Why Organic Search Engine Optimization?
A. Organic or Natural search results attract approximately 80% of the clicks on Google. This means that the traffic you get from natural search positioning will produce nearly 4 times as much traffic as pay-per-click advertising on search engines. (Source: eyetools.com)
B. Search use is now tied with email in popularity for internet users at 91%. Web surfers are using search engines more and more to find what they are looking for and we speculate that searchers see search results as authoritative. This means that they then value those top results which helps convert them to customers at top ranked sites. (Source: pewinternet.org 04/06)
C. Your competition is ranking at the top of the search engines and getting the traffic if you aren’t. That means they are becoming the authority or leader in your industry and potentially leaving you behind.
Contact us now for a free consultation on how we can help you rise to the top of the search engines.
Why Noble for SEO Services?
Experience
Noble has been providing professional web services to its’ clients since 2000 and offers ethical methods and time proven strategies to optimize your web site. With Google using more than 100 factors to establish their ranking system we work smart to give you the best chance to place well on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Results
Noble knows how to get search engine results. You probably found us on a web search using keywords that are very competitive. But you don’t want an SEO company that just gets results for themselves, you want one that gets results for their clients. We have provided you with some SEO examples so that our results can speak for themselves.
Web Standard Coding
We build or re-build websites with validated code according to the web standards established by the w3c. We also make it our business to know the Google guidlines for Webmasters and their Policies for working with an SEO company. Not because we have to but because we know this assures that your site will be search engine friendly and give you the best opportunity to rank well.
What Makes Search Engines Tick
In order to understand search engine optimization you need to first understand how the current landscape of search engines work. In the early days of the internet there was much competition between search engines and each one had it’s own advantages and nuances for web searchers. They also each had their own way of indexing and ranking websites.
Over the years this landscape has changed and many of the old search engines have either closed up shop or operate by getting their search results from one of four main search results providers. Those providers are Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. These four search providers serve results to their own visitors as well as Lycos, AOL, Netscape, Alta Vista, alltheweb, iwon and Hotbot.
Each of these four search engines have developed their own indexing and ranking algorithms to try to present the most relevant results when search queries are done. These algorithms are made up of numerous factors that are given different weights of value to determine which results should show up at the top of keyword searches. To add a little spice into the search engine optimization world these algorithms are always changing.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the top 3 search engines to see the individual personalities that each one has developed for itself on the internet.
Google – Leader, Innovator & Relevant
Google has become the “Big Boy” on the block for internet search which can be clearly seen by their approximate 57% of the US search share according to SearchEngineWatch.com. Their advanced search algorithm and crawling technology have made them the leader that they are today. Their users are treated to highly relevant searches provided at lightning fast speeds.
• Crawling & Indexing
As Google crawls the internet by following the links on billions of web pages they collect and detect many things. At the most basic level they discover new and updated web page content to add to their index. Googlebot, their crawling spider, is also trained to detect duplicate content, hidden content, paid links and other spamming techniques employed by many to try to trick Google into giving them high rankings. These techniques are not a part of search engine optimization and will in many cases hurt a sites’ performance on the engines.
Google has created a group of Webmaster Tools to help site owners provide Googlebot with detailed information about their sites. One of the these tools is a Google Sitemap which maps out all the pages of your website, indicates the importance level of each page, tells the frequency at which each page is updated and has the date of the most recent update to each page. This sitemap then allows Googlebot to index all of your pages, no matter how big your site is. It also tells Googlebot how frequently it will be able to find new and updated content on your site leading Googlebot to return on a regular basis.
• Ranking Philosophy
Google tells us that they use over 200 factors to help in determining how they rank web pages in their results. By using such an in-depth algorithm one thing we learn about Google is that they want to provide the best information possible for all search queries and they go to great lengths to make sure the results are relevant, trust worthy and timely.
We have found that site owners who take care to create good, quality, original content will have a competitive advantage on Google even before they employ solid search engine optimization techniques for their website. As a matter of fact, creating that kind of content is the foundation of search engine optimization and is worth the effort and resources to build it.
Some aspects of Google’s ranking philosophy is revealed through observation of their top results. One observation that we have found to be true is that Google gives preference to older domains. We believe that Google does this because of a trust and reliability factor that Google looks for in providing relevant results. Sites that have been around longer, Google reasons, are showing that time has proven them to be more stable and enduring and therefore more worthy of higher rankings.
Google’s PageRank system is also considered in the ranking of websites. PageRank is a score given to each web page that primarily measures incoming links to a site. This scoring is continually being improved as Google learns new ways to evaluate these links. Links can be considered like popularity votes for website but not all links are equal in their system. Some of the things Google considers in a link are the relevance of the link to the receiving site, the PageRank of the giving page, the text used in the link, the text around the link, the age of the link, does the link get used and is the link a paid link.
• Inside Google
Google is working hard to make it easy for website owners to follow their search philosophy. They have provided many channels of communication and tools that provide valuable information to website owners and you can find a few of them listed below.
Webmaster Central
Keyword Tool
Webmaster Guidelines
Google’s Blog
Webmaster Central Blog
Matt Cutts Blog – Head of Google’s Search Quality Team
Yahoo! – Content Provider, Paid Inclusion & Commercial
Yahoo! is a content rich search engine. If you compare their home page with Google’s you will see the difference immediately. The Google home page is all about the search box while Yahoo features a personalized content start page with content areas, headline news, advertising and, oh yea, the search box.
Yahoo! commands about 24% of the US search market searchenginewatch.com making it the second largest player in the industry but it’s still less than half of Google’s share.
• Crawling & Indexing
Yahoo sends out it’s spiders or bots much like Google to collect data but they are not at the same sophistication level that Googlebot is. One factor that plays into how Yahoo crawls websites is that they offer both free submission to their database and paid submission. We suspect that the paid submission sites get an advantage when it comes to getting crawled in a timely manner.
Yahoo also works with sitemaps, much like Google, to allow site owners to specify the pages to crawl and their importance levels.
• Ranking Philosophy
With Yahoo providing content and having its’ own Yahoo Shopping center it appears that they give more preference to commercial type websites in their search results.
This is great for businesses but not as great for other types of sites.
On Yahoo, they also consider links between sites as popularity votes. These links are not as scrutinized in the Yahoo algorithm so the strategy for them is the more the better and it doesn’t matter too much where they come from.
An observation that we’ve made is participation in Yahoo’s paid inclusion or other services will get decent results on the search queries. But when dropping out of those type of services the ranking results have suffered. This seems to indicate that they give preferential treatment to the paying customers.
Another observation that we’ve noticed is that blogs seem to strike a soft spot in the heart of the Yahoo algorithm. Regularly updated blogs can gain positions rather quickly in their index.
• Inside Yahoo
Yahoo does a decent job in communicating with website owners but not as extensively as Google. For some handy information and resources for Yahoo check the links below.
Yahoo Search Blog
Yahoo Content Quality Guidelines
Yahoo Buzz
Yahoo Tips to Better Results
MSN Live Search – Short History & Spammable
MSN is a little lower in US market share at just over 10% (searchenginewatch.com) than the other 2 but can still provide traffic to your site. They are a little late to the search game having only started providing their own results at the beginning of 2005. The recently released Live Search takes on a new, more serious contender look by featuring the search box, Like Google. However they add in the ability to customize the look of your results by providing a group of settings and options.
• Crawling and Indexing
It doesn’t take long to get crawled and indexed by Live Search. You simply submit your site via a short form and you can be listed in just a few days. Microsoft sends out their bots just like the other engines to gather fresh and updated content.
• Ranking Philosophy
With Live Search’s short history they have a less sophisticated algorithm for filtering out spam-like sites. They also have difficulty in determining weather incoming links are good quality, relevant links. Because of this, highly focused web pages that receive a quick burst of incoming links can rank high very quickly within this engine.
An observation of Live Searches rankings is that new websites can rank very well in a short amount of time. We think that may also be due to Live Search’s short history.
Another observation is that sites can come an go very quickly in Live Search’s results. It appears that they are frequently updating their algorithm to try to get up to speed with Google and Yahoo and in the process we are seeing big changes in search results.
• Inside MSN Live Search
Live Search has several resources available for helpful tips for those wanting to get listed on their search engines. Try the links below.
Live Search Guidelines
Site Owner Help
Live Search Blog
Read our SEO Blog for Web Site Owners
We have created an SEO blog with web site owners in mind. We will be providing educational articles that will help web site owners gain a better understanding of search engine optimization as well as inform them of market factors that may affect their web site.
You can subscribe to our blog in a feed reader or receive email updates of new posts to the blog.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Glossary
This glossary is provided to help web site owners gain a better understanding of search engine optimization and it’s filled with information that is clearly written in plain English and easy to understand. We hope this SEO glossary is a helpful resource for our clients and web site visitors.
