Rising Through the Ranks
April 28, 2008
Author: Alan B. Dee - Site Programmer
Rising Through the Ranks - Search Engine Optimization Explained
You may not know it, but your website is engaged in a constant battle with the sites of your competitors– the battle to stay the top of the search engine ranking list. According to a user behavior study done by iProspect, 90% of visitors will only click on the first three sites of the results page. If they cannot find what they are looking for in those first three list items then they will try a new search phrase. If your site is not on the first page of results, very few people will visit the second page.
To keep your website on top of your competitors’ it is important to have a basic understanding of how web searches work.
There are two major categories that affect search engine ranking:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
SEO refers to the design and layout of your site as it is seen by the search engine. How a search engine views your site is very different from how the site may look when viewed in your web browser. This is especially true for Flash sites and JavaScript rich sites, both of which attract little attention from search engines. Interestingly enough, the most feature-rich and interactive sites may often struggle with poor search engine rankings because of an inadequate understanding of SEO on the part of the developers. A web site should never be completely written in Flash, however Flash, AJAX, and JavaScript each have their place.
For example, CNN’s website is extremely rich in content with minimal interactive elements, like JavaScript or Flash, that would hurt SEO ranking. In contrast, Nike has an extremely rich interactive site. You may ask yourself which site works the best. The truth is that both of these sites are well-written. The difference between them lies in the audience. CNN’s goal is to attract people to their site with the latest news and they do so by using mostly html which makes for easy updating. Nike’s goal is to attract an audience interested in entertainment, merchandise and pop culture. Since targeting this audience requires more visual stimulus, it is one of the few exceptions to the rule that sites should not be programmed completely in Flash.
Effective SEO uses a variety of tactics, boiling down to what you can get away with and what you cannot. By attempting to “trick” search engines, your page ranking could go down or your site blacklisted (completely removed) if the search engine knows what you’re trying to do. Factors that could increase ranking include the age of the site, how often it is updated, and how many other sites reference yours.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)
Making a site SEO-compliant happens in the designing stages of the site. Once the site is live with the proper SEO in place, it should be maintained regularly while beginning a SEM campaign.
In most online searches the search engine will give you two separate listings: the normal listing and the sponsored listing. It is through SEM that a site gets positioned into the latter listing. Usually the owner of the sponsored site pays for each time a person clicks through to your site.
Setting up your pay-per-click listing is not a one-time setup, but is an ongoing process. Pay-per-click listings should change over time to match the changes in public trends, tastes and interests. What worked one quarter might not work the next. Figuring out how to carry out a proper SEM campaign takes a combination of logistics and creativity, two traits to look for when selecting a design/marketing firm.
Some SEM campaigns include banner-ads. These usually take place on interest sites, blogs, or message boards that have a section of their site put aside for advertising. Again, it takes a balance of logistics and creativity to pull it off successfully.
There are many factors to consider when aiming to achieve a high rank. Those explained in this article are merely some of the basics regarding SEO and SEM. Many books may explain what affects your site’s rank, but changes in the market tend to occur rapidly. As such, it would be in your best interest to select a firm to build and maintain your site in an SEM-compliant manner and to run a marketing campaign, when applicable, to ensure it is used to its fullest extent. Skogen Group’s breadth of creative and technical professionals are ideal for carrying out such projects to make sure your company gets noticed on the web.
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