Dec 8, 2009

SEO: The Most Important Thing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a set of techniques that one needs to apply to one's website to make it search engine friendly. There is also a set of techniques one needs to do to increase the site's popularity (i.e. back links). All this is done in relation to a particular set of keywords. In other words, you can't SEO-optimize a site in general. You would always SEO-optimize it for specific keywords, for example: "SEO Ottawa", "Ottawa SEO", "Search Engine Optimization Ottawa", and similar related keyword phrases.

It is commonly said that SEO cannot be done well by doing just one thing. For example, you can optimize your META data and copy all you want, but if you have few back links pointing at your site, your SEO will always be poor.

And yet, if you were to do just one thing for best SEO, what would it be? I'd say, clearly, build back links. Quality back links, that is.

How many back links do you need to have a noticeable effect on your SEO?

There is no scientifically proven answer to this question, but in my experience, a site with 3900 back links usually gets PR7 (page rank) on Google, which grants it to be displayed in SERPs (search engine results pages) as one of the very first links for very competitive keywords. But in that, there is always a good number of high quality links, i.e. the ones coming from .edu or .gov domains or large media outlets or other "important" destinations. So the number of back links matters significatnly less than quality of those links, but it does matter. Here is more information on this topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-link-command-busting-the-myths

Note that PR7 is a very - very - high rank. For comparison, Yahoo has PR of 8. So, for an average business, PR5 usually guarantees a very good SEO positioning on Google. Anything over that is simply fantastic, if you can get it. In my experience, back links are the most influential factor in Google's ranking decisions.

I did notice, however, that in certain instances sites that have PR0 (zero) still get displayed very high on SERPs, and, in fact, Googlers themselves were open about the fact that the page rank (PR) does not always play the main role (whatever that means!). Since noone really knows exactly how Google makes ranking decisions (it is, indeed, a very well kept secret), we can only form opinions based on our observations. And in this case, my observations are in agreement with the mainstream SEO community: link building is the most important thing for your SEO. And quality links, i.e. the ones coming from reputable outlets, are best.

So get started at it!

And if you need advice on how to build quality back links quickly and cost-effectively, do not hesitate to contact me via my main SEO Ottawa site.