SEO and SEM Tips – Keeping Up With an Innovative Engine

The internet has taken some tremendously innovative strides in the short time it has been around and the implications have been dramatic. By simply typing a series of keywords in a google search bar and clicking “search” one can effortlessly browse hundreds of relative links that lead to pages on the web relevant to those specific keywords. This is an amazing capability that has become the forefront of everything the internet is and represents in the present. Top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Kudzu, and many more have taken the initiative to fulfill a need that, before it was addressed, most of us didn’t even know we had.

These advancements, coupled with everything the internet has to offer on top of that, provide a powerful opportunity for business owners and individuals looking to get themselves or their product/service noticed by a massive and diverse audience. Internet marketing is the key to a successful business in our day. By overlooking the tremendous opportunity to market a business to millions of viewers everyday, one is basically saying to himself/herself that they are not concerned with establishing a successful business.

However, simply having a website is one thing. Having a GOOD website is a completely different story and can mean all the difference in the success of a business. As a search engine optimizer I often get asked a number of different questions from clients. Most of these questions revolve somewhere along the lines of, “How can I get my site to come up number one on Google?,” “What keywords should I use to optimize my website?,” or “How can I drive more traffic to my site?” All of these are good questions. However, I think sometimes business owners don’t understand that the answer to each of these questions is more simple than complex. We hear often about different strategies to “trick” google or yahoo into ranking our site higher or giving us a better score. There is a popular belief that google has some sort of underlying code that optimizers can crack and therefore automatically boost any website to the top of a the ranks for any keyword. This is simply not the case. Though there are a number of different techniques that can be utilized to help optimize a sight and make it more user friendly, relevant, and thus more “google” friendly, the ultimate deciding factor in how a website is ranked by google is relevancy. in other words, if you want google to think you have a good site, you have to HAVE a good site. No matter what you do for optimization, if it’s a bad site, chances are it will still be bad even after a heavy and steady dosage of SEO and SEM.

SEO and SEM stand for “Search Engine Optimization” and “Search Engine Marketing” not “Search Engine Overpowering” and “Search Engine Manipulation.” Basically what I’m saying is you’re probably tricking yourself if you think you can trick Google. The technology provided by this one company is revolutionizing the world as we speak. They are developing new and innovative internet tools faster than most can even keep up with. There’s just no sense in trying to find a loop hole. That said, given the length of this post already, I want to quickly list my top three pieces of advice for businesses thinking of building a new website or simply optimizing an existing website.

1. Content Content Content! Content is the Key! If you wish to rank high for “door bells,” there had better be information on your site about doors bells. If you want to see what you’re up against, type “door bells” in the google search bar and visit the top three or four sites and see how much information they provide about “door bells.” If you want to outrank them you’ll need to have more, and, if not more, better content than these top competitors.

2. Relevancy! This goes along the same lines as content but is a bit more in depth and technical. For example, if you’re trying to market “sunglasses,” your content should have words like, “sunny, summer, UV rays, sun protection, lenses, frames…etc. These words, “theme” words, should be interspersed throughout the entire site and especially on the homepage.

3. Blogging! Having a blog for you site is huge because search engines love to provide people with the latest breaking news in all topics. Search engines know that blogs provide the fastest means to market an idea or a story. Thus, when new content is posted on a blog the search engine detects new and exciting content and will quickly give the article a high ranking for keywords that show up often in that particular article. People want the latest news and this is what search engines are giving the people by giving fast high rankings to blog posts. Most blogs, especially wordpress based blogs, have built in pinging devices that notify top search engines and blog engines the moment an article is published which brings a web crawler from that search engine to the blog immediately to crawl if for content. The power of blogging is not limited to simply having your own blog, it is also helpful to actively participate on other blogs and forums that are relevent to your site. This can not only provide opportunities to create quality links to your site, but also gets you noticed by the members of those blogs and forums who then tell others they know about your services. AWeee the beauty of networking.

So there you have it. My top three SEO and SEM tips I utilize on a daily basis. While these are very important there are still a number of other techniques that are essential in optimizing a website and driving increased amounts of traffic to it. There will be more talk of these other techniques in later posts, but for now I hope this helps spark the attention of anyone thinking of optimizing an existing site or building a new website.

-Joe