Last week I was conversing with a client
over the phone and she mentioned that she wanted her new website to be
on the top of the SERP’s page. When I started to explain to her the
logistics of being listed at the top for her search terms she was
fascinated. She is a very intelligent woman with several websites
already, and it got me to thinking that I should probably do a post for
people who don’t quite understand it all.
So, with that in mind – let me just explain (gently) how it all works:
Whenever you go to a search engine such as Google and you type in a
keyword or phrase (the words you are using to search for something),
after you hit “Search”, the items that come up are broken down as
follows:
Take a look at the image below with the results in red:
Those
are the top paid results. To get in that position, you have to be
engaged in a PPC (Pay Per Click) or (Adwords) campaign with Google and
you have to be the top bidder for the keyword phrase that was searched
on. In this case the phrase was “complete business cards”.
In the next image, look at the results in red:
These are also paid or “sponsored” results from a PPC campaign. The
results on the side are not the top dollar advertising. Again, the
person in charge of the campaign has a choice on what keywords to bid
on, how much they want to spend per word or phrase and what position
they want to be in.
In the next image, look at the results in red:
These are the natural search results. Meaning, the results that are
showing up here are based on SEO (search engine optimization) and not a
paid advertising campaign. This clearly demonstrates how important
search engine optimization can be to your marketing budget.
Although I haven't explained the search engine algorithms and how
they work (that's a whole other subject), I hope I've helped explain
what it is your looking at when you do a search and what methods were
used for those websites to show up there.