Google And Other Search Engine Page Ranking.....how To Maximize?

[space cowboy]

I am a serious non-techie but need to learn more about how to best get a site more exposure via google and other search engine as far as rankings, etc. I am grateful for any replies as well as Pms and also would consider paying somebody hourly to "educate" me in these areas. Hoping to get some answers. Thanks in advance. I am in Bangkok.

[cdnvic]

I would signup for Google Groups and look through the webmaster newsgroups there. Whatever you do, do not fall for services offering to increase your Google ranking, or claiming to be able to get you a high page ranking. Often these services just wind up placing your site on link farms that will eventually get you blacklisted from Google. Other services will offer to submit you to 400+ search engines. Hardly worth the money when Google, Yahoo, MSN, and their affiliates comprise over 90% of the english speaking market.

Also, read Search Engine Watch regularly to learn the ins and outs of how various search engines work.

[monty]

Depending on what product/subject your website relates to, search engine optimization is not very hard!

As in any business, competition is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

If you manage a website for a hotel in Pattaya, the going will be very though, since there are 100's of Pattaya hotels all wanting to be on the first spot, and some of them have the cash to pay themselves to the top (google advertising etc...)

On top of that there are the hotel booking websites who will try very hard to push the websites of the hotels themselves down, so prospective customers for rooms will see their site before they find the site of the hotel itself (hopefully resulting in a booking on which they get commision)...

If on the other hand you have a website selling heating installations for houses in Thailand, you'll be on the top spot pretty quick

Anywhere in between you'll have to think very carefully about how you'd want to promote your site, what search terms will your prospective visitors use to find a site like yours etc...

The actual optimization will consists of two parts, first the content of your website, and how accesible the site is for a search engine.

The content has to be relevant, e.g. the more google will see the word hotel in a site, the more relevant google will think the site is to people searching for hotels.

Make sure google can easily find all pages, i.e. you need clear links to all your pages. Google does not understand fancy java based menu's.

The second part (especially for Google) is how many other websites link to your website.

Google gives every page a rank, which is very heavily based on how many other relevant websites link to your page...

Just make sure to educate yourself, because when you're too aggressive you can get blacklisted by google, and you won't get in again. E.g. if you put thousands of times the word hotel on your site in invisible small script, google might consider this spamming, and out you go, never to be seen again!

Edited December 19, 2006 by monty