Search Engine Ranking and Placement

There is a myth perputrated among those who send spam on this topic almost daily. Some of what they say is true, you can increase traffic to your web site, using placement the people who visit through search engines expect to find the answers and products they seek. I have fond that generally speaking, sales from properly placed, legitimate web sites increase significantly. The rate of that increase, and the margins from those sales are up to you. Before you eye up that pile of gold, there is some roll up you sleeves and get your hands dirty work to be done. The spams would have you think you can do this for $500, $50, $29.99 or even freem the process they are selling is called registration and gives you no guarantee that your web site will show up in any search engine. Truth is registration is only that, you're shouting "hey I'm here" hoping the engines will pick up on you, it just won't work. If you achive top ranking by simply registering your web site then your keywords are not competitive enough, or you simply achived ranking on your webs domain (www.mydomain.com).

Here's a good example of competitive keywords: my web site http://larry.boeldt.net is registered on Google and ranks me as #1 for Larry Boeldt, which it should because I'm the only Larry Boeldt in the entire world.  However for "web developer" a very commonly searched keyword, and one which my web site prominently prursues (aka this sub domain web-developer). Yet simply registering with Google as a web developer does not even get me in the first five pages. Less than 1% of people move beyond the first 30 results while searching for web content, worse yet, odds are they will find what they need in the first 30 results and never even see your web site. Why is this, becuase there are numerous

A helpful Metaphor

You've heard the term "it's like finding a needle in a haystack" which referrs to something being difficult on the grandest scale. Yet at least a needle looks different from hay so if you see something sparkle it's probably the needle. Ranking and Placing your web site is like finding a particular piece of hay in the haystack. It's difficult to tell one piece of hay from the other, none of them glimmer or shine, none of them will poke you in the finger as if to say "hey I'm here". That is what search engine ranking and placement intend to do, help the people looking at the haystack (the internet) find their piece of hay by asking someone who has gone through the stack with a fine toothed comb and has inventoried the exact location and unique characteristics of each piece of hay (each web site).

So now that we've dwindled the internet to a steaming stack of hay, let's figure out how to make your strand of hay stand out to a potential visitor.