Many people still think there’s a secret sauce to Search Engine Optimization — to getting a high search engine ranking, and if they could just get their hands on it, they’d get all the traffic they could handle. The truth is that there is no secret sauce and if you want to get a good ranking, you need to think like a search engine.
Well, maybe you shouldn’t think like a search engine per se, but like someone who runs a search engine. Who are your customers? They’re the people searching. Why are they searching? They have a problem and want to find a solution. What do you, Search Engine Owner, want to do for them? If you want your customers to be happy — and you do — you’ll try to deliver the best websites for their search.
So the goal of the people who run the search engines is to list the best websites. Not the webistes with the most keywords, or the websites with the best page-rank management, or the sites with the best titles, but the best sites for the search. All the other things are incidental — they may or may not be factors the search engines use when trying to figure out the best site — but they aren’t the end.
So when you’re thinking about optimizing your site for search engines, remember that the most important thing you can do is to make sure that your site has something people want, and that it’s easy for them to get it, and that they have a good time getting it. If your site is already this good, it probably already has a naturally high ranking. Some SEO at this point is probably needed, and it’ll take your site to the next level.
I’ve seen many companies think that if they focus on optimizing the site, they’ll get there without having to spend time on whatever the site contains. This is just foolish. If your food stinks, no amount of marketing is going to get people into your restaurant. You need to focus on the kitchen, not on advertising.
Everything copyright © 2010 Josh Orum