Before anything, let’s just clear up what’s meant by a search engine ranking? When an individual uses a search service like Google, Yahoo, MSN or many of the numerous smaller search services, they type in a question, or a request for information – this is called a ’search query’. When they enter that ‘query’ they are then presented by a whole list of results that search service has decided in their mysterious way are relevant search results to the query you want information on. This list of search results is often termed Organic Search Results. These are different to the Sponsored Search Results that often appear down the right hand margin of the search results page, and sometimes can appear at the top of the page shaded in a slightly different background colour.

These ‘Sponsored’ Search Results are simply text ads placed by those who wish to advertise websites that are then linked to the adverts. These advertisers pay to have their adverts appear when certain words or phrases (known as keywords) are typed into the search company’s services. Because the people that place these adverts only actually pay when someone clicks on their specific advert, these search results are often referred to as PPC or pay-per-click results, which is why they are termed ’sponsored’ results, being that they are ‘paid for’ by the advertisers.

Getting positioned (ranked) high with these PPC adverts is a completely specialised area, and one I’ll avoid discussing now as it’s a completely separate subject in itself, as this information now is focused on discussing ways to get highly ranked using the organic search results.

Getting “highly ranked” simply means that when someone types a question or request for information (a ‘query’) into a search service like Google, then the higher up the list towards the page 1 results you can achieve, the greater likelihood there is the person searching will then click on your website as you are possibly one of the first results they’ve found. If you appeared low down the results, say page 12, it’s pretty obvious that the person searching for results is highly unlikely to ever look that far through all the search results, especially when you consider that on each page of search results there is on average about 10 search results, so being on page 12 would mean the person searching would have to scroll through over 100 search results before they even came close to finding your website.

The key is pretty clear – aim to get on page 1 of the search results, and then as high up the page (preferably in the top 3 results), which then gives you the greatest chance that your website will get seen and people will visit it.

The obvious benefit over Organic search results as opposed to Sponsored (PPC) search results is whenever anyone finds your website and clicks on it with in the Organic results list, it costs you nothing! Whereas if you had placed a PPC ad to appear in the Sponsored results list, you have to pay every time someone clicks on your advert (regardless of whether you’ve sold them anything from your website or not).

There is also another great advantage to using Organic search as a way to drive people to your website, as opposed to Sponsored search, and that is the credibility of the results. People entering a ’search query’ will believe that the results that come back via Organic search results are far more credible and genuine to solving what their query relates to then Sponsored search results. The reason for that is most folks are now aware that the Sponsored results are all adverts paid for by the advertisers of those websites, and so they believe that person is paying to get ranked (as in fact they are), which in turn undermines the true value of that search result as credible in the eyes of the person searching “oh, that only appeared on the search results ’cause they paid to be there” is in their minds.

The difference with Organic results is the searcher ‘believes’ that what appears in their organic search results list is true, real and of genuine value to their quest in solving the answer to their query.

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