According to SearchEngineWatch.com, a recent survey of
businesses using the Internet as a primary marketing tool
reported that only 11% said SEO gave a lower return on
investment than search advertising. More importantly, 35%
said that SEO was more valuable in terms of return on
investment than paid advertisement.
This means that in 89% of businesses who could determine
the relative value, inexpensive search engine optimization of
page content was as valuable or more valuable than paying
for advertising on Google, Yahoo, or other pages and search
engines. A full third of all businesses found SEO to be the
most valuable advertising tool to use with search engines.
This is remarkable news because, with patience and
attention, anyone can optimize their page content for search
engine placement. This means that your little computer
business, with its tiny marketing budget, can compete in
search engines with international corporations if you do
things properly.
SEO: Making Your Page Work
So how do you harness this incredible tool to make your own
page's ROI higher? By understanding the search engines and
how they work, and by taking steps to ensure your page is
optimized for best usability by these engines.
First, search engines use text-based algorithms. They send
out miniprograms regularly called search engine spiders,
robots, or web crawlers that catalog the data contained in
web pages – data in the form of text – and use that to
determine where to place a page in search engine returns on
keywords.
So when your potential customer types in "butterfly
handkerchief," the placement and frequency of your
keyword phrase "butterfly handkerchief" is one of the main
things a search engine pays attention to when deciding
where to rank your page. If you are the only "butterfly
handkerchief" site that is clearly demonstrating you offer
these by placing the keyword phrase in the header,
metatags, and text of your page, then you'll get first
ranking. If Billy Bob's Hankies does a better job of this, he
will get top ranking, bumping you down.
But that's not all the search engines look for.
Content Has An Expiration Date?
Because there are so many billions of web pages search
engines are trying to organize, some sites are going to do
equivalently good jobs of inserting those keyword phrases.
There has to be a way of organizing pages beyond that
phrase.
One way is cataloging regular fresh content. A website that
delivers different content on a regular basis containing the
same keywords is a site that will rank higher in the search
engines. So if you rotate your "butterfly handkerchief"
articles frequently while Billy Bob gets lazy and leaves the
same one up for a year, you'll regain that top spot you lost.
A second advantage to using continual fresh content is that
it gives your customers something to come back for. Repeat
customers are among the most valuable. If you continue to
provide excellent content to this customer base, you'll find
them returning to – and spending money at – your site on a
regular basis.
Reciprocal Links
A third item the search engines look at when cataloging you
is linking. If you have great content and lots of other web
sites link to you, this will boost your ranking. That's why the
New York Times is placed high in a search for "The New York
Times," even though their name is mentioned infrequently
on any given page; the search engines see other sites
linking to the content contained there. This helps the
engines, which are really big programs with very good logic
and artificial intelligence, determine that the New York Times
website is the primary site for this term.
Your little site will probably never have the name recognition
of the New York Times. But if you make agreements with
complementary websites to link to one another, particularly
if you link within articles or at least not on "My Favorite
Links" pages, you can boost your ranking quite a bit.
And if you offer great information on your site, other sites
will be more eager to link to you. After all, when they link to
you, they're recommending you to their customers. They
wouldn't want to recommend someone who won't reflect
well on them.
If you trade reciprocal links with another webmaster, check
occasionally to ensure that your link is indeed posted, and
posted correctly. And do the same courtesy for them – be
sure you have their link up and active somewhere it will be
noticed on your website.
