Search Engine Optimization is the process of driving targeted traffic from search engines to a website. Learning this process is not possible without understanding how search engines work. And when I talk about considerate search engines, I am specifically talking about:
• How search engines read websites
• How search engines rank websites
• Why search engines change their ranking algorithms
• How (and when) search engines renew their algorithms
Points 1 and 2 are relatively 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 only source of traffic, and your websites are your only source of income, your livelihood hinges on the whims of Google.
That is a very scary thought, and is the main cause for much of the ‘panicking’ you see (or will see) in SEO forums whenever SE updates are discussed.
Do not put all your bets on one mode of income. If your traffic is primarily from search engines, spread 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 earnings, diversify further and think about making money offline as well.
Smart money-making principles transcend industries and the offline / online split. 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 important thing to note is this:
If you recognize 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 site rankings.
Think concerning that for a second – usually, search engine algorithms are a time when webmasters mess up about 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 get better 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 only one ‘serious’ way to get included into search engines, and it is this:
Obtain 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 present to get your website indexed in 100+ search engines…
All of that is a waste of time. Avoid any such schemes like the plague, and steer clear of ‘search engine submission forms’.
Why?
Because getting indexed by search engines is a easy 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 regularly have your website (or at least your site’s front page) indexed in Google in 2-4 days of launch.
Find practical points of view about Free Traffic System – this is your individual tips store.
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