Improve Search Engine Rankings, The Secret Formula

OK, so maybe there's not a 'secret' formula for improving search engine rankings, but we've seen rankings improve for many clients over years simply by common sense, and a plan.

Every business website 'should be' interested in improving the amount of leads it can generate for the company. The more leads, the more potential sales, the more sales, the more....well, life is better.

So, how do we generate leads? Traditionally, one might suggest that we must have more traffic visiting our website. However, let's take that one step further.

We will argue that more eyeballs looking through your website pages isn't the end goal....it's not JUST about getting more traffic. Rather, it's about attracting the right KIND of traffic.

Put another way, we want to attract traffic from people who are intested in what we have to offer, whether that offer is free or paid information, products or services, you name it! We call this, RELEVANT TRAFFIC to our website.

So, we leave you with this thought for now....if you could choose between 1,000 new visitors coming to your site tomorrow, would you prefer that they be visitors who:

1. happened across your site without any need for your information, product or service OR
   
   
2. came through a search engine, looking for exactly what you offer

If number 2 is your answer, you'll likely need to improve search engine rankings across the board so that YOUR site's pages are being 'found' on Google and other search engines. People are looking for what you provide....will they find your site in the mix?

"I Want To Be On The First Page Of Google!"

So true are these words for any website owner. However, what does Google want from YOU?

We think understanding this might just help direct a plan for being one of those fortunate first page site owners.

Think about it....Google, Yahoo, Bing, they are all trying to provide one thing, and that would be relevant search results for their customers, the people doing the searches on their engines.

Consider the following. When Google finds a web site, or when you submit your site pages to Google, it has two basic things it can 'measure' to determine where it's going to rank your website. As you can see above, there are 'ON PAGE' and 'OFF PAGE' factors that affect rankings.

The way we optimize pages...that's what search engine optimization is all about. The way we build links to our web site to make our site more popular...that's what search engine marketing is all about. We'll look at both to improve search engine rankings.

On Page Factors, Easy To See What Your Pages Are About?

The first thing it can measure is the relevance of the content on the page itself.

We call these factors 'ON PAGE' factors because they are things that we can do to help 'optimize' your pages, also called 'search engine optimization'.

Technically, search engine optimization is one PART of search engine marketing, the overall process of promoting your site to search engines. However, because so much of search engine marketing involves activities that don't actually touch the pages or structure of the site itself, we tend to think of these two buckets.

When someone types a search for 'blue widget' in Google, the search engine quickly asseses how many pages it has collected from all the sites it knows about on the web, and makes a determination about which of those pages has solid content about 'blue widgets'.

Search engine software (called 'spiders') can take one look at any page in your site and measure the number of times the term 'blue widgets' was found in your site.

Too little, and your page is probably not a candidate for ranking on this particular term. However, too much, and your site could be mistaken for spam, blocked from rankings...just as bad!

With that said, search engine rankings start to make a little more sense.

Off Page Factors, Do Other Sites Link To Yours?

The second thing Google can measure after deteriming if your page contains relevant content is how popular the page is.

We call these items 'OFF PAGE' factors, because Google and other search engines can easily see how many other websites link to your page. Anything a business can do off the page, really doesn't require technical knowledge and can help a site tremendously to build links to it.

When combined with the more technical nature of search engine optimization, the off page activities of search engine marketing are too numerous to mention here!

However, calling a another site owner in your industry (some site actually related to your industry) and asking him to add a link to your site is a very basic link building step that we group under the search engine marketing umbrella.

Once Google sees this new link and any others that you build over time, it shows that your site is becoming relevant in both content and in industry popularity!

This measure of popularity has inspired search engine marketers to do much more than JUST optimize their pages (remember those on page activities mentioned above?).

Indeed, business owners will want to make sure that they serve both masters in the grand attempt to improve search engine rankings....

They will want to build links to thier websites to show Google that their pages are not only optimized and relevant for certain searches, but that they are relevant AND popluar, with lots of links from other websites!

To Improve Search Engine Rankings It Takes Time!

So, it's plain to see that it takes work to improve search engine rankings, and it takes time. Sisson Media has worked in multiple industries with various clients....enough to see that some industries are more competitive than others, and do indeed take more time, more links, and more content to rank effectively.

However, with time, patience, and an effective plan, it can be done. You can improve search engine rankings for even the most competitve keywords, and we are here to help!