For boosting your site’s rankings on search engines, it is important to have a ba‐sic understanding of how search engines work.

Search engines do not perform live or real‐time searches of the web. Instead, they search through their own database which contains ‘snapshots’ of millions, even billions of web pages. An engine attempts to copy and arrange all the in‐formation on the web into its database, and when you enter a search query, it searches through the database and returns results based on an algorithm, with each result pointing to the URL of the webpage.

This search process occurs in three stages: crawling, indexing and retrieving.

1) Crawling: The engine’s robotic crawlers, also known as spiders, go over each available web page and make a partial or full copy (also known as caching) of it. Spiders travel from page to page via the links on a page.

2) Indexing: The engine removes or devalues duplicate pages, removes ‘spam’ pages, and then catalogues and indexes each page according to the content of the page, which includes both text and markup (code).

3) Retrieving: Once a page is indexed, it is available for retrieval in search re‐sults. A retrieval algorithm determines the results and their order; each en‐gine has its own algorithm, which is why results vary from engine to engine.

Performing a search

Let us use Google to perform a quick search for “used books”. In 0.2 seconds, the first SERP is generated, featuring the top ten of about 200 million results related to the query. Google now also features ‘web options’, enabling you to narrow your results down in a number of ways. Each result also has a link to its cached copy on Google, and a link to a list of similar results.

Before these results are generated, Google’s spiders have already accessed and cached all these pages into its database and organized them. Each page is parsed and stored in Google’s database as a collection of words, which are used to de‐termine what the page is about. Each page also has its own information, such as its age, type (news, forums, shopping etc), popularity and authority.

When you search for “used books”, Google searches through its own database to look for:

pages that contain the exact phrase “used books”,

• pages where the words “used” and “books” appear close together, 7
• pages that contain both words, though not necessarily close together,
• pages that contain other variations of both words, such as “use” and “book”
• pages that are linked by other pages with “used books” in the link text, and
• pages that are linked by other pages with “used’ and “books” in the link text.

One or more of these criteria are satisfied by over 200 million web pages in Google’s massive database.

Ranking Factors

The order in which these millions of results are returned depends on their rela‐tive relevance to your query. In short, Google aims to return the most relevant results first, and the least relevant last. The calculation of this relevance is of ut‐most importance to web site developers and optimizers.

In order to determine a page’s rank for a specific query, two main criteria are used by all major search engines:
1. Keyword relevance: how central is the search term to the theme or meaning of the content on the page?
2. Page trust: how popular and trusted is the page on which the term appears?

These criteria are further broken down into over 200 individual factors, and search engines conceal their exact algorithms from users and webmasters in or‐der to avoid manipulation and spamming.

Keyword Relevance

Keyword relevance depends heavily on on‐page factors. In addition to the raw text or body of the page, search engines use a number of criteria to understand what the page is about:

• the title of the page: does the keyword appear in the title of the page?
• the prominence and placement of keywords on the page: is the keyword em‐phasized on the page – by being used in headings, bold text, italicized text, link text, bulleted lists or larger text?
• the meta description of the page: does the ‘description’ meta tag in the page’s markup contain the keywords?
• keyword density: does the keyword appear a number of times?
• anchor text (link text): do inbound links to the page contain the keyword?

A page where “used books” appears once or twice in the body of the page will be considered less relevant than a page where it appears in content headings, which will be less relevant than a page titled “used books” which also uses it in the meta description and main body of the page.
 

Page Trust

If rankings depended only, or even heavily, on on‐page factors, it would be quite easy to manipulate search engines. Since search engines don’t have a human understanding of meaning, it would be easy to create spam pages where key‐words appear in the right places (title, headings, bold text etc). Just a few years ago, it was not uncommon for a top result in Google to be an irrelevant page, where keywords were either hidden or used without relevant meaning.

In order to lower the ranking of such low‐quality results, off‐page factors have gained a great deal of importance in search rankings. In short, search engines now put a lot of weight on what other pages or websites think of a page.

Since spiders (and humans) navigate the web through links, search engines use linking as a way to determine the reliability of the linked page. By linking to an‐other page, a web page leads humans and spiders to it, so a backlink (inbound link to a page) may be considered a vote of confidence for the page, and the words which appear in the link text are used in determining what the linked page is about.

A page’s reliability or trust depends on a number of factors:

The authority of the domain: how reliable and trusted is the main domain? A page on Wikipedia, for example, is much more reliable than a page on a new or low‐traffic website. Domain authority is determined by a number of fac‐tors, including age, traffic and link popularity.

Number of backlinks: how many pages are linking to this page, and from how many different sources (domains)?

The authority of the linking page: how important is the page from which it is linked? A link from a high authority website (such as .edu or .gov sites) is more valuable than a link from an unreliable source such as a blog.

Google has its own method, known as PageRank™, of evaluating the backlinks to a page. Each indexed page is assigned a weighted number between 1 and 10 which signifies its link popularity. You can check the PageRank of a page here or by installing the Google toolbar. Note that PageRank is updated every few months and can sometimes vary unpredictably. So should not be relied upon.

However the craze is still going strong and has become a very socially acceptable way to meet lots of new singles in the UK.

Our latest client www.ditchordate.com run a very successfull speed dating website and are looking to improve there online visability.

Over the coming months we will massivly target there major keywords with a strong onsite and offsite advertising and marketing campaign with the aim of achieving a top spot result for ‘Speed Dating’ as the UK’s most popular speed dating website it needs to retake its crown as the top website in the UK.

Speed Dating however will not be the only keyword targeted we shall also be looking to improve and achive good results and consistant local traffic for there Speed Dating events held nationwide on a regular basis.

This will allow them to increase attendance to there already popular events and allow for larger events at future functions and singles dating parties.

Keywords will include:

Singles Dating
Speed Dating
Speed Dating Edinburgh
Speed Dating Cirencester
Singles Dating Yarm
Speed Dating Manchester
Speed Dating Sheffield
Singles Dating Leeds
Speed Dating Newcastle

and many many more.

Thought 1:

Whether you call it branding with a capital B or just keeping up apperances, the image that your organization projects through the search engines is important. If the top-ranked website for your company name is a rant by a disgruntled former employee, or if half of your inbound links mention an outdated product name, you’ve got an image problem that SEO can help fix.

Branding improvements may be a fringe benefit of your SEO campaidn, or they may be a central goal. Either way, make sure you document outcomes like improved search engine listings; inbound link updates; cleanup of outdated, private, or inappropriate content; and mentions in other web media such as blogs or review siites. Keep a diary or log it in your Task Journal, and pull out these accomplishments when you need some good news in the analysis and interpretation sections of your monthly Report! I think these positive little pieces of information as ‘exclamation point moments.’

Thought 2 ;

Ive spent so many hours pursuing and documenting branding advances in my SEO campaigns and, frankly nobody seems to care unless its presented just the right way. Things like eliminating references to nonexistent products and services and monitoring blog references, media mentions, and hate sites are so important that they need quantitive measurment. When the effectiveness of an SEO campaign comes into question, you need more than an exclamation point in your monthly report you need hard date!

Try to quantify your image improvemnt accomplishments in some way. For example, “Eight out of 14 of our misspelled listings have now been corrected”, “Our company name has been mentioned on 63 blogs this month, up from 24 mentions in the previous month,’ or ‘Our specially designed landing page now outranks the ‘hate site’ listing for the keywords ‘I hate zappyCo’ a phrase that aproximately 250 people a month search for.’ Companies like buzzmetrics and Intelliseek work to measure activity in this area, known as consumer generated media (CGM). Or Buzz! Numbers help provide a clear baseline and measurable change. You’ll be glad to have facts and figures at the ready when you need to justify another round of SEO spending!

This ’product’ is so appealing……
I had better sign up quick before I miss out on the offers and look “Everybody is doing it!” where do i sign?

Ok so how does this phenomenon occur?

First I will tell you a little story to describe why this occurs. A few months back I was at quite a posh dinner dance party the place was chocked full and everybody was having a great time. Entertainment was provided in the form of a stage hypnotist and local light pop band then a DJ for the rest of the evening. The event was quite formal with full dinner suite and posh frocks for the ladies very la-te-dah.

The night was going very well with polite dinner conversations and the wine began to flow nicely. Inevitably as always happens when wine is provided free by the hosts … people then began to feel the need to relieve themselves more and more regularly.

Unfortunately the venue management appeared to have miss calculated on the number of toilets that would be required for the number of guests and with over 300 people that are now full of wine and food that need to relieve themselves resulted in a backlog …. (I’m getting to the point soon just bear with me!)

As a result a lengthy queue began to form outside the toilet area mainly the woman’s toilets although the gents had also developed a fair sized queue. However the disabled toilets were constantly vacant one brassy woman decided she couldn’t wait anymore and broke free from the que and in an annoyed manor headed straight into the disabled toilets to relieve herself, at a bizarrely similar time a man broke from the rear of the gents que and proclaimed he was going outside to ‘p*** in the bushes’

Now both these actions broke from the realms of social acceptability and was a defiance of the ‘Norm’ but then for the rest of the night all men and women began to use the ‘disabled toilets’ or the ‘bush outside’ thus reducing the que and waiting time for all from this point onward.

So what is this telling us?

This is an example of ‘Social Proof’ or the ‘Bandwagon effect’ essentially it is the psychological principle of doing something or accepting something because others have accepted it or are doing it.

As everybody had been drinking and they all needed to relieve themselves this made this process a ’soft sell’ as it was an easy solution to the problem everybody was now facing. However it was in an environment that this activity was not socially acceptable, posh frocks and dinner suits are not normally associated with peeing in a bush! But the domino effect of one doing it then others seeing no negatives from doing it and only positives caused as nobody objected it was easy for all to accept this as the new ‘norm’ and the que’s were quickly reduced.

Social Proof is one of the most POWERFUL psychological forces in our lives.
So how do we tap into this niche and use it to generate more sales and more money… the most obvious method and widely used is our old friend the ‘TESTIMONIAL’

TESTIMONIALS

Testimonials Influence your Customers Behaviour you should always have testimonials to hand when presenting your product, your website is a good place to have these but they can be more effective when presented in person. Especially if the company you are adressing has heard of or had contact previously with the company providing the testimonial. If all testimonials are from individual customers regional specifics are very important to help generate and an association a bog standard customer Testimonial could look something like this:

 “I tried it and i loved it made such a difference” – Mike Bains, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne

A Potential customer from Gosforth reading this will instantly make the link to themselves.

Here is a list of essentials for compiling your list of Customer Testimonials:-

1. Credibility – A testimonial builds confidence in your message, offer, product, and company because it offers proof that it has worked for others.
2. Objectivity – People expect you to say good things about your own product, so your persuasive abilities have a limit. But your argument is multiplied tenfold when other people say good things, especially when those other people have no bias and nothing to gain.
3. Similarity – The best testimonials are from those similar to your prospective customers. People give more weight to the opinions of those who are like themselves. Doctors trust doctors. Housewives trust housewives. Teenagers trust teenagers.
4. Expertise – If your product lends itself to testimonials from experts, this can have an effect as great as testimonials from similar people. I’ll listen to a person like me about the high quality of a tire for my car, but I’ll also listen to a mechanic who gives the tire high marks. Imagine a mechanic saying, “The Everlast Tire is the best tire on the road. Actually, it’s a little too good. Because once I put them on a car, I never see that customer again. Those tires could put me out of business.”
5. Bandwagon Effect – When many testimonials are presented together, they not only engage the social proof Effect, they also trigger the Bandwagon Effect. “Lots of people are doing it, so I have to get in on this and do it too. How can X number of people be wrong?”
6. Enthusiasm – Excitement breeds excitement. And if you’re aggressive in your testimonial collection, you should be able to gather comments that brim with energy. One testimonial, around which I framed an entire promotion for one of my clients, started with the word “WOW!” Others in the same promotion contained statements such as “What a treat!” and “I love it.”
7. Benefits – Testimonials also offer an objective means of relaying your most important benefits. And by collecting lots of testimonials, you have the option of organizing them in your copy so the most informative are at the beginning.
8. Features – Along with benefits, features can surface in your testimonials. Because of the quirky, disorganized wording of real testimonials, they may not cover all the facts. But people are likely to mention the most important or popular features or relate how particular features help in particular situations. It makes features tangible.
9. The People Factor – On a basic level, communication theory tells us that people are interested in people more than in things. Testimonials represent real people talking about their experiences and sharing their opinions. Anything real people say will be more interesting and relevant than what a copywriter can concoct.
10. Quotes – Along the same lines, people like to read or hear what others have to say. Readership studies show that anything in quotation marks – even if it’s not a quote – gets high readership. Quotations are also easier to read than running text. That’s why good children’s books are often filled with quoted dialog. It actually encourages reading!
11. Specifics – And finally, good testimonials allow you to share specifics about your product. And because of the higher readership value of testimonials, they will be absorbed and understood quickly and effortlessly.

The only thing you have to worry about now is collecting your testimonials from your customers.