So at my job (and at does not pertain to a where, since I do not go anywhere for my job, I work from home) I optimize websites for search engines. To some of you, that may sound interesting, others will not know what that means nor will they care. Regardless, this is more commonly known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
Try as I might to practice this on my own website, or at least all those crazy sites like Myspace, deviantART and Fickr to which I contribute samples of music and art that I create, it's difficult to do without spending money.
Ever wonder why you can type a search term into Google's search engine and find something that seems much less related to the thing you're looking for?
How It Works
Google has become such a successful website because the algorythm they use is very complicated, measuring nearly every last possible piece of information on the internet to determine which pages show up first on their searches.
The first step is measuring key word relevance. Based on what was typed in, Google searches its database for those words or that word. These keywords are found on the websites themselves as the following:
1) Title Tags - text which will appear at the top of the browser window and on searches
2) Header Tags - those which are denoted as titles of sub-sections (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
3) Body Text - as pertaining to the header and title tags, words in the body that relate
4) Links - those typicially blue and/or underlined words that take you to other pages
5) Meta Tags - hidden tags that do not show up on a rendered html site
It should be noted that meta tags are not as useful as they once were. This is where Google shines. The google algorythm is key in discarding meta tag information on web pages. The reason being, too many people were abusing the ability to add lots of keywords to a page that could not be seen by viewing the page in a browser. This is called keyword stuffing.
The rest of these, however, are very relevant to Google's searches, as they point to actual information on the page.
The second step is to measure the importance of the page itself. If any of you have the Google Toolbar installed in your browser, you will find a little green bar that measures page rank. This is how Google assigns importance. How do they decide? They have a cock measuring contest!
No, seriously...think about how we measure the importance of people in the world. Basically, it's by who they know, how important the people they know are, what they can do, how useful they are to the rest of us, how good looking they are, how much money they make, what they wear, what car they drive, etc. While this may not be applicable in every case, it should serve as a decent analogy to help you understand how Google decides which pages are important. This is also where the line between ON-site and OFF-site SEO is drawn.
In A Nutshell
Joe Shmo creates a personal website with information about videogames. He mentions a lot of useful things, has a well designed site, properly uses header tags, and his body text is rife with information relevant to videogames. Even his title contains the text 'Video Games'. However, no one else on the internet thinks highly enough of his website to link to any of his webpages. Real world comparison: he has no friends, no professional references and a small dick. Poor shmuck.
Now let's look at IGN.com. They are ranked 7/10 by Google. I don't have the exact statistics for their site, but you can imagine how many blogs, websites, myspace pages, partners, etc are linked to them. Not to mention, many of the websites which link to the site have ranking websites. Real world comparison: they are informative, relevant and have lots of friends, including many famous musicians and actors - like me, see, I just linked to them and I rule!
Google ranks itself 10/10. How selfish, but how appropriate. The main reason for this is...well, let's be honest, there should be no question as to how the most well known website in the world is the most important. But on top of these things, Google has set up a vast network of advertising tools that billions upon billions of companies, professionals and single people use to improve their own relevance on the internet. This is Google AdWords, which I also use from time to time.
However, SEO has to do with the natural search. This is the main list of results that shows up after you type in your keyword and click the little button that says "search" on it. AdWords results show up on the right side of the natural search results, under "Sponsored Links". Sponsored!? Yeah, because people are paying for them :-P
Making Friends
SEO isn't exactly free. So what better way to gain popularity than by buying it! There are a few ways to do this:
1) Buy Links - many websites will put a link to your website for a one-time, monthly or yearly fee, of which a one time fee is the best and buying links from higher ranked pages is optimal, however more expensive.
2) Submit Press Releases/Articles - websites like PR.com, PRweb.com and PRleapfrog.com have relatively high page ranks. For a fee of $100 - $600 one can purchase a corresponding level of online visibility. Sites like eZine.com and ArticleDashBaord.com are free, however some require a setup fee or something minimal for using the service. Both are good options, but the key is to vary your submissions and the keywords written into each one.
3) Buy Blog Posts - thats right, for all you know, I'm writing this for my own firm! But no, I don't get paid to perform SEO on my own companies site, I get paid to do it for our clients' websites. But there is one site imparticular, PayPerPost, which connects professional bloggers and SEO related professionals in order to provide an easy exchange. With these sites, I offer money to bloggers to post about the topic I choose, using a link to a website I specify, with as many words as I decide, etc. Basically, i set the parameters and the price and the bloggers are free to choose. I also set the restrictions so, for example, Blogger.com in ineligable. Sorry!
One last thought here. One more thing that Google serves as is the Internet Police. That's right, if they find some webmaster getting out of hand with their SEO practices and such, key word stuffing, etc., they will not hesitate to punish them. How do they do this? By penalizing their page rank, of course! You might be thinking, how mean! Well, this only helps ensures a safer, more relevant internet. Suck it up. Google PWNS you!
Anyways, now that I've officially bored and/or informed you, I'm out!
Also, don't bother clicking any links in this post - they all go to my Myspace page :-)
Happy late April Fools! (I'm a dick, I know)
No comments:
Post a Comment