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Sniffing Out A New Home

February 17th, 2010

Not Me. I'm an Angel.

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

Everyone wants to be the top dog when it comes to search engine rankings. It’s a highly competitive field out there. But for small businesses who are just beginning to establish a web presence, it can be like trying to observe the constellations through the Hubble Space Telescope. You can see it, but how will we ever get there? Proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not something that just magically happens. It’s not as simple as placing some keywords underneath your pillow and hoping that the SEO fairy pays you a visit with a nice new ranking.

In reality, search engines are more like an abused dog that you’d adopt from the local animal shelter. He’s very hesitant to trust anyone due to years of being beaten and mistreated by others and it will take time to earn that trust. So you put food and water out for him, take him for walks, pet him and scratch him behind the ears, but in the end, he’ll come around when he’s good and ready.

SEO works much the same way. Due to years of people trying to cheat search engines to obtain a higher ranking, search engines will not begin ranking you until they see what you’re all about. When search engine robots are sent out seeking data across the world to index pages, they’re looking for certain things such as:

Are you new?
Are you a legitimate business?
Are you spamming or trying to cheat me?
Have you done anything to your site lately to make me come back?

As these robots keep returning to your website and seeing that you are in fact a legitimate business and are not looking to beat the system for a few extra ad impressions on your website, they’ll begin to come around and you’ll start earning brownie points over time. As you keep performing credible updates and keeping solid content flowing throughout your website it adds to your online reputation with search engines. The process takes time though, so you’ll need lots of patience.

But I need traffic now…

Most search engines now have what are called ‘artificial rankings’, whereby a business can purchase a top ranking. Many companies prefer to purchase a higher artificial ranking while they wait for their organic search ranking to climb the ladder. The cost for these rankings are dependent on the competitiveness of your industry and the keywords you want people to find you with, however many artificial rankings can be had for merely pennies a click.

The days of filling the background of your page with white text to trick search engines into thinking you have loads of important content are long gone. Google and the like don’t care much for the funny business and you’ll find yourself blacklisted pretty quick for trying such techniques. Much like our canine friend, he’s been through a lot of trauma in his life and he’s not ready to start wagging his tail when you come in through the door just yet. All you can do is keep treating him like the best friend that he is until he returns the favour.

If you’re in need of some Kibble n’ Bits for your search engine ranking, contact Point.Click Media.

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Posted in Tips and Tricks on February 17th, 2010

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