Search Engines & SEO

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, Improve Your Google Rankings

SEO Myths in Website Design

There is probably no greater myth than those surrounding SEO. Have you ever been told by the $600 a website web developer operating out of his garage that he can get you in the top search engine ranking? Well maybe if your search criteria is “Nuclear power plant Brisbane CBD” because you probably won’t have that much competition from other web pages in Brisbane talking about Nuclear power plants, because there are none. When you change your search to “Restaurant Brisbane CBD” suddenly you have a whole lot more competition. If you do that search you will notice no single restaurant is returned in the top 20 listings. The top 20 are all directories about restaurants and hotels. Why? Because they have the resources to devote to search engine ranking and as you will learn later, sufficient depth of content in their website & a plethora of inbound links to warrant this ranking.

So let get a few things straight.

Firstly, Google is “the” Internet search engine. More searches are performed on Google than double all the all the other search engines combined.

Secondly, Google recently released its patent #20050071741 on its "Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data" (that's that little Google search page to you and me). In the document were over 118 factors that effected a web site's position in the search engine's rankings!

That’s right your website will be judged in over 118 ways as to whether or not it should get the top spot in Google. So you will probably start to realise $600 website man may not have the time to get you up there after he has finished your web design.

There are no Short Cuts to Search Engine Optimisation any more.

The only reality now is having a long term web marketing strategy and a commitment to building a site full of quality information.

Having said that, assuming that your site is one of the ones with the quality content, SEO still has its place.

On an average day, about 68 million Americans will go online."

"More than half of them, over 38 million people, will use a search engine."

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, January 2005.

What the above statement translates to all is that approximately 5 million Australians go online each day with about 3 million of them using a search engine. More importantly than that is there are no shortcuts anymore. The way to Google’s heart is by developing a useful website with large amounts of relevant quality information.

General Factors that will affect your Search Engine Ranking

Can Google index your website?

Your website will need to be written in a certain way to allow the Google spiders to trawl your website. It's complicated but it relates to the separation of textual content from the style of the website and having your website connected together in a way so the spider can reach all of your content.

Relevant Content

Is their sufficient content on your website that is relevant to your chosen search criteria? All sorts of things will come into this such as ‘keyword density’ & content relevancy to ‘page title’. Basiclly you need lots of content, LOTS of it.

Inbound Links

Google values other websites approval of you above all else. Every website has a Google page ranking. If a website with a high Google page ranking links to you, a well configured link that is, that will bestow there greatness upon you in Google's eyes, even more so if that website is in a similar field to yourself. Again relevancy is very important.

Conclusion

It is best to consider SEO right at the start of your web marketing plan as it is tightly woven into the way your website must be constructed and you should ask the following questions before you start:

• What is your web site about?
• Who will visit it?
• What will they gain?
• What will you gain?

Once you have clearly defined these things then you will be in a position to design & optimise your website for Search Engines. SEO requires commitment and resources but properly done it can be the best form of advertising you will ever have.