JENN

SEM SEO PPC

Natural Search Marketing Explained

Why is it so important that we use an ethical approach to Search Engine Marketing?

When you look at how the search engines go about finding relevant websites when a certain word, or phrase is typed in, it can be fairly simple to trick that system into finding your website before anyone else's.

These techniques are generally called "Black-Hat Techniques". They can range anywhere from doorway pages to hidden text, and more; essentially ending in your website getting banned or penalized from the search engines. Alternatively Ethical, or Natural, even White-Hat techniques are for those that play within the rules in order to obtain proper rankings. If a website follows all of the rules, in the long run it will obtain proper rankings, and will keep those rankings for a longer period of time. Never running any risk of being banned, or penalized.

What are some natural techniques?

The Right Keywords - Choosing the right keywords can be crucial when optimizing for a website. If you are a real estate agent in billings Montana , do you want to rank for "real estate" or do you want to rank for "Billings Montana Realtor"? Chances are someone searching for a realtor in Billings Montana is going to be more likely to choose your services than someone in Texas searching for "real estate". When choosing the right keywords, it is always good to consider the competition. If you are trying for a highly competitive word, be aware that you are going to have to try to rank higher than hundreds, potentially one million websites that are trying for the same word. Consider your competition, market, demographics, and your website itself before choosing your words. If your website is new (less than 1-2 year sold) try words that don't get searched as much, and have less competition. The more words you rank for with less competition, the more likely you are to get solid leads to your website.

Proper Meta Tags - Your title, keywords, and description should be formulated to hold the correct amount of keywords, and key phrases, without over doing it. While there is some debate over whether or not search engines actually look at your meta tags, it still doesn't hurt to make sure they are not only on every page of your website, but that they are written properly. All search engines look for meta tags second when visiting your site. As to whether your website supports those keywords, and how competitive those keywords determine where your website will rank when for those keywords. If your keywords and meta tags aren't there, the search engine has to find out on its own which keywords to look for throughout your content. If you list keywords that are competitive (there are a lot of websites optimized for the same keywords), meta tags alone will not do the trick, but they are the first step in the right direction.

Your Website's Content - Once the search engines pick up on the keywords in the keyword list of your meta tags, they then search through your content to see how many times your keywords are used. The more a keyword is used, the higher your website will rank for that keyword. Properly written content with the keywords and key phrases broken up and dispersed throughout the website's content shows how relative your website is to the keywords you are going for. The more they are mentioned on each page, the higher your rankings will be.

Good Design - Good design doesn't necessarily mean aesthetically appealing, but rather fast loading, easy to navigate, thus being "spider friendly". The faster your website loads, and easier it is for a spider to navigate and find what it needs the more likely your site will be ranked higher. If a spider runs into a road block (i.e a broken link, or a slow loading page), it will simply give up and move on. The key is to keep the spider there and allow it to find the information efficiently.

Links - Google uses a page ranking system in which it identifies each link to your website as a "vote". The more votes your website receives; the chances are the more popular your website is. Thus pushing your website higher in their search results. Google also looks at the content on the page that links to your website. The more the keywords you are going for are in that website's content, the higher your page rank will be. The higher your page rank, the higher your website shows up when searched for your keywords.

Web Map - A web map is a page dedicated to links of every page on your website. The main link to this page should be on the main page of your website, preferably towards the top. Search engine's look through each page from the top down. If your site isn't the easiest to follow, then a web map at the top of each page allows the spider to find each page efficiently.

Robots.txt - A robots page is a specifically coded page that tells the search engine where to go, and where not to go; allowing your website to be spidered more efficiently. These are great for dynamically generated websites that are still able to be indexed, but hold pages that aren't necessarily relevant to the website as a whole (such as login pages, etc).

Website Traffic - The more popular your website is, the more likely you are to rank. The more people that take the time to visit your website, and click on different pages while there, the more likely it is that your website is relevant to the keyword or key phrases that a user searched to find your website.

Age - The older your website, the more likely you are to rank above a website that is newer than yours. It is so easy to create websites, not to mention that overhead on maintaining one is phenomenally less expensive than other marketing or commerce techniques. With that, more and more companies that have the money will create multiple websites, and forget to maintain them. The search engines see websites that are older as ones that are more established, and are likely to be relative to the terms being searched for them.

Google Sitemap - Google now accepts an xml document written specifically for Google, and hand submitted. The document contains every page listed on the website (as in the web map) as well as information such as when the page was last updated, how often it is updated, and how important (a sort of rating of pages telling the spider which one to visit first). This allows your website to be spidered even more efficiently. You also have to have an html verification page located in the main directory of your website, assuring that you own your website, and that the website itself isn't dynamically driven by some generator.