Search engine optimization, or techniques and strategies for getting your site ranked highly in the search engines is an all-consuming exercise for some online entrepreneurs, while others stay away fearing this black science is best left to the hands of experts.
My view is that you MUST understand the basics of search engine optimization – most of which comes from understanding that the goal of search engines is to bring their users the best information on a given topic – not sales material, not an opt-in form, not just a links page but a well-crafted, content-rich, resource site that continues to be dynamic over months AND that demonstrates a certain level of popularity in terms of visitor searches and backlinks.
It’s also often misunderstood that getting your site discovered (indexed) by the search engines, either the first time, or indexed over-and-over again does not have anything to do with your ranking.
Of course, getting your site indexed is step 1, if it’s not found, then it cannot be ranked and will not appear anywhere in the search results under keywords potential customers use to find information on your market.
However, once your site is indexed, then you want to carefully follow the time-tested basics of search engine optimization such as…
- Offer good content, relevant to your market
- Target keywords and include them in headlines, sub-headings, as well as throughout your article in a way that is both relevant and that makes perfect sense.
- Understand related sites to yours that already have developed a high reputation with the major search engines and discover how to get back-links – this may be through a blogroll, exchange of articles, advertising in an ezine that gets archived online, operating your own partner or affiliate program, issuing a press release if your target site archives news, etc…
- Understand that your page’s reputation will increase over time – I’m not clear on the exact use of history in the major SE’s algorithms but it is clear that the same content page will rank higher if it has 6-months to 1-year of history over a brand new site and page with all other things being equal.
Here’s a great article over at ClickZ that discusses more about the common misconceptions and truths about search engine optimization and getting your site ranked highly in the search engines…
Jeff
