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How Search Engines Connect
Sellers and Buyers
Beverley knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking ? not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com. She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Beverley find your website.
Google will show Beverley 534,000 resources on "bread baking". Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking").
How do you get into the top 10 results so Beverley can find your website? You might have heard a lot about "search engine optimization" and "ranking analysis" and "algorithms". It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 ? 2 ? 3 principle.
A search engine will show Beverley only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.
The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most "important". This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.
The search engine will show Beverley the most "relevant" high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://www.beserved.co.uk relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Beverley's search? By the number of times "bread baking" shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words "bread baking" included.
Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Beverleys out there find your website and your book.
The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but "bread baking" might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking". The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.
The second is to prepare a link strategy. The "link exchange" pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Beverley discovers your book:
The total number of incoming and outgoing links
The importance of the sites you link to and from
The relevancy of the sites you link to and from
Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked?
What you include in the incoming and outgoing links?
Where on the page the links are placed?
How many links are on those pages?
How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links?
The ratio of links to content on the pages involved?
You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.
The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.
Three things you should NEVER do
Three things you should NEVER do (even if some slick-talking "expert" tells you it will cost you only £500 and will guarantee you gaggles of customers).
A webmistress asked me recently how much I would charge to optimise her site for the search engines. I took a glance at her site, and the first thing I found was a hidden link to an association she was part of. I asked her why the link was there. She told me it was "for the search engines." It never ceases to amaze me how much really bad ? I mean absolutely horrible advice is floating around the Internet. She never did hire me, but she did walk away with one free piece of advice that I now share with you: "Remove that link ASAP." Hidden links and hidden text are big trouble and something you should never do.
A hidden link is simply a link the search engine robots would follow, but is not visible to the naked eye. It could be a one pixel by one pixel graphic the same colour as the background. Hidden text could be keyword written in the same colour as the background.
If a search engine detects text in the same colour as the background, it might penalize or even ban your site. In fact, one search engine expert has even suggested that if your background is, say, white, and you have a black table with white text on your page, that search engines would read that as hidden text (white background, white text) even though the text is clearly visible in the black table. Hmm. I will have to revisit my own site's colours.
Why are hidden links and hidden text bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.
Duplicate pages are also a no-no. Search engines like original content made for human visitors. Five pages with the same article are seen as spamming, even if you did change "bicycle repair" to "fix your bike" in the second version and to "bike repair" in the third.
I was asked to exchange links with four websites this one person owned. The sites are very wholesome and I believe the webmaster is too. But the link pages on each website are identical: same introductory text and same links in the same order with identical wording each. All it would take is one complain to get all four sites banned, or at very least, severely demoted at Google and other search engines.
Needless to say, I turned down the offer, so that my site would not be associated with a "bad neighbourhood".
Why are duplicate pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.
Doorway pages are also bad. A doorway page is a page carefully designed to do well on search engine results, but is never meant to be used by humans. Often there is then a link to a website or there is some form of redirect.
Why not just optimize your site for the keywords you want, rather than try to trick the search engines? It probably will cost you less to hire a good search engine optimizer, and your website will not get banned.
I was approached by someone offering a combination of doorway pages and link farming (another no-no!). He did not call them by those names, even insisting they were not doorway pages. He wanted a few hundred dollars a month. There's nothing like your friendly neighbourhood mortician coming to call when business is slow and bearing his own special brew for you to sample.
Why are doorway pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.
By the way, "doorway pages" should not be confused with "entry pages". I get lots of my traffic entering through one or another of my articles. But these are real articles with real content, designed for human eyes and optimized for the search engines. This is a good tactic, because it adds content (which is what search engines are looking for).
Hidden links and text, duplicate pages and doorway pages are just a few of the "clever" tactics that can land you in the "Search Engine Slammer". If you spend much time on the Internet, you'll be approached about many others sooner or later.
Here is a simple question to ask yourself: "Would this be helping the search engines deliver the best results, or would it be trying to cheat their rules?" If it feels a little funny, don't try it. Or ask someone who knows.
Search engines are your friends. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you. You might just land yourself a berth atop Mount Google.
| David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant. For a free quote, call 613-448-1841, or send us an email. |
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