Search Engines
How do they work?
Search Engines strive to list sites against key words or phrases in terms of their relevance - this is their service to their customers, the end-user. Google have always been the best at this, which is why everybody loves them.
Arthur Leo from joe aliferis on Vimeo.
Engines like Google measure this relevance by analysing the descriptive content of sites and using their own algorithms to judge what they find. There is an industry devoted to unlocking these algorithms and helping people make the best of them. This has become known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
How site content affects relevance to keywords/key phrases
It is generally understood that search engines reward websites that contain meaningful blocks of descriptive text that is focused around 5-10 key words or phrases, is non repetitive and non plagiarist. The more the better, as long as its high quality content. One might therefore achieve better organic rankings by adding some descriptive passages to each page as well as a general introductory descriptive passage to the home page and subsidiary pages.
Beyond this, a good method of adding meaningful, non-repetitive content to a site is to add news items or articles and link text to other pages within the site where relevant. These extra items will usually talk around subjects that include your product/service, re-enforcing the search engines belief that your site should rank highly for the key phrases that best describe your product/service
Secondary content like this could also be brought in from 3rd party sources, like RSS feeds or an outside contributor (eg. a blog), or group contributions (eg. a discussion forum).
Inbound Links
Another thing that search engines reward is being linked to by other sites - and the bigger the other site, the better as far as they are concerned. Big can mean many pages/lots of content, high traffic or both. For example, being linked to by a page on the Guardian website, which is huge and receives 1000's of visitors a day will lead a search engine to perceive your relevance to be high.
Getting your site listed in as many free directories as possible will also help. As will getting editorial on review sites, being talked about in forums or online groups and Blogging. In each case, some text about your site/product/service followed by a link to the website is what you are aiming for.
Myths
Meta tags are powerful (they're not anymore - only the title tag is important)
WC3 validation is required (A good thing if you can achieve it but won't improve SEO in itself)
Hidden content (not a good idea - this could actually undermine your SEO dramatically)
Non-organic rankings (sponsored links)
If you type 'photo albums' into google you will see that competition for the phrase is very competitive. This is is true of the Organic rankings and the sponsored links (right hand column).
The links on the right of the page are 'sponsored links' - these are sites that compete for the key phrases by bidding on them. Their position is determined by the amount each site bids.
The site owners only pay google the bid amount when their site link is clicked on by an end-user. This is called 'pay-per-click' advertising.
Generally, the more competitive the key phrases, the higher price a site will need to bid to get good sponsored placement for those phrases.
This is why it is a good idea to think about and define your phrases carefully. What will your potential customers be entering into google when they want to find your product?
'photo albums' - or something a little more specific, like 'hand made photo albums' ?
Generally, more specific key phrases like the latter are cheaper to bid on and represent better value for your money.
Trying to compete with WHSMITH for the phrase 'photo albums' is not a good idea.
Anyone can sign up for a google account and start managing their own 'pay-per-click' accounts themselves.
Joe Aliferis
Newforms, Brighton
www.newforms.co.uk
