SEO-SEM reached critical mass in 2005, when even the most conservative of Fortune 1000 companies recognized the importance of Google, Yahoo and the rest of the dynamic Internet search community.

This acceptance stood the test of reason. It became obvious that with over 12 billion pages contained within more than 600 million web sites, growing at a rate of more than 100,000 pages per week, that active competition within all industries and segments required an approach commensurate with the relevant marketing factors unfolding in the virtual markets of the Internet.

As proof of this implied hypothesis, simply search on any product or service term for any industry or niche. The result on either Google, Yahoo or MSN will show numbers in the millions, sometimes even in the hundreds of millions, hardly ever less. A search for Web designer, for instance, will show 270 million hits on Google and 143 million hits on Yahoo. Such competition cries out for direct action.

The most important factor in search engine ranking is CONTENT. Content is king and it should be. The search community wants to give searchers what they are looking for. Seems simple doesn’t it, yet too many web sites still lean in the direction of being heavily dependent on graphics. Go figure . . .

Linkage from other web sites to the client’s web site – more is better: The search engine community surmises that a more linked to web site is a more important site; hence, a higher ranking. Industry important information which is often updated on the client’s web site, and/or a BLOG with such information is one way of attaining linkage. Other approaches attain linkage from vendors and customers.

Popularity is another factor driving rankings higher or lower: The more often web sites attract visitors, the higher the ranking. Again, industry news, product announcements, and even new jokes or cartoons can bring recurring traffic to a web site.

Search engine optimization of web sites and search engine marketing of such sites are also tools well within the control of web site owners.

Registration date of the base domain name in a URL: All other factors being equal, the web site that will be ranked higher is the one with the earlier registration date.

1. Composition of a header with a full title, description and keyword tags; uploading of this new code to the web site. The aim here is to achieve a top ten listing in the organic search results.

2. Prior to any header composition, potential search terms will be researched to comprehend how often such terms are in use by searchers. Depending on the industry and the number of products and services being offered by a client, the list of potential search terms may reach 200 or more. Only 20 of the most relevant words are to be chosen for usage, both in the header and within the pages of the web site. (This job involves a high level of collaboration between the client and 310 Web Design in order to reach for the optimal terms.)

3. Key term weighting: While graphics and/or flash animations are great to see and hear after a searcher reaches a web site, search engines cannot read these elements; hence search result rankings are lower than otherwise might be the case when a web site is overly dominated by graphics, animation and sound. Only text can be read by the software generated robots sent out by search engines to index the information on a web site.
Key term weighted pages gain more recognition and higher rankings than their graphically weighted competitors. Accommodating the needs of both eye pleasing graphics and the search community is a balancing job best done by an experienced web designer and search engine optimizer such as 310 Web Design.

4. Key term weighting: While graphics and/or flash animations are great to see and hear after a searcher reaches a web site, search engines cannot read these elements; hence search result rankings are lower than otherwise might be the case when a web site is overly dominated by graphics, animation and sound. Only text can be read by the software generated robots sent out by search engines to index the information on a web site. Key term weighted pages gain more recognition and higher rankings than their graphically weighted competitors. Accommodating the needs of both eye pleasing graphics and the search community is a balancing job best done by an experienced web designer and search engine optimizer such as 310 Web Design.

5. SEM (search engine marketing) is an additional and guaranteed step leading to a preferred marketing result. Google, Yahoo and MSN have advertising avenues called pay-per-click-through (PPC) campaigns. With these, the web site owner pays for the results of searches based on bidding for key terms. One can bid from a dime per key term on up. 310 Web Design advises against bidding for the top slot on every term; instead, opting for the third position which can always be had for a lot less money. The average cost of a keyword in 2005 was $1.43; the average click through rate on impressions was 3%. (Impressions equals how many times searchers see the ad.) Advertising through PPC offers much greater latitude than other media. Advertisers completely control daily and monthly budgets; ads can be turned on and off at will; bidding on key terms is at the whim of the advertiser; key terms can be added or deleted during the campaigns; and ad copy can be adjusted, all this at no additional cost. There is no charge for impressions, only for click-throughs indicating that a searcher has gone to the advertiser’s web site – even the landing page destination is in the control of the advertiser. 310 Web Design offers its services in setting up and managing PPC campaigns. We have competence in writing ad copy, in choosing appropriate key terms to bid on, and in managing the bidding process on a daily basis. When assigned these duties, 310 Web Design will report on campaign activity as often as directed, but most often weekly. Reportage includes the number of impressions and click throughs on each key term, the click through rate for each term, and the amount of money invested in each term by day, by week and by month.

Caveat: Although not as common in 2009 as in past years, we still occasionally hear of some SEO offering a full refund if a top ten position is not achieved in search results. This is a plain lie and simple scam, because no one can guarantee organic results. What it is with these people is a numbers game. They charge over the top prices for what they do. Most of the money has to be repaid against their guarantees, but because they charge so much, they still make out like the bandits they are.

BACKGROUND>>
Relative to the search engine community, the world wide web (www), has changed drastically over the past few years. The most radical and least obvious change is that the search engines no longer search the web looking for new web sites. The reason is that there are so many more pages (over 30 billion) on so many more sites (over 200 million), each search engine and directory can only attempt to keep up with a limited percentage of the whole web, so they just try to keep up their end of things. Sometimes several of them will band together to share information on web sites in their databases, but on the whole, each search engine is autonomous, doing as good a job as they possibly can, but still limited. (Google indexes only about 10 billion pages.)

An eon ago in Internet time, but only a few months ago for humans, we started receiving offers for various fees and such, to assist us in getting our clients to the top of the search engine results on keyword searches. We were intrigued to say the least. Maybe you have also received such e-mail and wondered what they were talking about.

Let’s get back to the matter of e-mail solicitations for search engine results on keyword searches. How can they offer so much we asked ourselves? As often as not we would mutually agree that it was all hog-wash, absolutely impossible to accomplish and go on about our business of serving you, our clients, in the best ways we know how. But in the back of our minds these offers continued to perplex us. No one could guarantee results, could they?

As the designated hitter on search engine business for 310 Web Design Studio, I researched the web again for whatever answers there were. I re-visited all of the search engines and read again what they each had to say about their criteria for url inclusion and placement -nothing new. I then went back to the World Wide Web Consortium in Switzerland where Tim Bernards Lee (the inventor of the Web and HTML) and his team of web wizards, which include Marc Andreessen (true genius and technical founder of Netscape), and who form most of the rules governing how web sites should be created and managed. Again, nothing new. Finally, I again visited with the Dublin Core Group, the American counterpart to the W3C.org, an organization that also helps to promulgate rules for better web sites, among which are the recommended elements for your "headers".

These two groups are a significant authority for all professional web designers and search engine pursuers. Would you believe it? Nothing new in the way of information that would lead us as professionals to better do the job we have done for you in terms of placement results on keyword searches with the search engines. I even spoke (e-mailed) with Danny Sullivan and Robin Nobles, the two most obvious search engine specialists in our industry, but found out that they too were perplexed at these claims of guaranteed results. (Wait till they read what I'm getting to here.)

This information is important to your getting the final picture on GUARANTEED RESULTS. The area of interest for the search engines and directories on your site is called the header or . In either Internet Explorer or Netscape the can be seen on your home page by going to the top-most control bar, and accessing "View". In IE, access Source, in NN access Page Source. What you and the search engines see in the first part of the "code" is the . Now some of the search engines read all of the meta tag elements, some do not. For those that do not we have added the http-equiv as the last element in order to appeal to the search engines that do not read the meta name tags.

Now we come to the crux of this report to you, our clients. After you've seen the e-mails telling you that you do not have to pay if the results GUARANTEED to you do not happen with each search engine you choose, it takes some thinking to figure out just what the gambit is here. As professionals, we know that this promise is too good to be true, but what is going on?

Here it is: The company that has had us so puzzled requires the site owner to pay $300 per URL per top ten position on a keyword search, and $100 per URL for a top 20 position. After working in the area of e-commerce, and specializing in search engine registrations for over a year, my experience is that out of ten registration efforts, two or three will reach the top ten when using any of the major search engines and searching for key phrases relative to the site. Another two or three will reach the top 20. The other four or five registration efforts fall between the cracks for a number of reasons during the first attempt.

For those who GUARANTEE results, it is all a matter of numbers, dollar numbers. It's just that simple. The people who promise results are not privy to a knowledge base of magic denied the rest of us. No way! If only two hit the top ten with 18 search engines and directories, as they normally would, that's $10,800. Another three in the top 20 yields $5,400. These people couldn't care less about the other five registrations that did not take hold. They've gotten what they came after - the url owner's money - at a price we would not dream of charging. A very clever business model, eh?

The way some companies can advertise "top 10/20 position for search engine results, or you don't pay" is simply a business model that is profitable because of the 20-30% of companies that actually do achieve the top positioning (and who knows for how long), they get paid enough to compensate for the 70-80% that don't. Their results are the same as ours, it's just that our customers pay a fraction of what the GUARANTEE's are charging.

If you are serious about doing business on the Internet, and I certainly think you should be serious about the greatest market potential any of us have ever seen, then you will respond positively the next time I contact you about redoing your header to bring it in line with what the search engines are looking for. Beverly Hills 310 and Web Design Studio give you your money's worth.

On another front, the e-mail solicitation companies I have been writing about also mention a "cloaking" technique that tailors your header code to match the requirements of each search engine spider, thus resulting in higher position results and preventing your competition from seeing what is in your header. Heady stuff and a neat-o feature for sure! Except that all of the search engines paying attention to what your keywords are, use the same criteria.

They look for a good title, one that does not just say "Welcome to ABC - home page", but goes the distance by saying "ABC - products and services online" (whatever those products and services might be).

They look for a description which can be reported back to searchers with the results. This description should be appealing and information. Your site may very well get accessed first because it is worded in such a way as to be catchy. Search engines look for keywords and key phrases which are closely linked with what you sell or promote and appear in text on your home page. Finally, search engines look for linkage from other sites to your site. They figure, and rightly so, that if a lot of people think your site is neat, then it probably is neat. Sites benefiting from this analysis are AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and a few others. This is a requirement hard for most of us to meet.