Search Engine Optimization -- Knowledge is Power

Search engine optimization is not easy. Anyone who tells you so is disingenuous. S.E.O. is something that should not be taken lightly, for if you do your website or blog will be lost with the other page ranking "millionaires". This is not in the sense of the millionaires with lots of money, but in the sense of lost with the other high ranking sites in the wilderness of "where are you?" millionaires. If you cannot be found you are lost amongst the millions of websites out there on the World Wide Web. S.E.O., when viewed as a discipline that must be performed daily, will return lower page ranking rewards over time. To assume that just because you have a site that looks good and functions, is a serious S.E.O. mistake, and is no guarantee it will return results. I use a free plug-in from Alexa, which sits on the lower taskbar. This little plug-in will tell you volumes of information on the site you are visiting. I have fallen into the habit of checking every site's page rank. The lower the rank, the better the rank, according to the search engines. The higher the rank, the less relevancy the site has. I am amazed at sites or blogs I found that are truly interesting, yet rank woefully high. I take a quick look and try to find out what they are not doing, or are doing wrong, for S.E.O. purposes. When I come across a site that ranks well, as in the top 100,000, I take special note of what they may be doing to make the site S.E.O. friendly. By checking the HTML page source code you can see a structure that is friendly to the search engines spiders. A great site title and description, as well as good relevant keyword or phrase selections. Another trait many of the better ranking sites display when using the Alexa plug-in is that they submit their URL to as many directory sites as possible. This creates links back to the site, and back links are like diamonds. Back links tell the spiders that other sites view the URL as relevant. So, submit to as many directories as you possibly can, get to know search engine optimization, for it is power, and it will show him better page ranking amongst the search engines.