Myths about Ranking in Internet Searches
Many people think that just having a website will automatically make them rank highly in "Search Engines " such as Google, Bing and other popular ones. The many ads out there that make it seem so simple have most professional web designers simply shaking their heads at this absurd notion! There is a reason why ranking results can be out of a million matches... If there is nothing to "catch the attention" of the search algorithms, such websites could end up on page 100 ....
The Science Behind High Ranking
In order to rank highly and be "found" on the first page of results for your particular major keywords, your website needs to incorporate a lot of different parameters as published by those search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and more. Premade template websites generally do not include any such parameters. Even when so-called "SEO" code is offered by cheap web builder platforms, it's just not the same because whoever created the SEO has no clue as to the real ins and outs of your particular business.
How Long Does it Take to Rank Your New Website?
The first question most people ask is " How long does it take to be "ranked"? Ranking is not instantaneous. It can take anywhere between 2 and 6 months for Google's "bots" to index all the new pages in the world and all the updated pages that happen constantly. To place them in the higher rankings, there are a lot of factors that are considered, including how well your website has been optimized, how many similar businesses are competing with you, how long has your website been around, etc. Budget is also a consideration - if your website doesn't contain the "right stuff", you may need to pay for Google Ad Words or other advertising venues and that still doesn't guarantee anything.
FAQ about SEO Terminology
Q. What is Search Engine Optimization
A. Often referred to as SEO - Google and the other search engines are looking for a whole bunch of factors and the more of these you have in your website, the higher you will rank. Because these factors all relate to your individual business, the more text and behind-the-scenes code that is specific to your business or industry, the better you will rank.
Q. What are Keywords?
A. Keywords are specific main words or groups of words which people will put into their browsers to search for your particular type of business. When Affordable Web Design Ltd's professional web designers works on your website, we take the time to ensure that your most relevant keywords will be put in many places on your website, both in the behind-the-scenes code as well as in the visible text.
A. This is where you appear when someone puts in a "keyword" to search for a specific type of business. As an example, if you are looking for "web design", just putting in those words will bring up just about every website in the world that talks about web design (currently around 11.4 billion matches when you type that into your browser address bar). However, if you put in "low cost web design", that will specifically pull up relevant websites which have incorporated such matching words (there are currently 2,380,000,000 [2.38 billion] matches).
A Today's computers usually "know" where you are located and your browser will pick out the most relevant websites related to the search words people put in where they are located. For instance, if someone is in Calgary and they are searching for an automotive mechanic, the browser they use will usually pull up auto mechanics in their area even if they didn't put the location in their search.
Q. What is a search algorith?
A. Search algorithms are formulae that search engines use to find specific information and determine the importance of a web page and its content. Each search engine has its own search algorithms to determine search engine result rankings of web pages. Although most people refer to searches as "Google", there are several other search engines used around the world. As of 2023, the top 10 most popular search engines around the world were Google, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Ask.com, Ecosia, AOL.com and Internet Archive, with Google being number 1 with a market share of 97.5%, and Bing being second with only 3.02%.
Q. What are Backlinks
A.- This means links coming into your web pages from another website's pages, which is one of the very important Search Engine parameters required to rank highly in internet searches. We are all inundated with emails offering thousands of links between sites - backlinks are only effective if those websites have something in common. Just having links to someone's site is not an effective backlink unless that website is talking about the same subject, or has other things in common.
