Why you should use cheap SEO services
Why you should use cheap SEO services
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a totally intangible product. You're buying a promise, what's more a promise that could take months to deliver. I'm sure you've heard enough people telling you that you get what you pay for, that if something looks to good to be true it probably is and the like. Why spend a load of money using some reputable, professional SEO company when this nice guy on the phone promises you top rankings for 50 quid a month?
Why you SHOULD use cheap SEO services
Google and the other search engines try to find the web pages that most closely relate and are most relevant to the search term that the searcher uses. They do this by using a variety of methods and an order of precedence to provide the most relevant results. For order of precedence, think competition and for competition I like to think of this of this story...
Two friends are walking through the savannah when they spot a lion in the distance, looking rather hungry. Quick as a flash one of the friends opens his backpack and whips out a pair of trainers. The other friend, realising neither is a Usain Bolt says "what are you doing, you'll never outrun the lion with those on?" His friend replies calmly, "I don't need to outrun the Lion, I just need to outrun you". It's pretty much the same with Search Engine Rankings.
Google (and the others) firstly analyse the content of web pages to find the closest match to the user's question or 'search query'. If you have a very obscure phrase, often simply using that phrase on the page will be enough to give you a top ranking within Google. If you sold underwater crocheting holidays, for instance, I'm pretty much sure that just incorporating the phrase "underwater crocheting holidays" into your page will bring you up tops. If there was more than one page that referred to "underwater crocheting holidays" then including the phrase more frequently and also including it in headings and the page title will stand you in much greater stead for getting to the top. There that was easy, no great mystery or skill, that's SEO done, now where's my 50 quid a month?
Unfortunately not many people do search for "underwater crocheting holidays" and pretty much guaranteed in today's competitive environment, if people are searching for something, other people will seek to meet that demand.
When you look at more competitive terms, where there are more than a handful or so of results, then Google will use other ways to figure out which result is most relevant to rank at the top. Then, in addition to how often the keyword appears on the page, it looks at the page titles, the Meta headers, the headings (<H1> & <H2>), the domain and the URL. It will also look at elements like the keyword density. The more a keyword phrase is used, the more Google sees this as a more relevant page for that particular keyword, however where a keyword is overused, Google will see this as spam and discount or even drop that page.
OK, still relatively simple, but where a keyword phrase is widely used, for instance there are 36,100,000 results for the term astrology, then Google looks even further than what's on a webpage. They look in true democratic style at how the web rates sites and pages. Basically the more links coming in to a page from other websites, the more other sites consider this an important resource for that particular subject. How sites link to the site, the keywords used in the anchor text, the relevancy of the pages that link to these pages, the internal linking and anchor text used all become more and more important in how the pages are ranked as competition increases. Google also looks at a variety of other technical, design, content and quality guidelines, see Google Webmaster Guidelines, as well as the traffic to the page, even the load time of the page. Where the site is hosted, geographically as well as the other sites hosted on your server will also have an impact, then don't forget Google likes to change the rules on a regular basis to ensure it serves the most relevant results.
And just like the guy, his training shoes and the lion, you need to keep looking over your shoulder. Rankings change continually as the search engines consider other factors; change their rules, as they consider changes to links and as competitor sites change what they do. Monitoring rankings is a major part of SEO. If your ranking has dropped and a competitors has risen, why? And how can you emulate or top that to put your site back on top.
OK, all that's not quite so simple, in fact it's a lot of work and virtually impossible to do on a shoestring. So the message is simple, if the keyword terms that are important for your business or organisation are popular and competitive, you need to invest in quality Search Engine Optimisation. If your keyword phrases are obscure and not competitive then you really should use cheap SEO services.
