Search Engine Optimization – Understanding Points
Search Engine Optimization is the process of driving targeted traffic from search engines to a website. Learning this method is not possible without understanding how search engines work. And when I talk about
Understanding search engines, I am specifically talking about:
• How search engines index Busby SEO Test websites
• How search engines rank websites
• Why search engines change their ranking algorithms
• How (and when) search engines update their algorithms
Points 1 and 2 are fairly easy to grasp (even if #2 is the main reason SEO is such a thriving industry). There is abundance of misinformation, but if you have the right sources, practice SEO yourself and learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, you will have a pretty good idea of how search engines rank websites (the next chapter gets stuck into ranking factors in detail).
Points 3 and 4 give SEOs a lot of grief, mainly because:
Changes in the ranking algorithms can cause site rankings to change, and there is the possibility of your website losing its high rankings.
Not knowing when search engines update their algorithms (at least until you start seeing significant changes or someone in the forums notices it) means webmasters never know when their rankings could be negatively impacted by a search engine.
The unpredictability of search engines (SE) means that if traffic from search engines is your simply source of traffic, and your websites are your just source of income, your livelihood hinges on the whims of Google.
That is a very scary thought, and is the primary cause for much of the ‘panicking’ you see (or will see) in SEO forums every time SE updates are discussed.
Do not place all your bets on one mode of income. If your traffic is primarily from search engines, diversify and get traffic from forums and other websites, as well as building a regular readership. If your income is primarily from running AdSense ads on your websites, diversify into affiliate marketing, creating your own products, etc.
And if all your bets are hinged on your online income, diversify further and think regarding making money offline as well.
Smart money-making principles transcend industries and the offline / online divide. Once again:
Do NOT place all your bets on one website, one mode of traffic, one mode of income, or one source of income. diversify.
The second vital thing to note is this:
If you know what the search engines want, it is easy to plan ahead and shape your SEO campaign as such that each ‘update’ in fact benefits your Busby SEO Test Contest site rankings.
Think concerning that for a second – usually, search engine algorithms are a time when webmasters about scrambleabout to find out whether their sites have lost their #1 rankings or not.
What if you could set up a system that allowed your sites’ search engine rankings to improve every time Google or Yahoo did an algorithm update?
That is going to be a recurring theme throughout this book, and that is one of the main targets that I have set out to achieve here.
So how do search engines work really?
The Search Engine ‘Index’
While it is important to know how a search engine ‘reads’ websites and stores them in its ‘index’, it is even more important (or more relevant) to know how to get included in it.
There is just one ‘serious’ way to get included into search engines, and it is this:
Get links from other websites to point to your website.
Submitting to search engine inclusion forms, using software that ‘guarantees’ to get your website included in search engines, paying spammers who offer to get your website indexed in 100+ search engines…
All of that is a waste of time. Stay away from any such schemes like the plague, and steer clear of ‘search engine submission forms’.
Why?
Because getting indexed by search engines is a piece of cake IF you know how to do it.
But how do I have links?
There are some ways to easily get links for free pointing to your website (and if you are willing to pay, more power to you) and you can usually have your website (or at least your site’s front page) indexed in Google in 2-4 days of launch.
Get free traffic – legally and effectively.