HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

Search engines such as Yahoo and Google use highly complex forumlas to rank web sites. The number of outgoing links versus incoming links, the use of key words, and the amount of relevant and concise content are some of the things that go into those algorithms. The higher number of those items in your web site, the higher in the search rankings your web site becomes. The higher ranking you have, the more likely your site will find its way onto the first page of an Internet search done through Yahoo, Google, Bing, Ask.com or any of the rest of the well known and even lesser known search engines.

OBTAINING MAXIMUM EXPOSURE

But what does getting ranked on the first page of an Internet search actually do for your business? What’s really the point? Can’t you just build the web site, and people show up, kind of like Kevin Costner’s character in the movie Field of Dreams?

The world wide web is today’s telephone book directory. When someone is looking for a particular product or service, statistics demonstrate that people between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five go to a site such as Yahoo or Google to find exactly what they are looking for. Those between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five prefer the Internet over the traditional phone book by forty percent. Those over fifty-five, that percentage of people using the Internet to look up product and service information does begin to drop drastically. Whatever the age group, whether we like it or not, the world wide web is today’s modern version of yesterday’s phone book.

And interestingly, the telephone directory sales person has said over and over the way to get noticed in the phone book is by purchasing a large ad. The ad in the phone book catches the eye quicker and faster than a simple telephone listing. A big ad led to phone calls which led to sales, and a first page ranking on a search engine is today’s large phone book ad. Simply put, SEO technology puts your web site, your services, your products directly in front of your customers’ eyes, which leads to phone calls, which leads to sales.

INCREASE RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Of course, a big difference between the traditional phone book directory and the Web is that advertising on the Internet is much cheaper, saving the business revenue that can be put to better use in your own wallet.

In fact, if you know how to work SEO technologies yourself, advertising on the Web can be a very minimal monetary expense. Although a significant amount of time must be invested.

For example, imagine a company using only the incoming link SEO technique. The best way to accomplish this is to ask the clients or customers to write online reviews. For each client that writes an online review, which links automatically back to the company’s web site, the owner gives the customer a percentage discount. This single SEO technique, if used properly, can generate a quick amount of new traffic to the company’s web site, and can also generate tons of new, repeatable business. But, the owner has to let her current clients know about the discount. She has to make good on the discount and verify that the review has actually been written. This money saving process takes up a considerable amount of the owner’s time, but the results using this single SEO technique nets her new customers every day. Her total cost for the advertising scheme includes her annual domain name registration and her monthly hosting service fee for her web page.

BE SMALL – COMPETE BIG

A successfully optimized web site can allow the small business to compete on a level playing field with the more entrenched and established businesses.

This is happening right now in the pizza industry. Small, independent pizza shops are taking a significant market share away from their big chain store competition with the simple use of SEO techniques.

For example, type in the key word “pizza” into any search engine, and you end up retrieving some very familiar names. Type the key word “pizza” into any search engine and add a location such as Dayton, Ohio or Houston, Texas and pizza shop names come up on the front pages of the search that you’ve probably never heard of–unless you are from the chosen location. These small mom and pop pizza shops have leveraged the power of SEO and the Internet to successfully beat out their traditional and more familiar counterparts.

The same SEO technologies and techniques can easily be applied to your companies web site, even if you’re not selling pizza.

STAYING AHEAD OF THE CURVE – STAY ON TOP

Correct, consistent, and maintained search engine optimization keeps you on top of the Internet searches.

When the phone book was the main way customers found businesses, how-to books were written on starting a company. Many of them suggested naming your new company with any name that began with the letter A. Why? Because the letter A is the first letter in the alphabet, and phone books were or still are organized alphabetically, a company with a name that began with the letter A listed first, there by increasing exposure. Alpha Technologies (a made up company name for the purposes of this article, of course) was always going to get the phone call from the customer before the customer even thought of Zero Point Technologies.

Today, staying on the top does not have anything to do with the letter in which your company’s starts with. Today, staying on top means staying on top of your site’s SEO performance.