How to stay afloat

Think of Google as the internet ocean. A Google search gives you an ocean of results (search "cars" and you'll get over a billion results in .16 seconds!). The results on the top page are equivalent to being on the surface of the ocean and the ones at the bottom are lost in the abyss below. There are roughly One Billion searches a day! That's a large ocean! Google has a specific reason for EVERY search result placement. That means there's a specific reason why one website might be number 168,371 out of 168,372 or, for the most part, dead last! The good news is that they made the search results. The bad news is no one will find them.

Algorithms

Google uses approximately 200 different factors, (the technical term is Algorithms) to choose which website gets to be in the results and where they will land. Now think of a website as a boat with 200 holes in it. If a website shows up on the first page of Google then that boat is afloat and the holes are all filled in with the right information. If it shows up on the second page then it has some holes that need to be filled in. The more hole that need to be filled the farther down that site sinks into the abyss below. This is something to remember - Nobody wants to get on a boat that's at the bottom of the ocean! And nobody wants to go through all those search results to find a website.

So now we can explain what SEO means: 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of filling in those 200 holes so your website can stay afloat on the internet ocean!

Simplistic View

OK, so that's a simplistic view of SEO, but that is basically what it comes down to. Unfortunately the SEO process is anything but simplistic. In fact, like the ever-changing currents of the ocean,  those 200 algorithms change on a daily basis and nobody, except Google, really knows what those changes are. Add that with the large companies spending millions of dollars a year to stay on the surface. And let's not forget those Snake Oil Companies selling SEO services that they learned on a forum! They actually add more holes to your boat!  

Another big challenge is that most websites were purchased from one of these Clearance House hosting companies - $50.00 a year to host your site! WOW! Where do I sign up? The holes in those boats are so large you can't ever fill them in. It would be like bailing out the water with a paper cup. Sure it will work for a little bit but put on your life jacket because that site is sinking fast!

SEO Caution

 Here are just a few items that make the holes in your boat bigger and your site sink quicker: Deceptive practices, buying links from just about anyone, white letters on white backgrounds, multiple sites with the same information, your multiple sites pointing to your multiple sites, your site on a dirty server, a spamming site on your same shared server, back links from a spamming company, copying another site's information, pictures, etc., too many meta tags, not enough meta tags, too high a grade level verbiage, and the list goes on and on and on . . . .

Click here to contact us and learn how SEO Smart Sites can help your web site stay afloat.