If a SEO company tells you that it will make guaranteed ranking of your page, think twice before striking a deal.
Only insiders with the search engines know how foolish these claims can be!
True, there is a mechanism. And, probably you can come to know a large part of that. But, ultimately, the whole thing is so complex that all your predictions can go awesomely wrong.
SEO companies can definitely improve your chances for a higher ranking.
But, what about trying it all yourself? After all, it’s YOUR OWN WEBSITE.
Let’s take a look at the basics.
When you submit your site to a search engine, the first thing that happens is indexing. Indexing is one form of storing data in the huge database maintained by the search engine. Search engines do this by running automated programs called ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’ that crawl the web pages.
So, keep fingers crossed, and wait for the ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’ to crawl your page and add it (indexing) to the engine’s database.
Done!
Now, get ready for ranking. It’s just like school – good students get better rank. No gimmicks!
The better the rank, the better is the visibility of your page. So, everybody is fighting for that.
But, there is one fundamental difference from the school approach. The ranking corresponds to a query. This is the query that you type on the search engine’s browser and order a search.
So, for a query like ‘good nuts’, your page may be within the first 10 results. When it is ‘good nuts and bolts’, you do not know where you are.
This is known as the relevancy factor. It depends on a complex set of calculations (algorithms). They vary across the search engines, and its parameters are completely out of bounds.
However, to be ‘good students’ in a relevant field, two things are very, very important.
One is the content of the page. The other is the link structure of the page.
No body knows which one is more important. But, both are highly complementary.
Links are important not just by numbers. The value of ‘who is linking’ is very important. Links from .edu or .gov sites are obviously more ‘valuable’ than links from directories et al. Search engines consider these sites to be more trustworthy.
And, when does an .edu or .gov site link to your site?
The answer is simple. It happens only when your site has real good content.
So, good content and links are reciprocating.
There are lot more technical issues, which are beyond the scope of this article.
But, one thing without which the whole exercise can fall flat is keyword selection.
If a real estate site floods its pages with keywords like ‘cheap condos available’, hardly they are likely to ‘catch the eye’ in almost a million pages that will show up corresponding to the search for ‘cheap condos’.
So, there has to be something more. Try to have a feel of the mind of the person who is doing the search, and select a bunch of relevant words that are typical to the language, culture, and geographic location etc. of the place where you are targeting to reach with your site.
That’s all. Your basic tasks are done.
If your keywords are fine and your content is real good, you have won a large chunk of the optimization battle.
And, if you’re willing to look beyond, try these resources I got from a very good seo company site, SEOmoz (http://www.SEOmoz.org).
Thanks to them and wish you all the best!
SEO Resources
Daily Blogs on SEO/M
SEO/M & Webdev Forums
Industry Conferences
How Search Engines Operate
Link Analysis
Keyword Research
Accessibility
Information Architecture
Duplicate Content Issues
Usability
Web Design
Content Writing for the Web
Link Bait
Community Building
Press Releases
Public Relations
Link Building
Search Spam
Website Analytics and Visitor Tracking
Selecting an SEO/M Firm