SEO can be a confusing business for most people. Even many of the so-called experts can have a hard time keeping a website at the top of the search engines.
First … search engines are constantly changing their algorithms in an effort to provide you with the most relevant website listings for your search query. Search engines also change their algorithms to get ahead of rogue companies that quickly learn to manipulate search results.
As soon as search engines change the way they list websites, unscrupulous people get down to business trying to figure out how to cheat the system.
These people are using what is known as “Black Hat SEO” and if you are trying to run a legitimate website, stay away from them at all costs! Sure, your website will get a high list pretty quickly using black hat techniques, but as soon as the search engines find out what you are doing, they will likely remove your website from their lists altogether (forever). And sooner or later, they will figure it out.
Secondly … There are many misnomer names for what is most important when it comes to SEO. Some of the so-called SEO gurus will have you believe that page ranking is the most important thing when it comes to search engine listings. This is simply not true.
Page Rank (or Google PR) is an important factor when it comes to ranking a site for search engines, but the SERPs (or search engine results page) is what really counts.
“Page Rank” is the way that Google assigns a number to the authority of a site. If they think your site is important, they will give you a higher PR.
But that doesn’t mean your site authority will index it for your top keywords.
There are thousands, maybe even millions, of websites that have a low page rank, but are listed on the first page of the major search engines (including Google), for some of the top keywords. On the contrary, there are so many high-ranking public relations web pages, that they are buried in “no man’s land” when it comes to search engines (including Google).
Also, the other major search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Bing, and hundreds of smaller search engines) don’t really care about your “Google page ranking” at all. They only care about offering their visitors relevant search results.
So ask yourself this … Would you rather have a low Google PR of 1 or 2, and appear on the first page of search results? Or would you rather have a high PR of 5 or 6, and appear on the 10th page of search results, where no one will find you …? I think the answer is obvious.
One of the websites that I built for my other online business, has not had a Google PR of more than 2 for the last 4 years (since it is available on the internet). But it’s been on the first page of ALL the major search engines (for my top keywords) for 3 1/2 of those 4 years. I’ll take the low PR and keep the listing high any day of the week.
What about this “Alexa Rank” I’ve heard of?
Alexa rank is supposed to be an indication of the amount of traffic a website receives. The lower the number … the more visitors a website receives. If your Alexa rank is 50,000, it is assumed to mean (out of the millions of websites on the Internet) that your site is the 50,000th most popular site out there.
If your site has an Alexa rank of 2,000,000, then your site is only the 2,000,000th most popular site on the internet.
But here’s the truth … Alexa rank is NOT an accurate measure! It only records websites that are visited by people who have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browsers (mainly SEO companies and web developers), so it does not count actual website visitors.
Here is a statistic that proved this fact to me …
I currently have a dozen websites that I maintain, and I regularly check the traffic statistics on all of them (as every good webmaster should).
One of my sites has an Alexa Rank of 171,246 (pretty good … right?) Another has an Alexa Rank of 4,276,996 (which is lousy) But according to my analytics stats (I cross-reference Google Analytics with AWstats and a couple of other programs, for a more accurate stat) The one with the best Alexa rank only gets 40-50 visitors a day, but the one with the worst Alexa rank gets over 400 visitors a day .
What does this tell us?
It tells us that the one with the highest rank is being visited by some people who have the Alexa toolbar installed (and the toolbar is sending statistics to Alexa). But the site that really does best is visited by real people who don’t. considers it necessary for Alexa to monitor your browsing habits.
Many SEO companies will use the Alexa ranking to show their customers “proof” that they are making their money. (“look, your Alexa rank has gone up … so keep paying me”) But remember this … Alexa rank is NOT an indication of how well a website is doing!
So what makes your website appear in the first two pages of search engines? In a word … “Relevant content” (OK in 2 words)
Search engines are only concerned with displaying search results relevant to a person’s “keyword search query”. Search engines make money by showing their ads to as many people as possible and by getting as many people as possible to click on those sponsored listings.
If your search results are useless to your visitors, people will stop using your search engines and start using a different search engine. No visitors … no search engine revenue.
So while there are a number of important techniques you should use to get a higher search list (backlinks, internal links, proper meta tags, and keyword percentage, to name a few) remember … relevant content is! the king! And as search engines become more sophisticated, the relevant content on your website will continue to gain importance.
There are also many other factors that go into listing your website at the top of search engines. It takes constant effort and continuous learning to keep up with the ever-changing algorithms of search engines, and a quality SEO person (or company) will continue to learn and keep up with the changes.
But remember … there are no “secret” methods to get listed high in search engines. If you are talking to an SEO company, and they won’t tell you about their methods of growing your website listing (because they say it’s “proprietary information”), I recommend that you immediately find someone else to talk to about your SEO. website.
A quality (and honest) SEO company should have no problem telling you what methods they will use to increase your website’s exposure in search engines. So before you give someone (or any company) your money, there are a few questions to ask them first …
9 Important Questions to Ask Your SEO Company BEFORE You Hire!
And yes, SEO is something you can do yourself effectively, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and most business owners have better things to spend their time on. That’s why you hire an SEO firm … to do the work for you. They provide a service and you pay them for that service.