Search Engine Optimization: What Every Company Needs to Know

Internet search engines exist to organize the overwhelming amount of information available on the web. They direct people to pages that are relevant to their searches, pages that discuss the exact keywords they are looking for. Customers in search of a particular product or service often choose companies listed on the first page of search results, and rarely continue searching past the second page. For a business that receives the majority of its clientele from search engines, search engine rankings can make or break an e-commerce company. Here we discuss specific search engine techniques that will help you to bring more traffic to your site and more business to your company. Search Engines Search engine optimization (SEO) is the marketing technique of enhancing a website and its content in order to increase the chances of achieving a high rank on search engine result pages (SERP) under relevant keyword searches. Search engines are very secretive about their criteria and ranking system-- they continuously update and revise their algorithms (a mathematical formula used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results). This way, there is less likelihood of webmasters and search engine optimizers using manipulation and spamming to achieve higher rankings. Each search engine has its own formula and criteria for indexing and ranking pages. One can analyze SERPs and backward links (all the links pointing at a particular web page) and attempt to determine a search engine's indexing criteria, however, there is a lot of risk involved in relying on a limited number of optimization techniques. Because of the unpredictable nature of search engines, a website can easily move from a top ranking position on a SERP down to the third or fourth SERP or even banned from the search engine altogether. The Issue of Trust There are many unethical SEO companies that claim to be able to offer your website top rankings. However, by using aggressive marketing techniques to manipulate search engine results they give the industry a bad name. The main problem with SEO companies is that they base their methods and techniques on research, trial and error, and speculation. As a result of the secretive indexing criteria of search engines, webmasters and SEO companies can only make an educated guess about the ranking systems and possible algorithm revisions. While SEO companies may be able to achieve high rankings on search engines for your website, it is important to keep in mind that the way they do it is precarious and requires a great deal of caution. Some SEO companies may use black hat', techniques to manipulate search engine results to their advantage. These techniques are high risk or illegal and can get a site banned from search engines. Black hat techniques can cause severe damage to the business of an e-commerce company. A few examples of black hat' techniques: Hidden text/hidden links: stuffing your pages with keywords or links too small to read or the same color as the background, so viewers are unable to see any difference in the aesthetics of the page. Cloaking: using browser/bot sniffers to serve the search engine spiders a different page than the page visitors see. It is used to show an optimized page to the search engines and a different page to viewers. Mutiple submissions: submitting your domain and pages to search engines, for example submitting http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html). There are SEO companies by the dozen, attempting to lure you in, convincing you to believe that they, and they alone, can help you attain top ranking results on search engines. If you are considering whether you should use an SEO company or not, you may want to do some research on the SEO industry. You can find some helpful information at