquet Flower Shop – Austin Texas”, Google will have a better indicator that your site is about a Flower shop. . The same goes for any written content on the site. Blogs, company descriptions, and detailed service pages give Google a better idea of what to expect.
How credible is it?
This is the most challenging, complex and time consuming part of a good SEO campaign. Google uses complex calculations to determine that information provided on one website is more relevant than information provided on another website. Factors include the age of your domain name, the quality of your web development code, and how many other relevant websites link to you.
Search engine rankings work like a popularity contest. The more websites that support you by adding a link, or button, from their website to yours, the more ‘popular’ you will be to search engines. Each link is counted as a “vote of confidence”. For example, if you owned a medical website that had a link from WebMD.com, that’s considered a strong vote of confidence because WedMD is a reputable organization. It can be safe to say that websites with the most votes will generally be considered more trustworthy and ranked accordingly.
Most SEO campaigns involve developing connections with other relevant websites and getting them to ‘link’ to your website. After a while, Google will notice these links and your rankings will improve.
In general, the two most important parts of an SEO campaign are the content and the links. If you have great, relevant content and it’s ‘popular’ with links, then your SEO campaign is in good shape.
As you can see, SEO requires a lot of work. It is impossible for a company to offer overnight success with SEO. The time required to create good content, develop relationships, and grow your links is relatively long and can take several months. In the end, patience pays off, as a well-optimized website can get you free traffic from search engines.