Getting Found

Information

The internet is essentially all about information, and there is a lot of it about. Google currently has over 9 Billion pages indexed, and the amount of information grows at a phenomenal rate every day.

The format of the information is very loosely controlled, and it is a wonder that we can find anything we want when searching this giant collection - it really is like looking for a needle in a haystack..!

The challenge of the internet

The biggest challenge for surfers therefore is finding relevant content, and for web site owners and ebusinesses its getting found by people who are looking for information on your products and services.

Thankfully, Goggle, Yahoo, MSN and others are there to help.

Spiders and human editors

Search engines have robotic spiders which crawl around the vast number of pages, following links, categorising and cataloging web page content, never resting, always on the move. For some major directories, human editors also review and classify content.

The topic of web pages is determined partly by the content - the actual words used on each page, and partly by the links to the page from other web pages - what other people say about you.

The search engines all have different ways to determine the topic and importance of individual web sites and pages, but their reputation and usefulness relies on delivering on-topic search results for each search term used.

Keywords and search engine optimisation

To develop and sustain a successful ebusiness, you need to identify and quantify the major keywords used by searchers, then search engine optimise and promote your web site to get found on the major search engines for these keywords.

This has developed into a science, or perhaps a bit of a black art. To be successful takes understanding of the algorithms used by the major search engines, and to keep-up with the frequent changes in these.

It also takes expertise in finding the best market keywords, in placing and using these keywords within web pages and links to ensure that they help the search engines to understand what your web site is about, to help develop your web page ranking, and to ultimatley ensure that you get found..!

It doesn't stop there though, because your competitors will be tryng to get ahead of you, to find the best keywords and get to the top of the rankings. To get to the top and stay there takes time, effort and expertise, and as markets and competitors change, you have to keep on the move...   more on search engine optimisation & promotion