Search Engine Optimization

In order to have an effective website promotion strategy, a website owner MUST understand how and where relevancy search engine positioning fits into the overall effort. A lack of this understanding can be very dangerous, as it can lead a website owner to spend much more time and effort on relevancy search engine positioning than that particular promotional effort merits. The proper approach is to understand the issues associated with relevancy search engine positioning, develop a strategy, implement it and move on. This total effort will probably take a few hours of work. Spending any more time than that will probably cost you traffic, because you won't be doing the other marketing and promotional activities that you need to be doing. The following list provides some salient points to consider:

• Depending on the subject matter, there is only so much traffic you can ever hope to get from search engines. Even if you are doing particularly well in relevancy search engine ranking, that traffic should represent no more than 20% to 30% of your total traffic. Other marketing tools, like affiliate programs, or comparison-shopping portals, for example, have the potential to dwarf search engine traffic! Spending too much time on search engines when you should be focusing on other techniques will cost you traffic! It can be counterproductive to your overall promotional strategy.
• It is impossible to control your placement in relevancy search engines. At best, you have some influence over them, and it goes without saying that you should exercise this influence. The problem is that even if you figure everything out and manage to get high rankings in search engines, the search engines change their ranking criteria with great frequency. This means that your rankings are never assured. If you implement a well-thought-out approach and allow it to do its work, you can spend more time developing other market strategies, rather than constantly monitoring and modifying to try to adapt to every change a search engine might make.
• In the future, being ranked number one in relevancy search engines is likely to continue to decrease in importance. Every major search engine on the Internet currently gives top billing to paid listings (like Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing). This practice is likely to increase dramatically, making relevancy search engine positioning less and less powerful.
• Depending on the content of your website, your chances of generating a substantial amount of search engine traffic varies widely. There are many factors to consider, ranging from the amount of competition to the popularity of subject matter, as well as how many pages you have on your site. Having an understanding of where your site fits is important.
• If you do not understand that relevancy search engines should represent a very small part of your overall website promotion efforts, you should learn that lesson now and avoid becoming obsessed with search engines. That being said, remember that every promotion effort should include a well thought-out, well designed, and carefully implemented relevancy search engine strategy.