Search Engine Optimization and Ranking

Whether you are new to Internet marketing or a seasoned website developer, knowing how to effectively utilize linking campaigns, website submission, and unique content will have the greatest impact on the success of your website regardless of its purpose. You are probably already aware of these marketing tools but are not sure how to use them to your sites best advantage. In order to help you determine the most effective way to capitalize on each of these online merchandising utilities for increased website success, you need to know the what, how, and why information for them.

So, what exactly is a Search Engine? How do they work? Why are they important to cater to? According to Dictionary.com, a search engine is a website whose primary function is gathering and reporting information available on the internet or a portion of the internet. There are basically two types of Internet search services: search engines and directories.

A search engine site uses software spiders or web crawlers to index websites and retrieve the requested information. Google, AltaVista, Hotbot, Go.com, Excite and Web Crawler are examples of internet search engine services. An Internet search directory uses human input by reviewing directory submissions from users and website owners to fill their indexes. Yahoo!, AOL Search, MSN.com, Lycos and Snap.com are some of the top rated search directories.

It is important to understand, cater to, and work with search engines and directories in order to increase your websites visibility. Search engine services which utilize web spiders and crawlers to sift through their indexes, are greatly affected by changing web pages, page titles, body content and linking. Whereas a search directory looks for information only in the website descriptions submitted to their site, thus changing your website pages will have no effect on your rank in a directory.

Why is search engine ranking important? Because most potential customers never look beyond the first page of a search listing and with a poor page ranking, you will have little to no traffic. Regardless of which type of search service is being utilized, the single most important way you can affect your page ranking is by having good content on your site. It must be relevant information with links to further relevant information on other websites. In the war for page ranking, content is king. And fluff wont do, in fact it could negatively impact your page ranking.

The next most important factor for increasing page rank is by implementing a linking campaign. However, you must be stringent about who you link to and how many links you have. Too many irrelevant links will also negatively impact your websites page rank. You must choose carefully by making sure the sites you link your website to have relevant information similar to your own. Linking for the sake of gathering links is useless and harmful. It is much better to link to and be listed on a corresponding site with very few links and an excellent page rank rather than being one of a multitude of inconsequential links listed on a poorly ranked site. The idea is simple. Have good relevant content on your site and link to other sites with good relevant content.

Hopefully you know have a feel for the importance of search engines, page ranking and site linking. Just remember that too much is not a good thing when it comes to developing your websites page ranking and marketing. Too many links and too much irrelevant content will hurt your site not help it. Stick to the basics: excellent and useful content with links to more useful content. Put yourself in your potential customers shoes would you want to read a bunch of fluff or waste your time scanning useless information? What would you do if after clicking on a link you found even more useless drivel? Click that red x in the upper right corner wouldnt you.