The Purpose of SEO - Top Search Engine Rankings

Every web site owner wants to “get ranked high at Google.” But how exactly are you supposed to go about it?

High search engine ranking can be achieved in one of two ways:

1. You can purchase it with a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign. You’ll pay for every click and the cost can be quite high.
2. You can focus on organic search engine results.

: Image via CrunchBase

Most business owners choose a sort of hybrid and utilize both methods-creating a solid search engine ranking with organic results, and then supplementing with a pay-per-click campaign when necessary.

Organic search results will be the key to long-term success. To achieve a high ranking in the search engines, there are a few things to address, including:

Content
Keywords
Linking

Content is of course the primary source for both your keywords and your linking efforts. Without content, there’s just no point. Content can come in a variety of forms, including:

Articles
Blog posts
Video
Audio
Photos and graphic images

As long as the content has a purpose, i.e. to motivate linking, to focus on a keyword phrase, to drive traffic, then you’re on the right track.

When focusing on keywords, it’s important to do good research. You want to choose keywords with a fairly low supply and a high demand. The better this ratio, the more success you’ll have reaching number one on the search engine results (this is assuming you also have quality content – the search engines’ algorithms are pretty clever).

According to a survey conducted by SEOmoz.com, these are the five most important elements to your search engine strategy:

1. Keyword-focused anchor text from external links

2. External link popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

3. Diversity of link sources (links from many unique root domains)

4. Keyword use anywhere in the title tag

5. Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains

If you’ll notice, both keywords and linking play a critical role in search engine success. Your keywords should be in your title tag, and also in the anchor text ( the “clickable” words) from external links. Your links should be numerous and come from quality websites.

So how do you accomplish this? Ultimately it comes back to your content. However, regularly publishing great content on your website is only the first step; you’ll also want to attract interest for that content. You can do this with:

Utilizing social networking
Commenting on blog posts in your industry
Linking to other relevant blogs or websites (initiating reciprocity)
Article marketing
Press releases
Partnerships
And of course by achieving good search engine results.

The better your results, the more traffic and attention you’ll have.More people will link to your content and your SEO plan comes full circle.Ranking high in the search engines begins and ends with your content strategy. Find your keywords. Create amazing content and market that content.Patience, persistence and a solid plan are the keys to search engine success.