Search Engine Optimization
Getting more traffic from the crawler-based search engines depends on search engine optimization. What does that mean? Well, it’s the art of ensuring that your web site shows up when a web surfer searches for relevant phrases on a crawler-based engine.
For example, let’s say you have a web site which sells tie pins. Someone who is looking to
buy a tie pin may go to Google and type in ‘tie pin.’ If your site comes up as the No.1 listing in the results, you have an excellent chance of getting a click. If you’re anywhere on the first page, you still have a good chance. If your site shows up in the second or third pages of results, you may get some traffic. After that, you might as well be in outer space. So the art of search engine optimization is all about getting your site onto that first page of results – ideally into the No.1 position. It’s a simple concept, but most people go about it the wrong way. As a result, they not only fail to get the traffic they want, they may even get themselves banned by certain indexes.
To make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes, remember the golden rule of search
engine otpimization:
Help the search engines to help their searchers In other words, work with the search engines – not against them. Consider optimization to be a partnership, not a war for traffic. If you abide by this simple maxim, your traffic yield will soar in the longer term. The search engines will love you for it, and repay you with targeted traffic.
If you surf the search engines forums, you will find all kinds of ideas designed to trick the search engines and provide you with an unfair advantage. But search engine companies aren’t stupid. They read the forums, too. A trick that wins you a little extra free traffic today is likely to be banned tomorrow. And if you are caught using such tricks, you may be penalized.
Why take the risk, when you can get much better results with a different approach?
So let’s look at how you can help the search engines to help their searchers. All search engines have the same basic objective. To guide searchers to web sites which provide the best match for the term they are searching on. If you can help them provide good matches for relevant terms, the search engines will love you. It’s as simple as that.
Although the crawler engines work in slightly different ways, the basic principle is the same. They analyze pages on your web site, and try to work out what the page is about. The systems which do this are very clever, but no automated system is perfect. So it’s up to you to help the search engine understand what the page is about, and which keywords you should rank well on.