Mediapainter

Search engine optimization is simple to explain, difficult to practice. It’s the designing and developing of your website and its content so that it ranks well for your targeted keywords within the search engine results pages (SERP) of all the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing (formerly known as Live, formerly known as MSN; can’t Microsoft get the domain name thing down yet?). What makes SEO so attractive is that unlike paid search marketing (pay per click), traffic from search engines in the SERP is free, referred to as organic.

The early days of SEO were interesting to say the least and are probably the root of every misconception in SEO today. You used to be able to rank well for any keywords you wanted by increasing keyword density (overwhelming the content of your pages with your targeted keywords), but search engines are a lot smarter these days and the algorithms that power them are far more complex. Google came on the scene in 1998 with the idea of creating a search engine that would make sense of all the information in the world and make it intuitively accessible. They developed the infamous PageRank (apparently the term is derived from the name of Google’s cofounder, Larry Page) which counts the inbound links of each and every page on the web as well as determines the quality of said links.

Naturally, the Google algorithm is much more complex than counting links and analyzing them, but that initiative is what’s separated Google from the others and has led to their overwhelming market share (now over 70% in the United States alone). With the greater part of the world using Google, it’s in your best interests to be Google friendly and not just search-engine friendly.

If this isn’t a priority in your marketing strategy online, I’d say you’re in a spat of trouble. Having a great looking website is great, but if you can’t bring in the traffic let alone traffic that converts, it’s not doing anything for you. To be competitive, you’ll need to develop relevant content for your targeted keywords related to your product or service and establish your authority.

Regardless of what techniques you might try, there’s no guarantee you’ll achieve placement in the top ten and more importantly, there isn’t a single SEO professional on the planet that can guarantee it either. SEO is a never ending battle that demands patience and hard work for you to be able to not only maximize, but also maintain top positions in the organic search engine results. Good luck!