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Monday, 19 March - 19:11 (Category: SEO )

Realistic Expectations from Search Engine Optimisation

SYNOPSIS: Find the right keywords, recognise that it takes time, focus on your inbound links, generate rock solid, interesting content and look for the killer idea.

I collared our SEO specialist, Al, and made him write a few words.  Here’™s what he had to say for himself on what you can expect from Search Engine Optimisation’¦

Professional Search Engine Optimisation is never a one size fits all service. SEO needs to be tailored to your particular requirements.

One of the first tasks in SEO is search term analysis. In order to reach your target market you need to determine your optimum search terms - words that accurately describe what your business does and has to offer. Furthermore these words need to reflect the words chosen by potential customers when using search engines.

Realistic Search Terms

Business owners often have a clear idea of the kind of words they would like to rank for. However, these words may not actually deliver results for the business. It is only through search term analysis that a set of realistic words can be created.

 Some search terms are more competitive than others. Compare for example, "business" and "home business opportunities".

Since link popularity is a massively important metric for search engines when attributing a rank to a document/site - it would perhaps be more realistic for a company specialising in home business opportunities to focus on the latter search term where the entry level to a top 10 rank isn't so extreme. This is not to say that you should overlook the potential to rank for the more generic term "business" but rather that it should be viewed as a long term goal.

Is Your Domain Name New?

If your domain name is new don't expect short-term miracles in Google. Did you know that Google has been dampening the potential to rank for new domains? The so-called "sandbox" effect is applied to new domains whereby a site’™s ability to rank is retarded for 6-12 months. It has been noted that one way to defeat the sandbox is through the acquisition of a large number of quality incoming links (link popularity). Rate of link acquisition is also under that watchful eye of the engines. A sudden spike in link acquisition then a trough might be deemed unnatural by an engine and, therefore, the effect downgraded. Link acquisition needs to be managed with care.

Do You Have Less than 30 Sites Pointing at Your Domain Name?

If the popularity of your site (measured by backlinks) is low don't expect short-term miracles for competitive search terms.

At this point you might like to discover how many sites link to yours. Yahoo provides one of the most reliable tools for this:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com, then click ’œExplore Url’?, then ’œInlinks’?.

You may want to filter out links from your own domain (with the drop down menu) to get a representative figure for backlinks (inlinks in Yahoo terminology.)

Not all links are created equally. One quality link from the www.bbc.co.uk (perceived by engines as an authority site on many topics) might be worth a thousand links from other diverse sites. The last thing you want is to get tied up with links from bad neighbourhoods (link farms, content scaping sites, etc) as these kind of links are of limited and even negative value.

Search Engine Indexes are Growing Exponentially and Webmasters are Growing Savvier

The number of documents indexed by search engines is growing all the time and at an increasing rate. Therefore, the number of documents that have the potential to rank for any given search term are growing all the time. Amateur webmasters know enough about the basics of SEO to pose a threat in many industries. So how can you differentiate yourself in an increasingly saturated medium?

Fortunately, content is still king. So be prepared to write interesting, unique content and plenty of it. Your content needs to stand out from the crowd and be remarkable (worth mentioning or commenting on). Not all of this content needs to be published on your own website - it can also be published on other websites with a citation (backlink) to your own website.

Can I Expect Big Success?

Well, let’™s be positive for a moment!  Consider how quickly ideas can spread on the net. There are many examples of this - remember the Million Dollar Homepage (www.milliondollarhomepage.com)? Alex Tew, a 21 years old from a small town in Wiltshire had an original idea. This idea spread like wildfire across the net with thousands of bloggers and news sites picking up the story and helping Alex to net himself 1 million dollars in the space of a couple of months.

The net is full of idea viruses. Can you spot an opportunity in your industry?

Extraordinary success is realistic with the right ideas executed at the right time.

Posted By:Jed Wylie at 19:11, 19-03-07