The net is a massive spiderweb of websites, information and resources. The organic search engines are really the only way the average person can even have a chance of finding the things they are looking for. Understanding Google or Yahoo can deliver a lot of highly targeted traffic right to your website, if you’re showing up on Page 1 for keywords that traffic actually searches for. We’ll focus on Google, as they have become the dominant player in the overall Internet search market.

Google’s thousands of employees are not sitting in an office scanning the web all day long. Every search engine is driven by algorithms – multi-layered formulas and equations that inspect, rate, categorize and sort content. Google’s search algorithms and processes are the most complicated and are kept so top secret that no individual employees know all the inner workings. Plus, the algorithm is adapted and evolved often to combat people trying to cheat at getting results.

You can read a lot of articles and opinion about “what works” in Google. As a home based business without a team of programmers and hackers working on your behalf, it’s best to take note of some things that most people DON’T tell you about the search engines. Put your time and money into conforming to Google, not trying to take advantage or fight them. You might “win” temporarily but you will get caught, and you will get bounced back far in the listings or delisted permanently. Here’s some tips.

1. Focus on the content of your website.

Every search engine’s algorithms are built around content, content, content. There’s no way to cheat at content. Gather up a lot of organized, relevant content to your website’s theme and purpose, and build it into a structure that gives viewers easy access to levels and levels of content in a user friendly manner. The search engines’ scanning tools or spyders operate much like a human being. This means leaving no dead end links, no dead end pages, etc.

2. Flash is bad.

It’s going to hurt you more than it helps you. There’s really no need for it, and Google’s spyders hate it. And don’t listen to anyone who tells you Flash can be coded to be scannable by Google. They can help it be more accessible, but it is no substitute for good, clean HTML.

3. Update your content often.

Google pays attention to new, updated information. If your website is in a blog format, update it every 3 – 5 days. If your website does not have a blog, then immediately set up a free blog account at WordPress linking back heavily to your website. Make sure you update information on your homepages as well, as this is the number one thing Google looks for in terms of updates.

4. Only certain types of links from other websites are important anymore.

Link farms, paid links in useless directories and automatic linking software have all been neutralized by Google and have no effect. The only links that matter anymore are links coming from relevant websites and content that have traffic. And ideally, those links to you will have traffic coming through them to your website. These types of links are the only ones that receive a high score from Google.

It’s extremely easy to build a website or blog very quickly. It’s easy nowadays with a GoDaddy account, a free WordPress blog account and with some help and tips. Proper search engine optimization is a whirlwind of details to be aware of and things to do. If you’d like some mentoring and assistance, we encourage you to reach out to us.