Search Engine Optimization and Snake Oil
If you are talking to a search engine optimization consultant and they tell you they can guaranty top listing on Google, walk away. Run away actually.
Search engine optimization has been a bit of wild-west with snake oil salesmen wandering the plains looking to sell services. The space is growing more sophisticated, but a good sign that you are dealing with a questionable consultant is any guaranty of results or search rankings.
As you evaluate optimization services, here are some things to keep in mind:
- You really are talking about a world dominated by Google and the Google algorithm. Bing has made some strides and is expanding to replace Yahoo’s search, but it still is in the 10% range of searches. Google simply dominates this space, so your optimization efforts will be driven by a focus on Google.
- Google has published basics on how to optimize your content for their search service. Remember, Google wants to know everything about your site, so they will be happy to tell you want they want. Visit Google’s webmaster tools to learn more. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
- Having sitemaps built to tell the search engines where to find your content is important. That is explained further in Google’s webmaster tools section. Robots.txt files are also helpful to search engines because they tell them where to go look and where not to look.
- Google’s algorithm is driven by keyword prevalence, links to your content from others and, in a recent addition, the speed at which your site loads (Google has, among other things, found a correlation between load speed and quality of content. That is why I host with Verio and became a channel partner.). The first two points should cause you to think hard about the content on your site and how to make it useful and relevant to others. If the content is good, the keywords will almost appear naturally. If the quality is good (and original), people will link to it from their pages. Big Lesson: Content Matters!
- Finally, on the flip side, Google will punish sites that attempt to “trick” their algorithm by stuffing words into their pages or using hidden text or “link farms” to game the system. For example, if the googlebot (Google’s engine that scans billions of websites all day long) discovers you have put a bunch of white text on a white background to hide some content on your page, they will blacklist your site. So, do not play games with Google.
- More and more, blogs are becoming a popular way to generate the content that will help with rankings because they are easy Internet publishing tools for non-techies (WordPress as an example) or the ease of content generation makes generating more content that is timely even more likely.