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What Will A Search Engine Optimization Service Do For Me?

A search engine optimization service (SEO) theoretically provides a way to make the search engines (SEs), such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, find your website when Web surfers type in specific words and phrases. By “optimizing” your Web pages, the SEOs claim that you have a better chance of being found by the SEs. That’s what a search engine optimization service is supposed to do, anyway.

The only problem is that the major search engines keep changing their algorithms–the way they look at Web pages to determine which sites are “relevant” to the Web surfer’s needs. It used to be that search engine optimizers could trick the SEs with methods that produced outstanding results for their clients, like smearing keywords all over the pages using a white font that was “invisible” to visitors, but recognized by the SEs as “keyword specific.” Websites optimized like this would show up on the first or second page of results, whether or not their site actually provided the information that Web surfers wanted.

But because the search engines want to please their clients, who are not Web surfers, but advertisers, it’s vital for the search engines to deliver quality results to the Web surfers. The surfers are the ones the advertisers want to target.

In other words, the advertisers are paying the search engines to bring them qualified traffic — people who are looking for what the advertisers are selling. If the search engine results give surfers a bunch of scamming, spamming websites, the advertisers won’t be happy (nor will the surfers), and the whole search engine process falls apart like a house of cards. So the search engine’s job is to find “relevant” websites.

Thankfully, search engines are getting smarter, and scam sites optimized to “fool” them are penalized and often even banned. Good news for those of us who ARE providing relevant content. By optimizing our Web pages to please the search engines and the Web surfers, we keep the advertisers happy. This makes the SEs happy, and we get listed in their results so surfers can find our websites. This makes makes us and our visitors happy, and we all know: Happy visitors = paying customers!

The Bottom Line On SEOs

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t hire a search engine optimization service. Many of them do follow a “best practices” method for getting your site listed, provided they can keep up with the SEs’ changing algorithms, but many of them can’t. They’re busy trying to find ways to circumvent the system. They’d do much better if they just accepted the reality that the search engines’ goal is to provide Web surfers with quality websites that have relevant content. It really is as simple as that.

So what does this mean for you, the small business owner who wants their website to be found? It means you need to optimize your website, whether using a search engine optimization service or by doing it yourself.

But how?

Search Engine Optimization the DIY Way

CONTENT IS KING

Contrary to what a search engine optimization service might have you believe, there is no magic formula for optimizing your website. But there ARE things you can do to improve your relevance to show the search engines your worthiness, to get them to list you.

First and foremost is building relevant content. Remember, on the Internet, CONTENT is king. While there are lots of hosting companies and graphic design firms and SEOs and MLMs and blah, blah, blah that will take your money and promise you whatever you want to hear, the real deal is CONTENT.

Provide your website visitors with valuable information, tightly-focused, highly-targeted information that gives them the solution they’re looking for. Sure, you want them to be paying customers too, but if they don’t know you, or trust your ability to provide them what they need, why should they buy from you?

With relevant content, you show them you understand their needs (very important) and you’ve made it your goal to help them. If they like and trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you.

Good content also draws your visitors in, making them comfortable enough to stick around awhile, absorbing your information. Your site’s “stickiness” is another way the search engines determine if your visitors find your site relevant.

KEYWORDS

Whether you’re using a website design program like DreamWeaver or FrontPage or a website template that most hosting companies provide, you’ll use Keywords to define your overall site concept — your theme — and to specify what each Web page is focused on. Your content-rich site will be written around these specific Keywords, which provide all-important relevance.

When you first sit down to map out your website, it helps if you can come up with one specific keyword or phrase per page that you’ll use throughout that page to make your content focused — relevant — visible to the SEs. This isn’t “fooling” the SEs, it’s providing relevant content to your visitors.

Think of all the words and phrases that Web surfers might use to search for the kind of information you provide, and make a list of them. These will be your keywords. Sprinkle these keywords throughout each page — making it sound natural without overdoing it–and across your entire website, so your theme shines through to both visitors and the SEs.

INBOUND LINKS

Another way the SEs rank your site is by the number and quality of inbound links: other websites that have a link to your website on their pages. In the bad old days of SEO trickery (and still today, unfortunately), “link farms” would link to your website, and thousands of others, for a nice chunk of change. Their thinking was (and is) that the SEs will find these links pointing to your website and give you points for relevance. Wrong.

Nowadays the SEs penalize you if you’ve got thousands of links in cyberspace pointing to your site from link farms. They (the SEs) also don’t want to see hundreds of links to your site bloom overnight–that smells like scam to them, and they don’t like it.

They want to see quality inbound links. They want to know that both linking websites are providing quality, relevant content to Web visitors. The higher another website ranks for quality content in the eyes of the search engines, the better quality of its link to you. The ideal situation is to trade links with other high-quality websites that will boost your status with the search engines.

You can also submit your website’s URL to other, smaller directories and specialty directories, which give you inbound links that the major SEs seem to like. They apparently give you credit if you’ve been screened and accepted by another directory which would presumably mean your website provides relevant content. Whether this is true or not is debatable, but it can’t hurt to have your website listed in multiple directories anyway — the more people exposed to your URL, the better chance you have of attracting visitors who are searching for the information you provide.

Maximize Your Chances

These are just a few of the ways you can optimize your website to attract the search engines’ attention. It’s up to you whether you want to pay a search engine optimization service to do the work for you, or if you want to do it yourself. It’s worth the effort to optimize your website though, because free search engine traffic can bring you more visitors, and the potential to make more money, than just putting up a website you hope people will find on their own. My personal philosophy is this: Why take a chance?