A search engine is basically a glorified database. The creators of the search engine send an automated program called a robot out into the World Wide Web. These robots are designed to find web pages, determine what the page is about, and file it into the appropriate slot(s) in the database. When a search engine robot lands on your web page it scans the text on the page to discover the topic. The robots then files the page in the search engine database under various categories based on the words that it finds on that page.
When a person enters a search term into the search engine, all of the pages that contain that term are served to the user. However, the results are organized according to how relevant it is to the user’s search term. The more relevant the search engine feels a page is to a user’s search term the higher the page will rank in the result pages. Since the majority of users don’t scroll past the first 2-3 pages of the search results, the goal of most marketers is to rank in the first 30 spots and preferable the first spot on the first page.
As you can imagine, much ado is made about ranking on the first page of the search results for coveted keywords. In fact, a whole industry has sprung up around this goal and people have spent thousands of dollars and man hours trying to achieve the dream. The problem is that many of these people are using questionable tactics that stop working the minute the search engines update their algorithms. If you optimize your website the right way, though, you can achieve long lasting results that will stand against the test of time.
Search Engine Secrets
There are two things you need to understand about search engines:
* They rank individual pages
One thing that confuses people is the fact that search engines do not rank entire websites; they rank individual pages on the site. People think that a website is ranked as a whole because the bare top level domain (e.g. example.com) may rank for certain keywords or have a certain Pagerank. However, that only applies to the homepage of the site, which is one page in the eyes of the search engine robot. The home page often achieves a high rank because most people link to bare top level domain. With enough links, any page on the site can achieve high rankings.
* The number and quality of links pointing to a page determines its relevancy
There are thousands of things a search engine robot is programmed to consider to determine the quality of a page. However, the primary indicator of page relevancy is and always will be links. No matter how much search engines want to deny or downplay the importance of links, they are the currency of the Internet. A link to a web page is a vote for that page. Get enough votes for a decently optimized page and it will rank high for the targeted search term.
Ranking well in the search engines is a matter of optimizing your web page for the right search terms and getting good quality links pointing to that page. Strangely enough, it really is that simple. For tips on how to accomplish this, read my Easy SEO Tips for Your Erotic Stories Blog article. Although it is geared towards erotica authors, anyone can incorporate these tips for good search engine rankings.
Daria Black is a fiction writer, blogger, and avid coffee drinker. Visit her website Daria Black - Words By Daria located at http://dariablack.wordpress.com to read fiction stories, talk philosophy, or just laugh at life.
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