“Yellow Page usage amongst people in their, say below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.” – Bill Gates (Seattle Times, 2007)

The Way We Find Information Has Changed

There used to be a time when everything people wanted to find within a city was in a big yellow book and all you had to do as a business was make sure you were in it and you were pretty much covered.

That big book still exists but not too many people are too looking for you there. Rather the dynamic new standard for gathering information is the internet search.

Powered by engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, information seekers are able to find the websites of the businesses offering the services they need in seconds.

That being said, while there’s clearly an advantage to having a website, it’s not so much of an advantage when everybody else has one too.

First is Still the Best

In the big yellow book days there was a huge obvious benefit to be had from being on the first few pages in a given category.

Back then the companies with names starting with the beginning of the alphabet got listed first. In fact many businesses used to choose their name solely based on optimizing it for these directories.

You might be happy to learn that not much has changed in this regard. There’s still a huge benefit today to be derived from your business showing up on the first few search result pages within a search engine. But what’s different is getting your site ranked highly on the first pages isn’t as easy as “ABC, 123” naming anymore. Adding to the challenge further is the fact that if you’re on top today it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically stay there forever; today’s listings are completely dynamic.

Appealing to the Invisible Robots and Spiders

So then how do search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing determine which company sites get to be displayed first for a specific “category”?

The short answer is that they use extremely complex algorithms in combination with computerized invisible worker agents called “Robots” or “Spiders” to determine and display the sites that best satisfy what the searcher was looking for based on the specific search phrase they entered (What the industry refers to as referred to as Keywords or keyword phrases).

So intuitively we can see that it would be beneficial to rank highly for the keyword phrases that define your business and its services or products. Often the exact same phrases that people would use to find your business.

Unfortunately, it is likely that you’re competitors will want to rank well for the exact same keywords which raises the following two questions.

First, how exactly do you go about making sure the Robots and Spiders understand what you’re site is about so that you rank well for those keywords?

And secondly, how do you influence these algorithms in determining that your site is among the best options to display for those keywords over your competitors?

The answer to both of these is SEO.

King of the Search Mountain:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does exactly what it says; it optimizes your website to rank well for relevant keyword phrases that searchers are using to find the services your business is offering. Search engine optimized sites are easily readable by Robots and Spiders and incorporate all the necessary information needed to help promote your website in the search rankings. But what exactly is involved in conducting SEO or more simply, how do you go about optimizing your website for search engines?

The way in which search engines determine which site ranks best for specific keywords is broadly speaking based on two set of criteria; on-site relevance and off-site relevance.

Generally speaking, onsite optimization deals with displaying content contained within your website in a way that optimizes the site for specific keywords.

For example if you wanted to rank well for dog toys, it would be wise to put place the words “Dog Toys” in your site in all the appropriate places along with other key terms related to dog toys while paying respect to search volumes for these terms.

But this is just one small example of a factor that could affect your rankings.

Other On-site optimization elements include things such as: