How Search Engine Optimization Works

Experts in search engine optimization can tell you the steps you need to take in order to be one of the top entries on a SERP. In our example, you've already provided the most important component of SEO: excellent content. Without strong content, SEO tips and tricks will provide a temporary boost in your site's ranking at best.

In an ideal World Wide Web, your site would rise to the top of every search engine's skydiving SERP based on content alone. While it's possible for your site to take the No. 1 SERP spot on its own, it could take months or even longer. Even worse, there's no guarantee your skydiving site will ever make it as high as the first page of search results.

For some webmasters, site traffic isn't that big a deal -- their sites might be a personal project. But for anyone who uses the Web as a way to make money, it's crucial. Whether the webmaster makes money by selling products on the site or through hosting Web advertisements, more visitors translates into more money. That's why some large companies are willing to spend money on SEO consultants -- they can be a worthy investment if the company's site is ranked higher than competitor sites.

SEO techniques rely on how search engines work. Some are legitimate methods that are a great way to let search engines know your Web page exists. Other techniques aren't good ways to get noticed and might involve exploiting a search engine so that it gives the page a higher ranking. Sometimes it's tough to tell if an approach is legitimate. If it seems a little questionable, it's probably a bad idea.

Let's take a look at the ways you can get a better spot on SERPs without getting into hot water with search engines. In the SEO business, these approaches are called white hat techniques. Read all about them on the next page.

To improve a Web page's position in a SERP, you have to know how search engines work. Search engines categorize Web pages based on keywords -- important terms that are relevant to the content of the page. In our example, the term "skydiving" should be a keyword, but a term like "bungee jumping" wouldn't be relevant.

Most search engines use computer programs called spiders or crawlers to search the Web and analyze individual pages. These programs read Web pages and index them according to the terms that show up often and in important sections of the page. There's no way for a search engine spider to know your page is about skydiving unless you use the right keywords in the right places.

Here are some general tips about keyword placement:

Keywords aren't the only important factor search engines take into account when generating SERPs. Just because a site uses keywords well doesn't mean it's one of the best resources on the Web. To determine the quality of a Web page, most automated search engines use link analysis. Link analysis means the search engine looks to see how many other Web pages link to the page in question.

Going back to our skydiving example, if a search engine sees that hundreds of other Web pages related to skydiving are linking to your Web page, the engine will give your page a higher rank. Search engines like Google weigh the importance of links based on the rank of the linking pages. In other words, if the pages linking to your site are themselves ranked high in Google's system, they boost your page's rank more than lesser-ranked pages.

So, how do you get sites to link to your page? That's a tricky task, but make sure your page is a destination people want to link to, and you're halfway there. Another way is to offer link exchanges with other sites that cover material related to your content. You don't want to trade links with just anyone because many search engines look to see how relevant the links to and from your page are to the information within your page. Too many irrelevant links and the search engine will think you're trying to cheat the system.

In the next section, we'll look more closely at ways people try to fool search engines into ranking their pages higher on a SERP.

Some people seem to believe that on the Web, the ends justify the means. There are lots of ways webmasters can try to trick search engines into listing their Web pages high in SERPs, though such a victory doesn't usually last very long.

One of these methods is called keyword stuffing, which skews search engine results by overusing keywords on the page. Usually webmasters will put repeated keywords toward the bottom of the page where most visitors won't see them. They can also use invisible text, text with a color matching the page's background. Since search engine spiders read content through the page's HTML code, they detect text even if people can't see it. Some search engine spiders can identify and ignore text that matches the page's background color.

Webmasters might include irrelevant keywords to trick search engines. The webmasters look to see which search terms are the most popular and then use those words on their Web pages. While search engines might index the page under more keywords, people who follow the SERP links often leave the site once they realize it has little or nothing to do with their search terms.

A webmaster might create Web pages that redirect visitors to another page. The webmaster creates a simple page that includes certain keywords to get listed on a SERP. The page also includes a program that redirects visitors to a different page that often has nothing to do with the original search term. With several pages that each focus on a current hot topic, the webmaster can get a lot of traffic to a particular Web site.

­Page stuffing also cheats people out of a fair search engine experience. Webmasters first create a Web page that appears high up on a SERP. Then, the webmaster duplicates the page in the hopes that both pages will make the top results. The webmaster does this repeatedly with the intent to push other results off the top of the SERP and eliminate the competition. Most search engine spiders are able to compare pages against each other and determine if two different pages have the same content.

Selling and farming links are popular black hat SEO techniques. Because many search engines look at links to determine a Web page's relevancy, some webmasters buy links from other sites to boost a page's rank. A link farm is a collection of Web pages that all interlink with one another in order to increase each page's rank. Small link farms seem pretty harmless, but some link farms include hundreds of Web sites, each with a Web page dedicated just to listing links to every other site in the farm. When search engines detect a link selling scheme or link farm, they flag every site involved. Sometimes the search engine will simply demote every page's rank. In other cases, it might ban all the sites from its indexes.

Cheating the system might result in a temporary increase in visitors, but since people normally don't like to be fooled, the benefits are questionable at best. Who wants to return to a site that isn't what it claims to be? Plus, most search engines penalize Web pages that use black hat techniques, which means the webmaster trades a short success for a long-term failure.

In the next section, we'll look at some factors that make SEO more difficult.

The biggest challenge in SEO approaches is finding a content balance that satisfies both the visitors to the Web page and search engine spiders. A site that's entertaining to users might not merit a blip on a search engine's radar. A site that's optimized for search engines may come across as dry and uninteresting to users. It's usually a good idea to first create an engaging experience for visitors, then tweak the page's design so that search engines can find it easily.

One potential problem with the way search engine spiders crawl through sites deals with media files. Most people browsing Web pages don't want to look at page after page of text. They want pages that include photos, video or other forms of media to enhance the browsing experience. Unfortunately, most search engines skip over image and video content when indexing a site. For sites that use a lot of media files to convey information, this is a big problem. Some interactive Web pages don't have a lot of text, which gives search engine spiders very little to go on when building an index.

Webmasters with sites that rely on media files might be tempted to use some of the black hat techniques to help even the playing field, but it's usually a bad idea to do that. For one thing, the major search engines are constantly upgrading spider programs to detect and ignore (or worse, penalize) sites that use black hat approaches. The best approach for these webmasters is to use keywords in important places like the title of the page and to get links from other pages that focus on relevant content.

Optimizing a site isn't always straightforward or easy, which is why some webmasters use an SEO consultant. When relying on an SEO consultant, it's important to check the consultant's credentials, track record and client list. It's also a good idea to stay as informed as possible about SEO issues -- if the consultant recommends a black hat approach and the webmaster takes the advice, search engines might hold both parties accountable.

Many SEO firms are completely legitimate businesses that only follow the white hat optimization philosophy. They help webmasters tweak Web page layout, choose the right words to increase traffic, and help facilitate link exchanges between sites with complementary content. If you have a Web page that needs a little help, it's a good idea to find someone who really knows how to leverage legitimate techniques to increase your page's SERP ranking.

To learn more about search engine optimization and related topics, follow the links on the following page.