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Why Google indexing requires a complex mix of skills
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Getting a company's name and products or services on the first page of a genuine Google search is not a trivial job. In fact, there are four different skills that a search engine optimizer must possess. Most people possess one or perhaps two of these abilities, very rarely do people possess all four. In truth, to get to all four, people who are good at two of them need to actively develop the other skills. Now, if you have your own business, do you really have time to do it? Is this the best use of your time?
Specifically, the four skills necessary for SEO work are:
Web design: production of a visually attractive page
HTML Coding – Search Engine Friendly Coding Development That Lies Behind Web Design
Copy writing: producing the actual readable text on the page
Marketing – what are the actual searches being used, what keywords are actually driving the most business for your business?
Many website designers are churning out ever more eye-catching designs with animations and clever scrolling buttons in hopes of drawing people to their sites. This is the first big mistake; Using layouts like these will actually lower your chances of ranking high on Google. Yes, that is correct; all the money you paid for website design could be wasted because no one will find your site.
The reason for this is that before you can attract people to your site, you need to make the spiderbots like your site. Spiderbots are pieces of software used by search engine companies to crawl the internet by searching all websites and then after reviewing the sites they use complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by web designers cannot be tracked by spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the HTML code, and walk right off the stage, not even bothering to rank your site. Therefore, you will not be found in any meaningful search.
It amazes me how many times I look at websites and immediately know they are a waste of money. The problem is that both the web designers and the company that paid the money really don't want to know this. In fact, I've stopped playing the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); Now I work around the problem. Therefore, optimizing a website to be compatible with Google is usually a trade-off between a visually appealing site and an easy-to-find site.
The second skill is to optimize the actual HTML code to be compatible with spiderbot. I put this as different from web design because you really need to get "down and dirty" in the code instead of using an editor like FrontPage which is fine for website design. Developing this skill takes a lot of time and experience, and just when you think you've cracked it, search engine companies change the algorithms used to calculate how high your site will appear in search results.
This is no place for even the most enthusiastic hobbyist. Results need to be constantly monitored, code snippets need to be added or removed, and what the competition is doing needs to be checked. Many people who design their own website feel that they will be sought after because it looks good and they completely miss this step. Without a solid technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always have a hard time getting your business to appear on the first page of Google results.
Third, I suggested that copywriting is a skill in its own right. This is the actual text writing that people who visit your site will read. Googlebot and other spiderbots like Inktomi love text, but only when it's well written in proper English. Some people try to stuff their site with keywords, while others put white writing on white space (so spiderbots can see it but humans can't).
Spiderbots are very sophisticated and not only won't fall for these tricks, they can actively penalize your site; In Google terms, this is sandboxing. Google takes new sites and "naughty" sites and effectively removes them for 3-6 months, you can still find it, but not until result page 14 - really helpful! In addition to good English, spiderbots also read HTML code, so the writer also needs to appreciate the interaction between the two. My recommendation to anyone writing their own site is to write well-constructed, normal English sentences that can ber read by both a machine and a human.
The final skill is marketing, after all this is what we are doing: marketing your site and therefore the company and products/services on the web. The key here is to set up your site to be accessible to the searches that most businesses will provide you with. I have seen many sites that can be found by entering the company name. Others that can be found by typing "Counter Manchester North West England", which is great, except no one does that search. So marketing skill requires knowledge of a company's business, what they are really trying to sell, and an understanding position than actual searches can provide dividends.
I hope you see that professional search engine optimization companies need more than a little bit of web design to improve their business. Make sure that anyone you choose for SEO work can cover all the bases.
