The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.
For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.
How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.
When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.
On-Site Search Optimization Challenges
The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.
* You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;
* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;
* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and
* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.
A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.
Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.
I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website. He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics
According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.
Think about how magazines are constructed:
The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.
On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.
Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.
Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.
By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.
In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.
Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics
Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.
I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.
Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content
To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".
Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:
* Google's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).
* Yahoo's #2 result - (Google PageRank 10). Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).
* MSN's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).
On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.
On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.
On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?
What Do These Numbers Mean?
Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.
Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.
The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings
Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.
I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.
Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.
According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!
Magic Fairy Dust
My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.
Okay, I admit it.
I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.
If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.
As I write this, there are 100s of IT people being "enlightened" about the advantages of using WAN optimization and application acceleration by their local Cisco rep. The 800 pound gorilla is on another mission to convince every IT manager, director and CIO that they have the best solution because....why else....they are Cisco!
I can certainly appreciate their efforts as Cisco offers a lot of great products in the world of networking. I have been a big fan of Cisco and their products for many years. I've been a Cisco engineer for more than 7 years. During that time I have had the opportunity to work with and install a whole slew of Cisco products, from Cisco 2500 series routers to Cisco MARS appliances more recently. Working for a Cisco integrator for 8 years has given me the ability to work in a lot of environments and deploy a wide range of solutions.
Cisco's push into the WAN optimization arena is like deja vu. Reminds me of 1998 and 1999 when Cisco first began selling AVVID voice over IP solutions. It was certainly an exciting time and VoIP was the next killer app to change the world. Ha ha....Those were the days....I digress.
Cisco was very new to the voice world and they gave away the technology to big accounts so they could write lavish stories about how Cisco AVVID changed the lives of employees and gave them the ability to order pizza on the 4x4 green screen of their fancy Cisco IP phone. I know it sounds ridiculous but I'm not far off from the claims they were making. Those of us engineers that had evaluated the AVVID solution knew that these stories were clearly FUD. On the street, the new AVVID solution was bug ridden and it took armies of engineers to get the solution to work....sort of. Many new stories began to emerge about large companies ripping out millions of dollars worth of AVVID VoIP gear because Cisco couldn't make it work.
Let's bring it to the present day and get back to my original point of this dang article. Here we are at the end of 2007 and according to the reports (InfoPro, etc) Cisco owns the VoIP market and has finally resolved all of the issues that were creating havoc back in the day. Avaya, Nortel, and other players are getting their butts kicked in the VoIP arena by Cisco.
And a new era begins.......Cisco's entry into the WAN optimization / application acceleration arena is very similar to those days in 1999. Cisco is new to the game and trying to quickly build a solution via multiple acquisitions and integration into their routers. As with the AVVID days Cisco is making a huge marketing push and trying to give away the technology into big accounts to begin their never ending story writing about how their solution saved the lives of 1000's of employees across the enterprise.
What we have found is that in the real world Cisco is getting their butt kicked by the first to market competitor Riverbed. Riverbed has been in the WAN optimization game for about 4 years now and has mastered the art of application acceleration....and it is definitely an art. We decided to partner with Riverbed because we saw that Cisco WAAS was no where near developed as the Riverbed Steelhead appliances. We have always focused on offering our customers "best of breed" solutions and we believe, along with most of the world, that Riverbed is the best solution for WAN optimization and application acceleration.
Cisco will eventually get it together but they are about 2 years behind Riverbed from a technology perspective in my opinion. Riverbed recently made it even tougher on Cisco with their release of the Steelhead Mobile Client. It's a great solution for mobile workers and small branch offices. It essentially allows you to install the Steelhead RiOS software that runs on their appliances on your laptop or PC. That software talks to a mobile controller at the host location and accelerates applications between the laptop or PC and the host location. This is a major breakthrough for the mobile worker. We have many customers that previously weren't considering WAN accelerator devices until Riverbed released the Steelhead Mobile solution.
As Cisco continues to clean up their WAAS solution to work seamlessly in a router, they are being left behind by Riverbed and their continued innovation in this arena. As of the end of October, Riverbed will be releasing RiOS 4.1. Oracle acceleration is one of the key additions in this release. Cisco continues to down play the need for a wan acceleration client while the marketplace raves about Riverbed's client. I guess if you drink enough Cisco kool-aid you will believe that it's insignificant also.
Most IT personnel are smart enough to seek out the top competitors when Cisco comes a knockin' with a new solution to sell them. This is giving Riverbed more opportunities to shine, as most IT departments are opting to have a bake off between the various competitors before they commit to making a purchase. We'll see how things play out. If Cisco can improve their product and innovate beyond Riverbed's capabilities, I will be the first one to commend them and recommend their solution. Let the battle continue.
Both Bill .platt & Justin Lofton are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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