This is the first article in a series of articles on how search engine optimasation works and how you can use it to gain higher rankings with Search Engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. The first thing that you need to know is that SEO is not a quick process, it can and probably will take months to reach your desired goals. There will also probably be one or two setbacks along the way, when you have a set back my message to you is “Don’t Panic”. Contrary to public belief there are few mistakes that we can make that cannot be repaired (There are techniques that would get us completely blacklisted by Google, but I do not use any of these).

A lot of this first article will refer to Google as that is the most popular search engine in. Let me tell you some simple facts about Google, and hold these in your thoughts throughout our journey up their rankings. Google has one simple aim and that is to provide it’s users with THE most accurate search results. So, no matter what you are searching for Google wants the most relevant websites to your search term to be at the top of their listings. At this time Google have peoples trust that their results are the most accurate, this is the reason that Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Google do very little to advertise their services, when was the last time you saw a TV advert for Google? They do not advertise and yet everybody knows of them and uses their service. The return for Google is that companies then purchase advertising on Google because companies know that their customers are using Google. This is the reason that Google wants to provide the best search results possible, to gain advertising revenue from third parties.

The next fact that you need to know is where their advertisers appear. The links on the right hand side of the page and those in the box at the top with the words “sponsored links” in it have been paid for by third parties. The main listing on the left hand side of the page are not paid for and are known in the trade as organic results. One third of all users will click on the sponsored links, so you may want to consider advertising in those sponsored links. Advertising with Google will not boost your rankings in the organic results.

To rise to the top of the organic listings your site is parsed through Google’s ranking algorithm. The algorithm stores details of your site and all the text within it. It then applies a number of rules when a search term is entered by a user to decide how relevant your site is in relation to the said term. The Google ranking algorithm is a closely guarded secret to prevent people like you and me being able to manipulate Googles results.

So what do we need to be the number one site on Google?

The site needs to be honest. By this the information needs to be up to date and relevant to the search terms that we want to rank highly for. Let’s use an example, we want to rank highly for the term “Liverpool salsa classes”. What we do not want to do is to put lots of text on the page that says “Liverpool salsa classes” repeatedly. When Google ranks your site they use very sophisticated software that analyses the text on the site and picks up if you are stuffing the page with keywords. Natural text always ranks more highly.

Google needs to know that your site exists. There are a number of ways that this can be achieved but the best way is to create a Google account and then have your site verified by them. Go to google and search for “Webmaster Tools” to get further details on this

This next fact is the biggie! The number of other sites that link to your site is the key to getting to the top on Google. Google sees inbound links as proof that your site is a good source of information for your chosen subject. Each inbound links counts as a vote for your site. However, do not think that we can just ask a couple of hundred sites to link to yours and that will get our site to the top. Again Google looks for suspicious behaviour such as sites that suddenly get lots of inbound links, so we need to build the links up gradually. I currently submit sites to about 5 directories each week. If you would like proof of the importance of inbound links try this experiment. Go to Google and enter the search term “click here”. The number one result will be for Adobe Reader. If you look on the page there will be no mention of the words “Click here” anywhere and yet it appears as the number one choice on Google, why? For the simple reason that all over the web there are PDF documents and next to the link to the PDF will be some text that says something along the lines of “To download Adobe Reader click here” with the “click here” link as a hyperlink.

Over the coming months I will post articles on on and off page optimisation, link building and the use of social media to boost your rankings.