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Understanding Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing
A lot of companies approach Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing like it's a mystical black art. But nothing could be further from the truth. At Kivos we believe in transparency so let's take a look at how search engines work and what goes into optimization. Here's a brief overview of a typical search on Google. Search engines such as Google put the vast amount of its resources into doing its best to return relevant results to search queries. Here's the typical search in a nutshell.
1. customer inputs search criteria
2. Google examines the input and based on proprietary algorithms, returns relevant results It sounds simple but in reality, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to return those results. Let's take a look at what's publicly known.
1. search terms inputted.
2. Search engines try to determine if search is a shopping query or informational content.
3. Search engine looks for relevant content by examining
- · page titles. How closely does the title match the search phrase?
- · Highlighted content. How closely do items such as headlines and paragraph headers of the page match the search phrase?
- · Density. How often does the search term or variations of the term appear on the page? This is a delicate balance that Kivos has perfected. If the term and keywords appear too often then the site could be penalized for "keyword stuffing." Too little and the page could be deemed irrelevant.
- · Page Age. The older your site is, the more likely it is to actually be relevant and not a quick-hit scam site.
Once relevant content is gathered, the next step is to sort it properly. Since some searches return hundreds of millions of relevant pages, it becomes a delicate balancing act. Most search engines tend to sort by site popularity. And how is popularity determined? It's a closely guarded secret but common wisdom says popularity is determined by the number of other popular sites linking back to your site. If these "high authority" sites like your content and link to it, your site becomes more popular as well. Think back to high school and the nerdy kid who suddenly became popular by becoming friends with the "in crowd." Search engines believe that the more popular your site is, the more relevant content you'll have for searchers.
"Backlinks" (links from other sites to yours) can be quite arcane and complex. Google uses a proprietary combination of link structure, page rank and relevancy to assign "weight" to each indexed website. Ten relevant links from very highly ranked sites will get you a higher ranking than 1000 general links from low or non-ranked websites. KIVOS experts understand backlinks and how to target them so that you get maximum exposure for yours.
Search Engine Marketing
While some companies use the terms search engine optimization and search engine marketing interchangeably, the fact is, these are two distinctly different approaches and search engine optimization can be just one component of a search engine marketing campaign. Here's the difference. Search engine optimization concentrates on boosting a single website in the search engine listings while search engine marketing is a strategy that creates multiple listings in a search category that leads back to the main website. Utilizing off-site web 2.0 properties such as blogs, video,rss feeds and social bookmarking, companies can create multiple listings (and multiple backlinks) to dominate a web niche. This can be especially powerful for businesses tapping into the power of the Internet to sell directly.
The KIVOS team can help you build and execute a complete Search Engine Marketing campaign. Talk to our professionals to start mapping your strategy today.
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