The Gateway to Success

The gateway to success

The exponential growth of web into a vast pool of information has ushered in a new era. This era is characterized by search engines, which have become the elementary navigational aid for the online community to explore the World Wide Web. Search engines are entrusted with the mammoth task of presenting web pages relevant to the searched term, from millions of web pages resident on the web. According to comScore, Americans conducted 11.7 billion searches at the core search engines, nearly identical to the number of core searches conducted in July. Google Sites handled 7.4 billion core searches (up 2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.3 billion and Microsoft Sites with 977 million. These figures strongly communicate what an organization would be missing if its website cannot be found via search engines. For organizations that don’t have a website, the statistics is reason enough to get one at the earliest.

It has been established beyond doubt that people use search engines to find product, services and information. A majority of people who use search engines do not use brand names to search. Instead they use descriptive words and phrases to perform a search. Therefore, a website with low search engine visibility would be like a resort built in the middle of nowhere. It will only attract occasional visitors who happen to discover it, only by accident. Such websites would defeat the purpose of its existence. On the other hand, having a website with high search engine visibility would be like having a resort in a famous tourist destination. It would attract a sea of visitors and thus suffice the motive behind any business - profitability.

Building a search engine compatible website is the key to achieving search engine visibility. Search engine optimization, as a tool to garner search engine visibility, is being widely used by web masters to gain high search engine visibility. Keyword research, analysis and deployment form the backbone of any SEO campaign. The website content is optimized to achieve keyword density and prominence along with other changes to the website’s HTML code to make it search engine compliant. Link popularity activities are undertaken in the form of link building, content syndication, directory submissions etc. to further augment search engine visibility of the website.

Contrary to the usual belief, search engine optimization is not a set of techniques used to trick search engines into giving high ranking to a particular web page or website. Also, while employing search engine optimization for your website you should not forget that the website is intended for the users and not search engines. Search engines are only a medium to reach them. No matter how high the search engine visibility, if a website does not appeal to end users then it would fail to entice business. The formula to success lies in striking the perfect balance between search engine and user friendly website.