Northern Virginia Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
by people who were able to get their own website to the top of the rankings!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Reality Check

"Can you improve my website's search engine rankings?"

A short review about how search engines really work

by Walt Thiessen
Written: January 27, 2011
Last Updated: August 11, 2011

One of the most common questions we get is, "How can I get better rankings in the search engines for my website"? There are an awful lot of self-described "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) experts out there. Chances are high that you've already been contacted by a bunch of them, promising to move your business's website to the top of the search rankings. It's crazy, but that's what they all promise.

The Naked Truth About Self-Described SEO Experts

Here's a reality check for you: Self-described SEO experts who promise to move your site to the top of the rankings lie at least 99.9 percent of the time! How do I know? Simple logic.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume that you're a dentist in Alexandria, Virginia. A quick check of Verizon's Superpages (their online yellow pages) shows that there are about 400 dentists in the greater Alexandria area. How many of those dentists do you think the SEO experts contact? If you answered "all of them", you're right!

Now, if an SEO expert contacted all 400 dentists and promised to put all 400 of them at the top of the search engine rankings, how many of those dentists did the SEO expert lie to? If you answered, "at least 399 of them”, you are absolutely correct!

This fact alone should tell you that SEO experts who promise to move your site to the top of the rankings lie 99.9 percent of the time. It's no exaggeration to conclude that 99.9 percent of all self-described SEO experts who contact businesses to sell their SEO services are liars.

But what if the SEO expert who contacted you really IS good at his job? What if he's actually part of the 0.1 percent who do know what they're talking about? How would you know? Again, there is a very simple test. Find out their company's website address. Let's assume you asked and found that their website is www.seo-by-joe.com. Good. Now, go to Google and search on the keyword "search engine optimization". Or, if you want to be more specific, search on "Virginia search engine optimization" or "VA SEO" or something like that. Then go through the results on the first 2-3 pages. If you can't find the SEO expert's website, www.seo-by-joe.com (or whatever it is), on the first 2-3 pages of search results, then you know for a fact that they don't really know what they're talking about! After all, if they really are search engine experts, then they should score well for their own, most important keywords, right?

Do not fall for the trap of trusting them when they say, "I put so-and-so's website at the top of the rankings for their best keywords." Anyone can claim that, but it's almost impossible to prove or disprove. How do you know that they even worked on that site? How do you know that so-and-so's website got to the top because of what this particular SEO Expert did? Some business people hire lots of so-called SEO experts to work on their sites over time. If they end up at the top of the search results, which of those experts actually got them there? As you can see, there are many reasons to not trust a claim like that.

That's why it's always better to check the expert's own site's rankings for SEO-related keywords, because their own website's rankings are a lot harder to fake!

I don't try to rank high for search engine optimization, because that's not my main business. My main business is website hosting and website videos. We rank well for keywords like "virginia web site hosting”, "virginia web site videos" or "va website hosting”, (as well as variations on these keywords), because those are our main keywords. Do a Google or a Yahoo! Search on keywords like those, and you'll find our website, www.vahost.net, somewhere on the first 2-3 pages of results. That proves that, unlike the so-called "SEO experts" I really am an expert...far more of an expert than the so-called "experts”. I know that no one, not even me, can guarantee top rankings.

A Short History of Google

Before Google came along, search engines like Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos, and Alta Vista dominated the search engine business. If you visited one of those search engines in the 1990s and did a search, however, the results you got were completely irrelevant to whatever you were seeking. It was great for skilled webmasters, because it was easy to use various "tricks" to get our websites listed on the first page of a search. I was really good at it. All skilled webmasters were really good at it. In fact, we were so good at it that we could push a website that was completely unrelated to a particular keyword to the top of the rankings for that keyword!!! This was the origin of search engine optimization. It was great for us and our clients, but it was lousy for everyone else. It was terrible for users who rarely got the information they wanted from a search. For instance, if they did a search on "plumbers”, chances were excellent that none of the first 10 results (the first page of results) would be about plumbers (unless, of course, the plumber was a customer of one of us webmasters who knew how to force search engine results to favor our clients!).

In 1998, along came two college students at Stanford University named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They were computer science graduate students, and their thesis for their PhD was a paper on how to produce better search engine results. To prove their concept, they created the first Google search engine server using the computer lab at Stanford. Their very simple concept revolutionized search.

Page and Brin argued that instead of basing search rankings on factors such as what meta-tags your web pages have, how often a search term (also known as a "keyword phrase”) appeared on your web pages, or how many pages on your website included that search term, search results should be dependent upon what other websites thought about your site. This would take the power of web search out of the hands of webmasters, making it possible to produce much better search results. They measured what other websites thought of your site by looking at how many other sites linked to your site, and more importantly, how relevant (similar topic) those websites are to your site. So if we think of links to your site as "votes”, they proposed that whoever received the most high quality "votes" in the form of links to their sites from other peoples' websites would score highest in a particular search. They would give added weight to a vote depending on who cast it.

So, for instance, let's say you're in the retail tire business, and you have a website that talks about your products and services. If other tire businesses link to your website, those "votes" would be weighted pretty heavily, because you and they are both in the same business. If Goodyear or Firestone linked to your website, those "votes" would be weighted even higher and would count a lot more. If Joe Blow has a blog where he writes about automobile tires, his votes would also count, although they would count a lot less than either a tire manufacturer or a competitor. But if Joann's Fabrics linked to your site, the "vote" wouldn't count at all, because clothing fabrics have nothing at all to do with automobile tires.

From the moment they created the first Google search engine in the Stamford University computer lab in 1998, it produced remarkably accurate search results compared to the leading search engines of the day. This is why Google very quickly became #1 in the search engine business. In fact, the improvement was so dramatic, they didn't even have to publicize or market their product. It was passed along via word-of-mouth and caught on like wildfire around the world, turning Brin and Page into instant billionaires along the way.

Their success insures that there's very little anyone can do to manipulate search engine results to favor their own website.

This story does, however, illustrate the value of exchanging links with the websites of others in your field. In other words, if you're a lawyer, and another lawyer links to your site from his site, and you return the favor by linking to his site from your site, you both benefit from the "vote" factor. You vote for him, he votes for you, and you both gain. This only works when both sites are about the same overall topic (in the case of our example, the overall topic would be "legal questions and issues”). Will it put both of you at the top of the rankings? No, but it will help.

So now you know that when someone promises to put your website at the top of the rankings, you know not only that they're lying, but also why you can be certain they're lying. This is even more true if you get a phone call or an email from someone who says they're working with Google or Yahoo, or in some way claims to have a working relationship with either search engine. If you get a call like that, hang up. Don't even hear them out, because they're lying to you, too. Google and Yahoo do not have any vendor relationships with any so-called SEO Experts.

So is there nothing I can do that will help your website's search engine rankings?

There are certain things we can do, although none of them guarantee #1 rankings (or even top 10 rankings). Most of them are very time-consuming, and most self-employed people don't have time to do them, but I mention them here anyway for the sake of completeness.

1. Make sure the keywords for which you want your site to be found are included somewhere on your site (preferably the home page). This one is pretty straightforward. If the word or words don't appear on your website, Google, Bing, and Yahoo! won't find them for your site. So if you're one of those dentists in Alexandria, and you want to give your site a chance to be found for the keyword, "alexandria dentist”, make sure that keyword appears somewhere on your site, preferably on your home page.
2. Exchange links with other websites in your field. Website owners who do this will find that their links to each other will help boost their rankings and increase traffic to their websites. This is the most effective way to boost your search engine rankings. I can't predict how many links you'll need, because it varies from industry to industry, from region to region, and from customer to customer. Nor can I promise that this will push you to the top of the rankings. What I can tell you is that, for most industries, it doesn't take a lot of links to improve your position in searches, because most website owners (so far) don't try to exchange links.
3. Add lots and lots of content to your site. Search engines like content. The more useful and informative pages of information that you add to your site over time, the better your chances with the search engines.
4. If you have lots of time to spend online, open a blog account and start blogging. Link back to your website from your blog on a regular basis. This approach is only for someone who can afford to spend time blogging every day.
5. Do Social Networking. Another thing to do if you have lots of time for it (which most business people don't) is to open a Facebook account and begin to do "social networking”. This is merely the modern term for what used to be called old-style "networking”, where you join a Chamber of Commerce or something like that, participate in their various meetings, committees, etc., meet and greet, and build relationships. The difference is that now you do the same thing on Facebook, by far the most popular website for social networking. It's currently the second-most-popular website in the world, according to Alexa.com, which tracks that kind of thing. (Number 1 on the list, in case you hadn't guessed, is Google.)

Google Places

Lately, we've also gotten a lot of inquiries from local businesses regarding how to do well in Google Places, also known as Google Maps. This is another area where the so-called SEO experts have heavily sold their overpriced wares.

The truth is that it's very easy to get listed in Google Places. Believe it or not, you simply create an account with Google (if you don't have one already), login, and do a search for your business by name and address. If you're listed in the yellow pages of your phone book, chances are excellent that your business will show up. Once it does, click on the Places link and then click the Claim This Business link at the top of the page. It's pretty easy. In one of those rare instances where you can't find your business, you can simply create a new entry.

But how does Google decide who gets listed first in Google Places with those little red balloons on the map? Primarily, there are three factors.

The first is called the "centroid”, which means how far you are from what Google considers to be the center of town. Alternatively, it can also mean how far you are from the user's location, particularly if they're using a mobile device, such as an I-Pad or a cell phone. It's not always clear how Google calculates the centroid for a town that has no local government. Woodbridge, VA, for example, doesn't have a town hall, court house, or police station. In cases like these, it's often best to simply go to Google Maps, type in Woodbridge, VA, and see where the name appears on the map. That's your best indicator. I just checked it now, and Google located Woodbridge near Potomac Mills at the intersection of Rt 1 (Jefferson Davis Hwy) and Occuquan Road. Thus, if your business is located in Woodbridge, Google measures its locality relevance based on how close it is physically located to that intersection.

The second major factor is user ratings. Google users are able to rate local businesses by logging into their Google account and clicking on the rating option for your business. You'll see this as five little stars in a row. Depending on which star they click on from left to right, they end up giving you a low to high rating. The highest rating comes when they click on the far-right star of the five. They also get a chance to leave a comment.

The third factor is your websites' regular, so-called "organic" rankings. If your site ranks well in regular, non-Google-Places searches, it helps your Google Places rankings as well.

If you're concerned about your rank on Google Places, look at your competitors listings and you'll see that whoever has the best combination of having the most positive ratings, being ranked highly in the organic rankings, and being closest to the "centroid" is the one who is at the top of the rankings.

See? You didn't have to pay some SEO expert a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to find that out!

If you want help, we can do some work with link exchanges and keyword development that suits your needs and your budget. We can also help you take control of your Google Places listing. But once again, I refuse to guarantee results because that's the only honest way to provide such services. And even if we manage to get you to the top of the rankings, there is absolutely no way to insure that you'll stay there. Search engine rankings change daily, and they are all outside of the power of any webmaster or SEO expert to control, including us. The most any of us can honestly do is recommend ideas that help.