Getting your website, blog or whatever you’re trying to promote on the first page of Google takes some time and effort.  Here’s a bit of the basics, after a bit more testing of something’s I’ve been learning over the last few months, I’ll add some more advanced SEO information to this blog in about 3 weeks-I just want to make sure that they work first. So for now, let’s look at some things we all need to know to fuel the Search Engines out there!

First: What is a Search Engine:

An article on bbc.co.uk states that: “A Search Engine makes it possible to find a specific bit of information in the huge mass of data stored on the web”.

Second:  Who are these Search Engines that we should care about:

According to Rob Croll there are actually thousands of Search Engines-Who would know that there are that many! But, to get found on the web as of today August 26, 2011, we should concentrate on having Google, Bing and Yahoo! find us. And Google is by far the main Engine we want to feed most of our fueling efforts towards.

Third: What do the Search Engines Do? as of today I gotta say.

The Search engines like Google and Bing are known as crawler based engines and at the moment operate similarly to each other. These engines do three things to find our blogs and websites:

A. They use Spiders also known as Bots and Crawlers that search the web for content by finding links and getting directed to in a few other ways-that sentence it a bit vague, but don’t worry or get confused. Basically Spiders, Bots and Crawlers are all the same thing and what they do is look for you and me. I’d draw a fun picture if I didn’t need to sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll draw it another day and add it in here.

B. Once the Spiders find you or me, the information is indexed into a database to allow for future retrieval for the time when someone does a search-Types a word into the Google search box or as some people call it the google rectangle.  the Google search box Which BTW is on the top right or the middle of your page. The top middle area where the web address is called the browser.  I’m sure many of you know what a browser is but For many years our IT guy would ask us to copy and paste things into our browser and for the life of me I could never find it on my email-duh it appears when I turn my internet on. So I never did anything, but I managed to get by for many a year. I think learning to copy and paste and what a browser actually is, was the best thing I’ve ever learned on the computer-it now saves me tons of time and frustration and gives me more leisure time and how super easy is it? OMG!

C. Now when someone goes to Google, Bing or Yahoo! and types in a word, a sentence or question into the “search box”(ah I like that name-easy to remember and use) an algorithm tries to identify the most relevant results from their indexing.

Fourth:  What do Search Engines look for?

Each search engine has its own criteria and their own algorithm but they all basically look to see if there is a relationship between your page and a searchers inquiry. The closer your page fits what the person is looking for, the easier you are to find. After you’ve read this simple explanation, look to the bottom of the page for many of the helpful things to learn about to increase your Search Engine Optimization.

Fifth: How do they know which blog or site is best for your inquiry:

They use their “secret” algorithms. Ahh, i love that word, its my favorite word when I explain how Pandora finds the songs you like, they use a complex algorithm. So, what’s an algorithm? It’s basically a pretty complicated mathematical formula. Google will even tell you it’s so complex it uses 200 different variables! And the search engines change these algorithms frequently. Actually, Google has admitted according to Rob Croll at Marlannah Digital Marketing to changing their algorithm at least once a day! Wow! now that’s pretty crazy, but I suspect they will change them more than once a day in the near future, who knows they probably already are doing this.

I really didn’t mean to write this much tonite and I do need to get some sleep, but before I go I’ll give you the list to increase your SEO that I promised you.

1. Content relevancy: Whatever your site or blogs name is, write about it.  Like today, If I was trying to increase my SEO rankings, I would have written the word “advertising” or “radio advertising” or better yet “advertising in Hawaii” in this blog. but today, I’m just writing to help out. Hah, but I did just write it, but not to increase My Ranking, but to tell a simple example.

2. Popularity: How many views have you had today, yesterday and over the years that your site has been around. Also, Who is following you or your blog. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare fans and friends help you here too. Over the last year or so, your Social Media competency helps a lot with your popularity.

3. Inbound Links:  These are the links on other people’s pages that link to you.  In many of my posts I link you to various sites mainly to help you find the information, sources, people, places and things easier, but these outbound links from my site DO help others Inbound links, which helps one get higher on the Google food chain. Today I’m trying to go linkless, mainly to keep this all about learning and not about increasing my sites Google search ranking.

4. Outbound Links:  These aren’t nearly as important as inbound links.  But, I like to use them because they help you the reader find things easier and who knows, they may bring me an inbound link or two if people are using the spiritual law of reciprocity.

5. Title Tags: The words in your title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP). They also can be seen in the top of internet browsers.  From what I gather, they are extremely important, some say if you don’t fix this, don’t bother with the rest. Others say this is 1 of the top 3 things to pay attention to for increased views of your page. I suspect I need to fix my title tag on some of my sites. From looking on the web, it seems most advise to put what you are selling/doing first, then keywords that make sense next to each other and end with your company’s name.  So Something like this would be a good start for a Pizza Joint:  Pizza, Eat in-Take Out, the best pepperoni Pizza in Hawaii, Hawaii Pizza Company. There’s a ton of good advice if you do a search in Google.

6. Page Rank: Google uses this to rank your site/blog. A link analysis algorithm. Basically doing all of these other things on this list will help to increase your page Rank. Which will in turn help you get found faster and easier.

7. Domain Age: From what I’ve read on the net, Google likes sites better that have either been around for a while or the name has been purchased for 3 years or more. Less than a 3 year lease on your site’s name decreases your ranking.

8. Useability: Attribute, description of how easy your site is to use. Method or technique to get things done easier for the user. People who come to your blog/site can use it easily with high satisfaction. 

10. Site Maps:  Visual or textually organised model of a websites content that allows visitors to find what they are looking for easily and make sure that all of your links and connecting words work!  A site map is like an interactable table of contents on your site. The bigger your site the better your site map should be, if you have a pretty simple blog, I’d work on some of the other of the top 10 first.

These 10 words come from “Epic Strategies for Small Business” How Search Engines Work written by Rob Croll on July 11, 2011 for marketingzeus.com  the information written after the 10 words, I wrote from mostly reading all sorts of things, seminars and of course by “doing” my various websites and blogs.  I’m a big believer in “don’t just think about it, wonder if its right or wrong, just jump in and start doing it”  No one’s perfect at writing a blog or getting their site to page one on Google, but its better to try things than wait around until you “think” you’re ready and/or perfect. If you do that, five years could go by as you wait, that’s a lot of lost practice time!

You can comment and I’ll add in your thoughts and recommendations and add a link to your site if you like on what they mean.  For more information on anything listed above, just google it, there’s a lot more information out there on all of these 10 items. We could do a whole one page blog on each of them if we wanted.  For additional information on Search Engine Optimization check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide or Bings blog has a post entitled Search Engine Optimization for Bing. Or check back here in a month or two and we’ll add new things. As we’ve all learned, it’s an ever-changing landscape, but just working on the basics will work wonders for  you and people searching for you.  The simplest thing I ever did was moved from Web.Me to WordPress and my views double in a week. That was so, super easy, should have done it years ago! Have a nice weekend-Stay Dry!.