Introduction to Search Engine Marketing

This article addresses issues of relevance, quality of content and incoming links as they relate to search engine marketing. It has been compiled from many sources knowledgeable in this area of internet-based online marketing.

Search engines continually refine their algorithms that evaluate both on-page and also many "off-page" criteria. You want and need cost-efficient ways to achieve good search engine rankings in Google and other search engines and this write-up addresses many of the facts and myths surrounding this endeavor.

The relevancy of your pages to the search terms web searchers use, the quality of your content relating to the search terms they use and the quality of other websites which are providing incoming links to your website all affect your positioning.

In the beginning…

Beginning around 1995 and lasting for a number of years thereafter, search engine “tricks", such as stuffing your page’s meta tags with keywords not relevant to the content of the pages they appeared on (or not even relevant to your site) and/or adding “invisible keywords” to your web pages in the same color as your page background worked to achieve higher page rankings... but not any longer.

The same is true for using “replicated gateway pages” that you created that all pointed back to your own main website and a number of other popular “search engine optimization” tricks of the past.

Today using such tactics not only does not help you, it can actually get your website and web pages “banned” from many of the most important search engines, so read this write-up carefully!

The major search engine staffs never rest on what was; they are continually pioneering the future. And, major search engine companies, such as Google, have virtually unlimited budgets. Google’s stock market capitalization today is approaching $60 billion and it is foolish to believe that you will come up with a “trick" that they can’t code around!

Additionally, even within Google’s own programming staff, work projects are always divided among different programmers and different groups, so that no one other than their top management really knows what their true overall criteria for page ranking is. If anyone tells you they know some inside secrets purporting to reveal this to you: run the other way.

Basically, quality relevant content is what search engines are searching for on your website. Not irrelevant meta tags, pages filed with creative keyword stuffing nor “tricks” of any other kind.

Quality relevant content is what they are looking for.

What’s the case that can be made for making this statement?

The ultimate goal of any search engine is to deliver to their site’s users the most relevant content they can find that matches the search terms that their users typed in. Search engines do this so that their users will continue to return to their search engine to perform more searches.

As a result of having satisfied users return again and again, Google (and others) are able to sell billions of dollars of paid advertisements on the search results page to advertisers with content RELEVANT to the search terms used. This should be fairly basic. Fairly simple. And VERY true.

So, in short: A search engines job is basically to compare your web pages with other web pages containing similar content and then determine which page is most relevant to the search terms entered.

The search results pages contain links to both editorial content pages and also to paid sponsored links that match the search terms entered. Searchers click one link or the other and sometimes they explore both.

When a searcher clicks on ANY link, the search engine and Internet technology of today enables the tracking of:

How many pages on the visited site you viewed;
How long you stayed on the viewed site;
Whether you came back to this site later the same day;
Whether you came back to this site the same week or the same month;
Whether you returned to the search engine and repeated your search;
How many times you returned and repeated similar searches;
How many other sites link to the pages you visited;
How "important" are the pages linking to the visited pages and;
Hundreds of other parameters!

Quality relevant content is ultimately what they are measuring for.

How do you give searchers and search engines THAT? In some ways that’s very easy and simply to answer and just takes some common sense. Yet, from another perspective: Common sense is often MOST uncommon and difficult to find!! That’s where we come in. Give us a call to discuss your search engine marketing goals and we will provide you with a large dose of common sense. We'll also clear up a lot of myths that are floating around related to other aspects search engine marketing.

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