Why Care About search engine optimization ?

The art of getting attention
Capturing and arresting customer attention is fundamental to the process of marketing.  In today’s marketplace this means competing with a monstrous array of media sources for  a customer’s attention.   In recent years the way customers think about the buying process has undergone dramatic change.  Customers are no longer passive consumers of marketing material.  Customers are active seekers and researchers.  A customer going into a car dealership today is armed with much more information than the same customer from ten years ago.   Marketers can no longer limit themselves to the creation of content to be passively consumed.

Unlike conventional media sources, the web is an “active” medium.  This contrasts with traditional mediums such as newspaper, magazines, radio and television.  In these mediums the audience is not required to participate in the medium at all.  The web, on the other hand depends on the audience to participate, supply input and ask questions in order to do its thing.  This interactivity provides unique opportunities and tremendous  powers as a communication tool when it is understood.

To that end, this course is intended to help you to understand search engine marketing.  An understanding of search engine marketing will help you target  customers who are already thinking about your product. 

What is search engine optimization ?
Search engine optimization is the strategy which causes your web site to be listed competitively in the search engine results pages (or SERPs) of a search engine such as Google.  Competitive ranking is important because human attention is finite.  When you search for something online, more often than not, thousands of results come flooding back at you.  If a web site is listed on the fourth page it may as well be listed on the fortieth page.  To illustrate, consider the  last  search you made online.  How many pages did you navigate through before giving up?  Two?  Three?  Have you ever heard the expression "It's always in the last place you look"? 

The reason is that once you've found something you stop looking. 
 Thanks to those clever engineers at Google most searchers never have to look past the first few pages to find the answer they were looking for.  Results returned within the first few pages tend to be the relevant to the search term used.  Good search optimization techniques will get your web site in front of people who are searching for your product.

When we talk about search engine optimization in this course we are talking about taking steps to get your site ranked as high as possible.

 Understanding Google
Much energy, effort and speculation has been expended trying to understand how Google decides what is relevant and what is not.  Why the mystery?  Let’s consider how Google works.

Every minute of every day Google tirelessly analyzes all the web sites on the web. It follows all the links it encounters on any web site it is aware of using a process called spidering.   As it spiders the internet looking for new pages, Google creates an exhaustive list of pages.  It then returns to those pages and reads everything on those pages. It is important to note that Google cannot read text which is made of a picture.  (More on this later)  The indexing process helps the Google system to match search terms used by users with the web site addresses containing the content.  

This is where things get mysterious.
Google then automatically analyzes the site and decides which of the sites in its index are relevant relative to other sites in the index.  The device which tirelessly performs this task uses a set of criteria defined in the “Google Algorithm”.   Many unscrupulous web designers and online marketers have sought to understand, mislead and lie to the Google Algorithm in an effort to artificially improve their ranking, regardless of the quality of their web site.  As a result the Google Algorithm has been rewritten many times since Google's inception to thwart these unsavoury webmasters, and to ultimately maintain the quality of the search engine results that come back.

There are two important points to take from this.  First, Google does not advertise how the algorithm works.  It is a closely-guarded secret.  The second point is that the algorithm is designed to discourage the corner-cutting and unethical behaviour which threatens to clutter search engine results with irrelevant garbage.
So how do we boost our search engine ranking?  Are we flying blind?  Are we at the mercy of a system we have no hope of understanding? 

Not at all.

Google has published a document called "Webmaster Guidelines" which can be found at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

This document details steps which every webmaster or small business owner can take to maintain and improve the quality of their site(s).  Google is, above all, interested in returning good quality, and relevant search results to searchers. 

As we move through this course, we will show you how to develop your web site, how to stick to these guidelines, and still target your ideal customer.

Ignore the speculation
Here is a note of caution: The web is overrun with people that claim to understand exactly how Google works and how to fool Google’s algorithm.  These are the people your mother warned you about.   Ignore the speculators.  

Aligning your interests with Google’s       
Developing an Internet marketing campaign which results in a high-ranking website is simply a matter of aligning your interests with Google’s.   Google’s modus operandi is it that they want to provide everyone in the world with quality answers to their questions.  If your website similarly answers peoples questions with quality information, Google will ultimately reward you with a high-ranking on their search results page.    

If you only take one thing away from this, this should be it.  

Next, we'll tackle the steps you need to take to start measuring traffic and understand your web site visitors.