High Search Engine Rankings - Long-Term Techniques

by Scott Buresh

Ever since there have been search engines, there have been people who have used tricks to achieve high search engine rankings. In the beginning, these search engine techniques were fairly simple, such as stuffing hidden tags with keywords or using invisible text on pages. As the search engines caught on to these tactics, the techniques used to achieve high search engine rankings evolved into more sophisticated methodologies. Current examples of these questionable search engine techniques include using computer programs to design hundreds of different optimized pages (commonly called "doorway pages"), and feeding search engines a different page than what the average visitor sees (called "cloaking"). Most practitioners of such tactics try to justify their use by claiming that search engines use "unrealistic" criteria for ranking, and that making the necessary adjustments to their website to match that criteria, and thus achieve high search engine rankings, would somehow undermine the visitor experience.

What is ignored is the fact that the search engines have established ranking criteria based upon extensive study of their users. In most (but not all) cases, the sites that do not have high search engine rankings are not giving the visitor what the search engine, through its exhaustive research of the searching public's preferences, has deemed important. Unless they have the time and resources to perform a full-fledged study of their own on what search engine users want, how could a web designer or business owner expect to know better?

It turns out that web searchers want informational content that addresses a question or need. They also want the title and description they see on a search engine to exactly match the contents of the page they visit. In addition, they find that pages that are deemed important by others are generally more useful (this is called link popularity, in which a search engine gives a ranking boost to sites that have incoming links from quality, related sites). Why should these criteria for high search engine rankings be considered unrealistic? Moreover, why should search engines be blamed for the ranking problems of an existing site that doesn't match their criteria or uses questionable search engine techniques?

If a person in charge of a website five years ago began concentrating on the elements listed above, they would probably still have high search engine rankings today (and probably would have seen rankings improve over time, as search engines removed sites that were using illegal search engine techniques). If this same person continually concentrated on questionable search engine techniques, they would have had to start from scratch several times as the search engines repeatedly caught on to their tactics and penalized or removed the site. The beauty of the content-driven approach is that there is no risk, and that what works well today will almost certainly work well in the future. On the other hand, many of the current search engine techniques employed to achieve high search engine rankings are likely to become just as obsolete as hidden text is today. Doorway pages are already being banished from most engines, and some engines (most notably Google) have openly stated that they will ban sites that use cloaking. Why embrace search engine techniques that are doomed to eventually fail?

In short, put informative content on your pages. Name each individual page according to its contents. Look for quality sites related to yours and ask them to exchange links. Your search engine techniques shouldn't center around taking an existing site and changing it as little as possible for the sole purpose of achieving high search engine rankings- it should center around making whatever modifications are necessary to directly address the interests of your visitors. In the search engine optimization industry, there is a saying that "Content is King". This is true in many ways, but really only tells half the story. The Visitor is King. Keep that in mind when working on your website, and the search engines are sure to reward you with high search engine rankings.

Our credits to the source/author of this article: Author: Scott Buresh Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. He has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SEO Today, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue,an Atlanta search engine optimization company , serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DuPont, and Georgia-Pacific. To receive internet marketing articles and search engine news in your email box each month, register for Medium Blue’s newsletter, Out of the Blue. This article is taken from the Medium blue website.

Source: http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/high-search-engine.html