Understanding the Search Engines

Here is a simplified view of how the search engine algorithms work:

Think of the engines like teachers handing out gold stars (or check marks) for everything that you do well.

Google currently has about 200 factors in their algorithms that determine how your site will rank.

The process they go through is the equivalent of the teacher looking at your site and then looking at their checklist and giving you a gold star for each of the things that you do right.

However, some of the items on the list are more important and you may get multiple gold stars.

No one knows for sure how the algorithm works, but we test and monitor the industry to come up with a technique that works well for getting sites ranked.

You should look at the foundation of the site first (we call this search engine friendliness.)

This includes looking at the HTML that is used to build your site and making sure there are no errors in the code, and looking at how the site is built to make sure there is nothing that will block the spiders.

Then you should look at on-page optimization, which is tweaking the content for keyword density (increasing the usage of keywords on the site), tweaking the Meta tags (they are like a guide to each page that tells the search engines what keywords are on the page and what the page is about, and then use ALT tags, Header tags and various other HTML tweaks.

You should also look at adding new content - as long as it is informative and relevant and not just keyword stuffed text that has no value.

You should do a sitemap, an XML sitemap (this is a technical way of feeding your site to the engines so they spider your content frequently).

You should work on obtaining quality links into your site to boost your link popularity.

All of this is to drive the search engine spiders to your site, so they can review it and hand out the gold stars.

The number of gold stars you achieve will determine how well your site will rank.

There are no shortcuts; there are no tricks (none that are safe to use and won't result in trouble down the road).

All you can do is make sure your on-page optimization and links are in place and consistently work on growing your site with relevant content.

You really don't need to submit to the engines these days, especially not multiple times. Your XML sitemap set up and submission will call Google and Yahoo, and the rest will follow.