Powwwerpages

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Page

1. What is SEO ?
2. The big fuss about SEO - Why is it so important ?
3. How Search Engines assign Rankings to Web Sites
4. Ranking Factors

Some Research Results and Statistics

We publish this SEO page for the benefit of our Yellow Pages, Free Web Creation, Powwwerlistings, Powwwerlinks, and Powwwer-what-else subscribers. We trust most of our regular visitors and customers know us by now. First-timers may want to check out our Home, About, and FAQ pages.

Our customers (paid services, i.e.: Premium Listings and higher) are entitled to individual FREE SEO assistance, way beyond the scope of our SEO pages and news. Those customers are welcome to contact us for free advice at any time. Please give us 3-5 business days to reply.

To many of you, much of this SEO page will look pretty elementary. Our apologies, but we also need to cater to those readers who are only now getting acquainted with the concept of Search Engine Optimization, one of the hottest yet most-often misunderstood and misapplied aspects of SEM (Search Engine Marketing). For more advanced SEO information, click here.

Let’s jump right in.

1. What is SEO ?

Search Engine Optimization is (to put it very dryly and scientifically) the sum of strategies, tactics, methods (and tricks !) used by webmasters to maximize the “impression” their web site makes on the major web-crawling Search Engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.), so that the site’s ranking on those Search Engines is improved as far as possible. Rankings are a consequence of, rather than and equivalence to, “popularity” or “relevance”. For Wikipedia’s definition of SEO, click here.

Less dryly and more bluntly put, we could define SEO simply as “getting the Search Engines rank your web site higher.”

(By the way, the term “Search Engine” Optimization is, strictly speaking, not even correct. “Web Site” Optimization would be far more accurate. After all, it’s not the Search Engine but the web site that’s supposed to get optimized).

2. What’s the big fuss about SEO ? Why is it so important ?

Other research (click here) differs somewhat, but only with respect to the extent, not the facts : any result that ranks lower than 30, i.e.: beyond Results Page 3, is highly unlikely to be looked at and considered.

And if you don't find it, you don't look, and then you don't click. Regrettably, also, no clicking means: no business from that search.

Conclusion: Lunch with the Joneses, or become lunch. This is the essence of SEO.

That’s why it gets pretty crowded (meaning: competitive) on those first few pages. And where it gets crowded, there’s often a lot of pushing and shoving (meaning: SEO) to get rankings up, and keep them high. After all, the difference between number 30 and 31 may look trivial; but as far as competing for that customer's business dollars is concerned, it’s the difference between being in the running, and running for cover.

3. How Search Engines assign Rankings to Web Sites

Let's say you visit your library searching for a book on a particular topic. An intelligent librarian will retrieve books for you based on the subject you choose, but if your subject is too general, he/she will ask you for clarification, i.e.: you will need to narrow down your topic. A search engine is not a librarian and has no idea what you really want when you type in a general expression. But what a search engine will do is take the information (usually residing on a web site) the contents of which most closely match the requested information, and ranks it in descending order of importance, or relevancy.

And this content is simply what the web designer or webmaster has written into the web page.

So it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more relevant the content of a web site is, the more likely the web site will be found by the search engine, and the higher it will rank on the results page.

But how do search engines determine this mysterious relevancy with millions of web pages to sort through? They sort by a set of rules, known as algorithm. Each crawler-based search engine has its own closely guarded and secret algorithm, but generally they are guided by a very practical (Of course, there are other rules, too).

If the webmaster attaches great value to certain words (keywords) important or relevant to his web site and displays them prominently, the search engine will consider those words important too.

Imagine a newspaper editor who buries highly important and relevant content in a major news story somewhere in the tenth paragraph, and in small print to boot. Such copy would almost certainly remain unread, except by the most diligent readers. The same goes for a web site.

Would a search engine give high rankings to a web page that doesn’t even “rank” its own contents highly? You bet it won’t.

The rule of the thumb, therefore, is quite simple: make your web site’s relevant words (Keywords) as important as possible, and your web site will rank higher. How high, depends on many factors - the Ranking Factors.

FREE SEO service to our customers to help
improve their web rankings.  Ask us.

Your Powwwerlinks could be here!

Not signed up yet?

Sign up here for

FREE Business Listing (Sample)

FREE Powwwerlinks (Sample)

FREE Business Tools(Sample)