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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.

For millions of reasons, but they can all be classi‐fied into three main types:

1) Informational search: people looking for information online, such as “who directed Gone with the Wind?”, “currency of Angola” etc.

2) Navigational search: people searching for a specific online location, such as the website of British Airways or the online customer service section of HP computers.

3) Transactional search: people looking for specific items online, often but not always in order to buy, such as a color printer or picture frame.
There are hundreds of search engines online, but only a few of them are used by the majority of searchers. In order of popularity, they are Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. In August 2009, 13 billion searches were performed on Google in the US alone, with 2.8 billion on Yahoo and 1.3 billion on Microsoft’s search sites1. For the purposes of this eBook and for SEO in general, only the top search engines are discussed, with a particular focus on Google.
Search drives traffic
Search is one of the most important sources of traffic for websites, and for new and small websites (which do not enjoy the brand awareness, loyalty or monop‐oly of sites like Amazon, IMDB or Wikipedia) it often accounts for a majority of the traffic.

And traffic is the currency of the internet.

If you have a website – whether you are selling a product, advertising a service or trying to create awareness of an issue – your first goal is undoubtedly to at‐tract visitors; ideally, visitors who are interested in the product, service or infor‐mation on your website.

Scenario: Selling a CD

For the purpose of understanding how search works and why it is relevant to every website owner, imagine that you are selling a CD of relaxation techniques online. Your goal is to bring visitors to your website, ideally those who are inter‐ested in knowing more about or purchasing a relaxation CD.

Your ideal visitor will come to Google or Yahoo and search for “buy relaxation CD” or “relaxation music”. There will be others who will be looking for “relaxa‐tion techniques” or “relaxation tips” as well. The search terms they enter are known as keywords or key phrases.

Every search has an intent or purpose, and a user’s keywords are the first and greatest indicator of his or her intent.

Paid and organic search results

When a user searches for any terms on the major search engines, he sees two kinds of results on the search engine results page (SERP): paid results and organic results. Paid results are also known as ‘sponsored links’ or ‘sponsored results’. This is a form of search advertising based on keywords.

Paid results are the advertisements that search engines display based on the keywords entered by the user. They are clearly marked as sponsored, and every time a user clicks on an advertisement, the search engine makes a little bit of money. The amount depends on the popularity of and competition for that search term. For instance, “color printer” is a much more competitive (and prof‐itable) term than, say, “capital of Russia”; so there will be more sponsored links for the former, and advertisers will pay more for every click. This is also known as Pay‐per‐click or PPC advertising.

Organic search results are the “natural” results, which take up the majority of the search engine result page, and which the user usually assumes are ranked in order of importance or relevance based on the query.

Although this eBook is not about paid search advertising, it is important to know the two biggest ways in which paid search advertising is not as effective as hav‐ing a high natural rank for your keywords:

1) It is costly; you pay for user clicks and have no guarantee of making a sale.

2) Numerous studies indicate that 75‐80% of searchers click on organic results instead of paid links.

Pay per click advertising can work very well, but it is best used as part of an overall marketing strategy which includes search engine optimization for boost‐ing natural rankings.
Various search engine‐related techniques such as SEO and paid advertising to increase a website’s exposure are collectively known as search engine marketing (SEM).

Searching for a relaxation CD

Now imagine your ideal user looking for a relaxation CD online. He opens his browser, navigates to Google and searches for “relaxation CD”. Google will re‐turn nearly 7 million natural search results, and a number of sponsored links on the right based on the search term and other related queries like ‘meditation’ and ‘relaxation music’.

Out of these 7 million search results, the user is, statistically speaking, most likely to click on the top few organic results on the first SERP. The first SERP contains 10 results, and with each decreasing rank his likelihood of clicking on the page decreases. He is also much less likely to click on the second page, especially if he finds what he is looking for on the first page itself.

So lets get down to brass tax!! Rethinking Search

Clearly, it is not accurate to think of search engines as portals or doors to the web – they are more like authoritative guides. Search engines today are ex‐tremely discerning; they organize incredible amounts of information and make recommendations based on rankings which can make or break the fortunes of a website owner.

So in order to attract the right kind of users in large volumes, your website should be featured as a result on the top search engines – with a high rank for the right keywords.
The techniques by which you try to achieve high rankings for the right keywords is known as search engine optimization.

Here are some SEO Myths to wet your appetite:

• Higher bid on PPC ensures a higher Ad placement in the search engine results.
• Once you achieve top/high rank for your keyword you can stop optimising your website.
• SEO Companies that offer guaranteed top placement for your keywords eliminate the risk.
• Fantastic Short term results are a great result in SEO
• Search engine Optimisation mainly consists of endless Search Engine submissions.
• Search engine optimisation basically is a set of clever techniques designed to con the search engine.
• By following standard SEO techniques you will guarantee high rankings.
• If you Hire an SEO company it is expensive and they will blind you with meaningless terms.
• Basically all you need do is repeat your keyword loads of times on every page.
• Most Websites are optimised as they are being built so if you get a new website this will all be done for you.
• There is only one search engine worth optimising for and thats google everybody know that right?
• High PR is all that matters and getting a good PR automatically translates to high position.
• Brand new websites don’t stand a chance in the Search Engines.
• Link building is a completely automated process with little or no user interaction.
• High position for any keyword ensures high sales and conversions.
• PPC has a knock on effect on natural/organic ranking.
• High bid in PPC is directly proportional to high click through and conversions
• PPC is far to costly for small business owners to consider.
• All links in a successful link building campaign are permanent.
• PPC and keyword selection is all done by some clever bit of database.
• Getting more and more links will increase PR
• The number of links a site has is far more important than the quality of back links.
• Endless number of links can be aquired for free given enough time.

Matt Cutts the SPAM guru at google chats about some more complex myths that occur in SEO check out the google video here

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.

Google Insigts http://www.google.com/insights/search/

Basically google insights is a vastly improved version of trends and is excellent for comparing keywords and competition keywords so you know exactly where to focus your site and your hard graft!

New features like ‘rising searches’ show new popular terms that are building in popularity daily excellent for jumping on the bandwagon and seeing what the world is looking for.

The main advantage of Google insights is the geographical nature of the tool, with regional search specific you can look at your region specifically rather than global trends. This is especially useful for local business.

Google Keywords has been beefed up as well to coninside with the new google insights launch so with the combination of the two tools you are armed to the teth and ready for SEO for free by google.com

Keep up the good work google and thanks for such a great tool!

Whats a search engine developer to do? Two things: First, combine results from several sources, as discussed earlier. This allows the search engines to intertwine the massiveness of the machine-driven system (robot results) with the finesse of the human touch (directory and PPC results). Second, structure the ranking algorithms to integrate ‘votes’ from human beings. Putting the human touch into a ranking algorithm can be done in a variety of ways, and search engines continue to experiment with solutions. Counting inbound links from other websites, for example, is a way of measuring how many votes a site has from human – and presumably intelligent – webmasters. Other ideas have included measuring how many search engine users click through to your site and how long they stay. Social bookmarking sites and collaborative tagging, even comparing a persons current and past searches, are forms of artificial intelligence intended to improve the search experience.

But artificial intelligence still has a long way to go. In movies you can say to a computer, “computer, rotate and enhance!” and the computer will somehow manage to turn and un-blur a grainy image from a security camera just the way you need it. In real world, we just aren’t there yet. Search engines remain very literal creatures unable to improvise very much beyond the exact words, even the exact syntax of words, they are given. Which leads us to our next Eternal Truth:-

What is the Matrix?? well Neo in the matrix of search engines only one factor drives the whole system etch this on your brain:

TEXT MATTERS
 ’Text is eternally important in Search’

The entire process of a web search is text-based, even when the item being sought isnt text at all, even if its an image or video text and text descriptions drive the web. The search engines care about how much text you have on your site, how it’s formatted, and, of course, what it says.

Keyword Selection is Key

Careful keyword selection is heart of the SEO campaign. Site owners who are on top of their SEO game have a list of top-priority keywords that they use on their site, with reasonable repetition, in strateic places. We never let a site go for six months without checking the keywords to make sure they’re still appropriate. If a site’s focus or positioning changes, new keywords are in order. If a company adds new products or services, new keywords are in order. If a new competitor comes on the scene, its worth peeking into its site for new keyword idea’s. Even if none of these changes takes place regular keyword analysis is in order because search behaviour and trends may change as well.

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.

Contact us for a no nonsense informal jargon free chat here

Here at Search engine we don’t want to blast you with useless GEEK Jargon until you are so baffled with gibber gabber we can force your pen to paper and sign away your corporate identity to a web project thats not what your really looking for.

Ever had a meeting with the ‘nerds’ in the ‘nerdary’ and afterward felt less intelligent for having it as your head is now stuffed with bonkers words that sound made up?? Well our team or gurus at searchengine.ltd.uk believe in taking the time to educate and consult with customers on things they don’t understand about the internet and try to avoid the use of jargon when explaining what we do.

To prove it we have compiled a handy list of some of the most common ‘jargon busters’ for all to see that you can use against any prospective web design company to see if they really know there stuff.

WARNING simply the knowledge of these terms is not enough! It is a completely different skill set that is required to be able to put them into good use by turning jargon and knowledge into increasing the numbers of real ’potential customers’ who will visit your website, and subsequently buy your product or invest in your services.

Have a read of our new SEO glossary section and Jargon buster page here please leave your comments below.