Online Sales The Organic Way Making Search Engine Front Page A Reality
Monday, February 1st, 2010Ok, so you have a website that impresses] your associates, but do you have a website that impresses your clients? In fact, are you getting the visitors to your website that you really need to ensure it is sensible? Sadly, most website managers do not get the payback on their Online Marketing spend that is practical and a prominent Search Engine Placement is a thing they are very unlikely to achieve. Today we’ll consider a typical search results page and look at how, with the assistance of a Website Optimization Company, you could reap the greatest reward from your Online Marketing investment.
If you use Google (which most people do) you’ll already be familiar with the look of their results page. You type in say, “Website Optimization Company” and you’ll get two sets of results returned. Down the right hand side of the page (sectioned off by a vertical bar and across the top of the results section (with a pastel coloured background) you’ll see a set of results titled “sponsored links”. These are chargeable adverts. They are kept separate so it’s quite clear that they are paid for.
The organisations that place these adverts usually pay nothing up front, but they will pay a small sum each time any searcher clicks on one of the links. This is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The remainder of the results on your page (if you’re using Google) will be what are often known as “Organic” results. No payment needed for these entries, just a fair amount of savvy and a fair amount of hard work.
Whilst PPC advertising could well be an significant part of your Online Marketing plan as you look for a good Search Engine Placement, surveys have shown conclusively that search engine users place greater trust in organic results than in PPC adverts. This isn’t particularly surprising. Organic Search Engine Placement tends to be earned rather than bought. To be on page one of Google or any other modern search engine, you’ll need to have a webpage that is relevant and authoritative in the opinion of the search engines. Only by filtering the results effectively, can the search engine ensure it serves up exactly what the searcher is seeking.
The sophistication of the search engines means that they have many ways of making sure your site meets their criteria. In days gone by, it was possible to fool the search engines into serving up your website to an unsuspecting searcher no matter how suitable (or unsuitable!) it was. Thankfully, we no longer have that problem. Search engines such as Google use very subtle algorithms to determine the relevance of a result with the fundamental reasoning being that for a site to rank highly on a results page, especially for a common or competitive search word, that site will almost certainly require some citations – that is, it will need to be linked to by an authoritative source.
The downside, if indeed it is a downside, is that you now need to work much harder to achieve the ranking necessary to get your site to the top of the listings. Whilst there are many “On-Page” modifications that can be made to your web site that will ensure it has the best possible chance of being indexed appropriately by the search engines, that first page search slot will be tricky to achieve without the assistance of a Website Optimization Company and a comprehensive and considered Online Marketing campaign.
A good Website Optimization Company will advise you on those localized coding changes you can make yourself, help you decide which keywords and phrases will achieve the best Search Engine Placement for you and then go on to produce a full Online Marketing campaign. This should ensure that your company’s reputation as relevant and authoritative is reinforced and recognised by the search engines thereby helping make a page one Search Engine Placement a reality with all the business benefits that bestows.
