As our search engines get smarter, we find that there are more criteria that we must focus on to bring our page into the first three. One of the more recently discerned methods of determining relevance is click-through.
Most individuals or businesses that are taking their first stab at online presence make the mistake of believing that if you build it, they will come. You may attract customers through your paper, radio, or television advertising to interact with your site; but the fact remains that without good search engine optimization (SEO) principles applied, you won’t be getting found organically. If you want to be associated with the hot keywords that are relative to your business, social, or organizational goals, then you need to employ a few tactics to put you closer to page one in the search engines.
Click-Throughs
Click throughs are the clicks that one page receives when it is searched on a search engine. Most search engines do not have the ability to watch the site traffic for every site they have cataloged; but they do have the ability to track how many clicks they receive when they are searched on their engine. How does this relate to page rank? The more click throughs a site will receive, the better the page rank the next time that the search engine reviews the ranking for that site in future searches. Essentially, the search engine wants to put sites that are the most relevant and helpful closest to the top. That means that your site has to have what the searchers want, it has to be related to the others sites that the searchers want, and it should receive clicks from individuals that are searching for what you have.
Page Rank
How do you get more click throughs? Well, you can increase your page rank. Does that sound redundant? It can feel like it, but it is really not; it is more like a snowball effect. Do you remember that commercial where the guy walked a rut into the floor saying “I buy drugs… so that I can work longer hours… so that I can make more money… so that I can buy more drugs… so that I can work longer hours… ?” Similar concept, but without the narcotics. If you employ search engine optimization tactics, you increase your page rank, which increases your search engine visibility, which gives you more click throughs, which improves your page rank. Get it? That makes it sound terminal, so let me give you a healthy example of bolstering your click throughs.
Sell Yourself
I have said in previous articles that if you provide content for a site that has an exceptional page rank including your byline and backlink that you have found a small business SEO gold mine. I will explain how that works for you here. If you are a known good source to someone that is seeking information, then you will be included in searches that are relevant to the search terms that are in your scope of expertise. That sounds good, but it’s not all. You want to be known as a resource, but you want to be found as a resource as well. If you can’t get the customers to your site yourself, why not recruit the help of the sites that you are ranked on?
Be Relevant
When someone searches about something that is related to the content that you have provided to another site, they will see your site name there. That will lead to increased ranking for the page that is directing them to your site, which lends to increased traffic by interested parties. This also means that the prospective customer that finds your content on this high ranking site will consider you to be a resource in the field, and will create searches that will yield you closer to the top of the list. When you are found more often via search engine, then you will be found more often via search engine, just as with the above example. If your content is good, then you will also receive more naturally occurring back links from users who found your content useful.
Good Choices
Though this is only a very brief coverage of important features when you are trying to employ good search engine optimization to your site, hopefully you have found it to be helpful. A good writer or Web designer with experience in optimizing your content can help you create material featuring the proper keywords in the right way to promote a more rank-friendly site. Also, when you choose the right contractor to help you optimize your site, they can assist in producing back links and reciprocal links that push you toward effective optimization.
Thu, Mar 26, 2009, by amherrie
Search Engines