What is SEO, PPC & Ranking?
This article examines the basics behind quality site promotion.
Let us take a good look at acronyms in the industry! Search
Engine Optimization (SEO), is a term thrown around a million
times a day online. So many sites use old techniques that will
get there rankings hurt or reversed with there hap-hazard web
designs it frustrates me. I don't want you to be one of them. In
fact this article is aimed for creating SEEN web design
projects. If you don't use this anti-SEO (i.e. cloaking and
doorway pages) and follow the following rules you can expect
decent results with your web design. The basics for SEO are
simple and should be used by all web designers and web design
services (although that doesn't mean they are always used):
1. Optimize your site with a high percentage of text relevant to
the search terms you intend to go after.
2. Make sure all alt (alternate image tags) and title tags have
relative descriptions including keywords.
3. Make sure your site meets current online standards and can be
equally viewed among all browsers and operating machines. Even
though some pages may still display correctly with incorrect
HTML, it can hinder the way search engines will look at them,
bringing the overall optimization of the page down.
4. Make sure all pages are under 800K (recommended for fast
loading pages).
5. Submit (manually, by hand) to all major search engines, an
automatically to lesser engines through (at least) a free search
engine submission service or program.
Keeping these five rules in mind will help, however a serious
look at other aspects will help even more in SEO. I will go into
these aspects in more detail with articles to come at
websiterankingtop.com but this is a good start.
PPC, otherwise known as Pay Per Click advertising is found on
numerous search engines and smaller ones alike. The two major
players are Google and Overture (now own by Yahoo), however
there are some other PPC engines that use a multiple of lesser
engines and quality websites to offer there services. Some will
give you a top ten ranking within your keyword searches while
others have you bid for placement among there engines. A few
simple rules to follow:
1. The content of your site must match the keywords bid on.
2. SELL! SELL! SELL! While traditional SEO focuses on how the
search engines will view your page, this is your chance to
engage the human customer! Traditional sales techniques work
best here.
3. Will visits to your web pages convert into quality leads or
actual sales? Make sure the cost of bidding will be recovered,
plus some.
4. The more popular the search terms = the more expensive it
will be. Keep this in mind and target populated terms with
financial efficiency.
5. All of your keywords stand no chance whatsoever of being
listed in the top ten positions on the major search engines.
Organic top ten placements can be very expensive so this is your
chance of competing with terms you don't rank well with.
Make sure to have a relevant page for your search term. This is
critical as we all know from browsing; if a site doesn't fit the
bill in the first three seconds we are more than happy to click
that back button.
SEM = Structural Equation Modeling? NOPE! SEM = Search Engine
Marketing? NOPE! SEM = Standard Error of Mean? Nope! While all
of these are acronyms for SEM, there not the ones we care to
discuss here in our brief overview of Search Engine Mechanics.
Anything I say in this column may be outdated with the next big
search engine "patch" so what I mean by SEM is simple: Keep Up!
That's right, by simply going by what you know, or an article
written 8 months ago you will get lost or penalized in your
attempts for effective online marketing. Search Engine mechanics
is the mathematical art behind the algorithms of the popular,
well producing engine online. To find out that a "Jagger Update"
relinquishes all reciprocal links to your website in the eyes of
the 75%+ that currently engage Google is huge. The mechanics of
the currently used search engines is something to keep your eye
on. While HTML doesn't change much each year (comparatively),
search engines do. Simply put: make sure you know what to do to
get ranked in this ever evolving market!
-One last note: make sure you know what pages are visited and
where users are spending there time. If you have a well visited
page (found through your web stats) that isn't receiving much
time spent: GUESS WHERE YOU NEED A REWRITE!
This is meant to be, and should be a good start to all wanting
high search engine ranking within there web design realm.
Websiterankingtop.com Bill Naugle
About the author:
Bill Naugle has been writing articles, press releases and ebooks
to help Webmasters achieve success in search engine rankings. He
has written on many subjects. He started writing on the internet
in 2001. http://www.websiterankingtop.com/