Whitehatmedia News

04/10/2004  |  SEM now very important for website success

Search Engine Marketing is the new battleground for website owners. Now that most companies have a website how do you get yours higher on Google and other Search Engines than your competitors? If you do nothing at all then it's likely that when someone searches on terms you'd like to be found on they simply won't find you.

So how is it done and can it be done quickly? There are a number of companies who offer instant guaranteed results that you will be 'number one' on Google within days. These claims should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Of course someone has to be number one on Google but it is more complicated and more hard work than it might initially seem. This is because Google have publicly stated that it uses more than 100 ways of scoring a website in order to determine how to position it. Yet it has never publicly stated what these criteria are.

in addition to this Google and other Search Engines constantly changes their algorithms by which they score sites.

However there are some steps you can take to give yourself a better chance. First you need to spend some time doing what's called 'keyword research' and decide which words you'd like to be found with.

After that comes optimisation and this doesn't mean just putting some keywords into your metatags. It is believed that Google looks at keywords in a number of places as well as the metatags, such as headings, body text, alt-tags, links and others. It measures frequency, weighting, number of occurences, font size amd other factors. And you have to get it all right to get a good position.

Even when you have optimised your page you must know about Page Rank a score determined by the number of links to and from your pages which can either be calculated with an arcane formula, or if you like the easy method, read off the Google toolbar.

IBL or In-bound Links are also vitally important and you should endeavour to get as many of these as possible. Having an active and continuous link building strategy is a must for the aspirant website owner or marketeer.

White Hat Media is a specialist in all these things and if you would like to find out more about how to raise your position on Search Engines and improve your webiste marketing then email us