In Search Of Eldorado: The Hunt For Rank Position One

Article Directory - Search Engine Optimization

Written by Russell R. Hughes

Saturday, 12 July 2008 02:48

I have created quite a large number of websites, and if, like me, you have spent hours building yours, then it can be a thankless task when it comes to waiting for customers to hit your virtual door. Like any overnight success, it can take weeks or even months for your website to start to gain popularity unless you have the benefit of advertising in other areas, such as banner adverts, posters, flyers and so on. For the average site builder, the date of publication can come and go as though all your hard work has made no difference to the value of the internet.

But once you can see a trickle of people starting to dribble through to your website, you may wonder why it isn't a torrent. Perhaps next week? Or next month? You start seeing your creation as an investment rather than an overnight sensation that will see you retiring by the end of the month. Clearly people are starting to find you, and perhaps you have had a few comments or a few orders, but what else have you done to try to improve the popularity of your site and the overall number of visitors it receives?

Perhaps you have come across websites that talk about how to make sure your website is optimized so that it is more easily found. This mainly reflects on the way in which search engines find you and list your site in their search results. Bearing in mind how many millions of searches are carried out every day on the internet, making sure that the major search engines know your site exists, and list it, will be of huge benefit. However, being listed is one thing, being high up on those lists is quite another.

When people search the internet using a search engine, the list of results is ordered by rank. The higher the rank of your site, the closer to the top, on the first page, your website will be. If people enter the keywords 'alcohol free whiskey', and this is what your site sells, then you would hope that your website would be fairly near the top, or at the top, and definitely on the first page of results. On Google, a search for 'alcohol free whiskey' actually brings up 216,000 results, which at ten results per page is well over 21,000 pages. Incredibly, only 3% of people ever look past the first page of results. That means that 10 website owners will enjoy the company of 97% of visitors, whilst 215,990 website owners will only ever see 3% between them.

So what is it that helps you get to the top of your keyword search rank? Is there a single big secret that many SEO companies are aware of, and will only tell you for a huge fee? Certainly many companies do seem to suggest that they alone have the answer, and that only by going through them will the Golden Secret be revealed to you, and suddenly your site will rocket to the top. In fact, there are three things wrong with this. Firstly, there is no single solution - it's a combination of many varied factors. Secondly, no one single company can ever offer guarantees, promises or assurances that your site will be at the top, or near the top - they can try, and almost certainly your site will rise, but this depends on other factors beyond anyone's control. This might, for example, be because your website is in a mass market, such as insurance. With hundreds of thousands of keyword competitors, getting near the top is a huge endeavour, whereas if you're selling rainbow coloured light bulbs then there is likely to be much less competition, and so more chance you'll rise more quickly, and further. The third thing is that any rise is never going to be overnight, and any progress can take weeks, if not months or even years.

Be very wary of those sites that suggest that the best way of getting your site noticed is to use keywords. Although this is certainly true, search engines now take the number of keywords as only a minor factor in judging a site's rank. Search engines got wise to the fact that many website owners were simply cramming great blocks of keywords into the code of a page just to get attention. They get attention now all right - and the result it that they lose their rank position very quickly. There are many other ways now which the search engines use to judge how good a site is, one of which is its popularity. This is measured in several ways, but the most significant is how many other websites are linking to yours. The more links, the more popular, and this in turn implies more relevant and useful.

Because as web designers we can sometimes become a little too close to our designs, and sometimes don't just need to step back away from our glitzy masterpiece, we need someone else to take a good hard look and give us some feedback. Invariably these people like to be paid, but I have come across a nifty little site that offers a free assessment of your site. Although it's free, it's carried out by hand, and their advice is pretty thorough. They don't just focus on keywords, but look at a whole range of ways in which your site could be made friendlier towards the search engines, and get ranked higher. If you haven't tried them already, I'd recommend getting a review of your site for free. Even if your site has been around for a long time, or if it's brand new, they'll tell you all the things you could do to help improve your rank position.

Knowing what your site does well, and what it doesn't, will help you go a long way towards getting your website listed higher. I have a site which was hardly visible at all in Google's results - even I got bored trying to find it. After spending a couple of days implementing a few very simple changes that made very little difference to the way the site appeared, I resubmitted it to Google. I checked it earlier today, and it's now ranked as number one! It's a niche market, but even so, it's now the first site people reach, and more and more people are finding it and spending money, which is great! For two days' work, it was well worth it. I'd certainly recommend you get your site checked out; from my experience it really made a big difference.

About the Author:

No visitors? Buried on page 10? If you want to be found by Google and the rest of the search engines, you need to have an optimised website. Find out how easy it is to have a free evaluation and make your website profitable today.

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