If you think of your website as a brick-and-mortar store then think of the search engines as the roads that run past it. Just as a store owner hopes someone driving by will notice their shop, so do most website owners hope someone just searching the Internet will notice them.
Unfortunately, search engines don’t work as easily as a sign on a main road. Your business might be exactly what someone is looking for, but you need to prove that to the search engines first.
Thankfully, we include Search Engine Optimization with every website we develop so you don’t need to worry too much if you’re one of our clients, but for those who aren’t or for those who just like to learn, we’re going to spend some time teaching you the basics of Search Engine Optimization.
The Beginning and the End
In Part 1, we’re going to start where your website ends up (hopefully), Google.
There are other search engines besides Google, most notably Yahoo! and Bing (Microsoft), but Google still has the largest share of searchers and sets the trends for the entire search industry. Most search engines will look and act just like Google, although they might hide it under large graphics and pretty colors.
The Anatomy of Google
click the image to enlarge
Take a look at the screen capture from Google above (click the image to see the entire screen.)
In this case, we’re searching for “Atlanta hammers,” which had over 3 millions results. There are 3 different type of results, which we separated with colored borders: Green, blue and red. When discussing search engine optimization, only the results in the blue area really concern us, but we’ll explain the other results as well.
Google Local (green results)
The top part of the Google results outlined in green is called Google Local, which includes results with a physical proximity to your search term, in this case, the center of Atlanta. If we just searched for “hammers,” Google Local would not show up. So this area is only relevant if you are a local business.
You’ll notice links at the top and bottom of Google Local to view additional local results, but the top 3-10 local results get listed (usually) above all other results on page 1 of the general results screen (what we’re looking at.)
Your ranking in Google Local does owe something to your website’s optimization, but it also has a lot to do with your physical location and whether you are verified in Google Places. We’ll devote a future blog post to Google Places and how it works with Google’s local results, but, if you’re wondering, we do offer services to get listed in Google Places.
Google AdWords (red results)
Take a look over to the right of Google’s results screen to the area outlined in red. These results are sponsored links from Google’s pay-per-click program, AdWords. This is Google’s bread and butter, their billion dollar golden egg.
Basically, businesses pay Google a small fee each time someone clicks their AdWords link. The fee is set up like an auction. The more you’re willing to pay Google, the higher your ad will appear on the screen (more or less.)
We could, and probably will, devote a future blog post to Google AdWords as well, but it doesn’t have much to do with website optimization. It is, however, a great way to rank highly in the search engines if you’re not able to optimize your website or if you’re waiting for the optimization to take effect.
Companies offering you services for Google AdWords often refer to their service as “search engine marketing,” and, you guessed it, we do offer search engine marketing services. It’s important to note there is a difference between search engine marketing (SEM) services and search engine optimization (SEO) services, and it all comes down to the area of Google you aim to rank highly on.
Natural Results (blue results)
Google places it’s natural search results, outlined in blue, below everything else. Well, they don’t make any money off these results. However, studies have shown that people more often click the natural results than the sponsored results, probably because people understand that natural results are going to be more relevant to their search.
The natural results area is the holy grail of search engine optimization. This is where Google (and others) look through your website, checking the text, meta tags, links and everything else, to determine whether your website is more relevant than millions of other websites.
Next
We’ll cover, step-by-step, in subsequent parts of this article, how to optimize your website to rank highly in the natural results. We’ll cover researching the best search phrase, integrating the phrase into your website, and, finally, ways to optimize your website outside of your website.
Check back with us soon, and remember: Small doesn’t mean invisible.
