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Online businesses are very dependent upon search engines for success. Understanding how search algorithms work can give you insight into how to prepare your website to be found by search engines as well as human beings.
Things to Consider
- Have you tried searching for your website across different search engines? Be sure to look for your business name as well as terms potential users might look for.
- Search engines need words to know what your site is about. How many words do you see on your website's home page?
- Do you feature any videos on your website? Do they appear on search engine result pages?
- What websites link to yours? Are you aware of how much traffic you receive from those websites?
- How often do you publish new content on your website?
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Businesses are very dependent upon search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
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Each one has its own way of determining the value of your website.
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This is what's known as their search algorithm.
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By considering specific variables and using a special blend of code,
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search engines will look at every page on your website
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to determine what they're about and how valuable they are.
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Then when people search for certain topics,
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the search engine will know which pages to return.
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These results are also known as organic search results
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as they're based on the search algorithm
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and not on paid advertising or other outside forces.
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The order in which the results are shown
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depends upon how strong the search engine thinks your page is,
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and this is vital.
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Getting to the top of the search results page
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can be quite lucrative for businesses because research has shown
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a huge percentage of users click on the top results and often don't scroll down to see more.
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When the search includes a brand name however,
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the top results get clicked even more.
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Therefore, ensuring that your business website is seen favorably by search engines
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is a high priority.
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And it can also lead to heavy competition for certain terms.
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Search engine algorithms are essentially secret recipes.
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Nobody knows exactly what's included.
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Google claims its algorithm takes over 200 different variables into consideration
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when ranking results, and they tweak the algorithm all of the time.
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But what we do know about these algorithms is that in general
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there are certain aspects they all take into account.
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The content on each page--
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more specifically the collection of words--is a very important element of a website's SEO.
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If your webpages include the important terms you want to be found for,
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your chances of being found and displayed near the top of search result pages
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are much better.
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This means writing great content about your company.
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Products. Services. Expertise.
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The people in your company.
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Your customers. Sharing testimonials.
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Reviews. Answering questions.
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Providing help. Contact information.
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And doing it all in a logical and natural way.
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Provide a variety of formats as well.
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Recently, search engines have started to feature video content
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near the top of search engine result pages,
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so don't miss this opportunity to get found.
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Anticipate what your users need and what they want to know about.
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In other words, what will they search for?
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And build this into your site.
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Another important aspect of using these key words and providing all of this content
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will be ensuring that you link to all of it.
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Using key words in the titles and headers of your pages
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and linking to and across all of the pages can
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show search engines what each one's about
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and how they connect to each other.
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Now when other websites link to you,
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it increases the value of your site even more--
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just as a personal recommendation from a friend would.
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The more prominent the website the more valuable their link to you is,
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so it's very helpful to get links from important websites in your industry.
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So, how can you make that happen?
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Writing a guest post or getting your product reviewed by a high-profile site
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in your industry can lead to very valuable link-building opportunities--
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not to mention coverage in social media--improving your SEO and find-ability.
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As with all things, it's important to maintain balance--
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in this case between natural use and overuse of key words.
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Don't try to unnaturally overload your site with key words, links,
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or try to cover too much on 1 page.
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Some people create overly-redundant links.
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Some people even set up dummy websites simply to provide links back to their initial site--
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all in an attempt to make their site look better than it really is.
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Search engines can detect these practices
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using their algorithm, and they will penalize a site's value
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if they believe you're trying to unnaturally cheat the system.
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Simply focus on providing real-world value
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organizing your website in a logical way,
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and put content in its proper place.
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Lastly, search engines love fresh content.
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They assume that websites that haven't been updated in a long time
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may be old or out of date.
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Many sites use blog platforms to publish new content on a regular basis.
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And because it's easy to manage and provides many built-in SEO benefits
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like using title key words in the URLs of each post
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and providing easy ways for users to share content.
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These are some of the core best practices you should consider
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if you want to improve the SEO on your site.
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Now, one last thing.
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Recognize that fresh, key-word rich content that provides lots of helpful information about
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you and your company won't just impress search engines.
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It will also impress real people--
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your potential customers with money to spend.
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