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Pick Me Google - How Google Can Choose You

By: Peter R Smithson Click author's name for more of his/her articles

My interest in how search engines select websites and to present them on the front page began in 1999, the year after Google was born but before anyone knew about it.

I was working for Ericsson as the GM of Sony Videoconferencing. I knew the web was bound to become more popular and needed to be easier to use. I spend $25,000 of Sony/Ericsson's money building a beautiful looking website called virtual-travel. It just looked looked super. It had pretty good content about the products we had available, but not much general information. After I finished putting the site together I was not sure how people were going to locate it on the internet. After we publicized the launch with an outbound email we had a surge in traffic, but then it fell to nothing. I knew what a search engine was, and knew who Google was; we thought it was just another one we sometimes used.

People back then were still not often going to the internet to find stuff they needed.....alongside us humans being creatures of habit, we just found it hard to use. Looking back, websites back then not so great, and didn't have much information either. It was just easier to grab the yellow pages or newspaper and phone the business that was spending on the largest or best advertisement that day.

There wasn't a search engine popular or powerful enough to govern how websites should be; and reward them by showing them at the top of the search results. So the problem was at both ends...the users thought it was hard to get what they wanted, because it was actually very hard!

I remember wondering how to make these search engine's to recognize my new website and place it at the top of the index. I called the website company we had spent all the money with, and they didn't know....or wouldn't tell me. So I found out who were the biggest website design-houses in Brisbane and I asked them. Two more of these companies couldn't, or wouldn't tell me. Until one smart chap eventually told me "yes I know, with Meta Tags"....I remember saying "ahhhhh...Meta Tags..... I love it!" He was quite right back then....that and a keyword stuffed URL and Meta information, was about all there was to search algorithms. My fascination began.

What has different now for the consumer with the success of the internet....it is that it is no longer the company with a big print advertising budget that gets all the enquiry. The Google search algorithm strives to deliver results for businesses that has done the 'hard road'.....the company that has been around the longest, provides the most organized information, and the one that links to, and from alternate information sources. Search delivers the company who has been creating and organizing their content to deliver relative original information.... the one who is an authority in that industry or subject.

So what do internet marketers do? We replicate the natural process a website would normally take years, and do it in just a few months....or in a year or so. To really understand how internet-search marketing works, you have to first understand how it is naturally intended to work.

Of course Google is well aware of internet marketers, and knows Search Engine Optimizers (known as SEO's) are not going to go away....so they have to accommodate us and we have to repect them. It is important when doing SEO to remember to keep the process looking natural. This is called 'White Hat SEO' and is deliberately obliging Google. Then there is 'Black Hat' SEO; those that set out to try and fool Google, and quite frankly they will always eventually fail. Google only employs geniuses to contribute toward the algorithm; and they have plenty of these geniuses, all over the world. They are all continually re-writing and contributing to this algorithm; now probably the world's greatest and longest equation. It is updated about 10 times a week. So it is pointless to try to outsmart it.

So it comes down to the question - What can an Search Engine Optimizer do, to help my website look mature, informative, organized, and present as an authority in my industry in order to rank on Google front page?

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: See Optimax for advice on internet marketing and www.optimax.net.au/pack1.html"> search engine marketing or tips on how to improve your website traffic.