Search Engine Optimization

And Then Along Came A Spider

By Charles Snodgrass
Deep Creek Arts

f you’re a web site owner and you want to rank higher in the Google search engine results pages, you’ve first gotta work with a spider named "Googlebot."

Don’t worry, because you’ll never come face-to-face with this spider. Googlebot is an internet computer, a "web-crawler" that secretly visits — or "spiders" — the world’s web pages gathering information for Google’s massive index. Googlebot spiders your site at least once a month.

With an insatiable appetite for information, Googlebot reads just about every word on your web site. But it pays particular attention to the page titles and recurring phrases that help Google understand what your web pages are all about.

Google’s internet index is a lot like the book indexes that you’re familiar with. The difference is this: A book index is comprised of individual words. Google’s index contains key word phrases.

Googlebot is not the only spider on the web either. Other search engines, including Yahoo and MSN, collect their data in the same manner.

So How Do You Cozy Up To A Spider?

Preparing your web site for Googlebot’s visit is a process called search engine optimization (SEO), a key component of any internet marketing program. And it’s all about key word phrases.

Anyone who’s ever used Google knows that one-word or very general search terms are rarely productive. To illustrate, if you enter the phrase "bed and breakfast" (in quotes) you’ll be presented with a list of 6,380,000 web pages containing that term. However, a more specific search phrase like "Dillsboro North Carolina" + "bed and breakfast" + jacuzzi yields just 55 web sites.

How To Make The Top Twenty

Since internet users rarely read past the first two pages of search results, it’s obviously desirable to rank in Google’s "top twenty" search results. Yet Google’s top rankings vary from one search phrase to another. A web page may rank high for one key word combination and be completely out of the running for another. In other words, your ranking is dependent on the search query chosen by the Google user.

The trick is to optimize your site for the most productive search terms — the key word phrases that present your web pages to the largest number of potential customers.

Ten Tips For Improved Rankings

Unless you buy your way to the top with "pay-per-click" advertising, there’s no way to guarantee a top search engine ranking. However, the experts all agree: there are proven SEO techniques that, done properly, can earn your page a top ten or top twenty ranking. These are techniques you can do yourself, or with the help of an internet marketing professional —

1. Choose key word phrases that are relevant to your products or services. Nobody — including Google — likes bait-and-switch key words. The idea is to attract your target audience. You want customers not just visitors.

2. Choose phrases that your customers actually use when seeking products or services like yours. Use a statistical service like WordTracker to eliminate the guesswork. You may be surprised by what you learn.

3. Choose phrases with low competition — phrases that, while relatively popular with search engine users, are not found on lots of your competitors’ web pages. Again, WordTracker is a great resource.

Other Articles:

Internet Marketing
(introduction)

Link Popularity

A Web Site
Checklist

Domain Management

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