Everyone wants to be number one on Google. Why wouldn't you? The top position in search engine results is the one that is most likely to get clicked on and the more clicks you get the better off your website investment is.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a branch of Search Engine Marketing that focuses specifically on getting your website in as visible a position on search engines as possible.

Unfortunately for Website owners the search engines have no interest in making this task easy for you. They wish to be the unbiased third party that dictates what in fact is the best website for any given search term. To this end they keep their 'rules' for high search engine positions a closely guarded secret and change them regularly to better improve the experience for their users. It is for this reason that Search Engine Optimisation services such as those offered by Alkemi are in such high demand.

What Determines My Search engine Position?

The means by which most search engines determine the relevancy of your website to a given search term (and as a result your eventual position) can be broken down into two parts: on-page and off-page factors.

On-page factors are those elements of your website you have direct control over. We're talking about the actual text that appears on your site, page titles, alt-text on images and other physical elements of the page. The search engines read all this content and from this attempt to distil the purpose of the page and what keywords it is most relevant to.

Off-page factors represent those aspects of your website that you have little to no control over; predominantly this means your site's link popularity.

Link popularity is a term that refers to how many links on external websites are pointing to your own. To use a very basic metaphor consider every link to your website a vote of confidence. Given two websites with largely similar content but significant variance in the number of incoming links it is the site with the most links (or 'votes of confidence') that the search engine is most likely to put in the top spot. Search engines will even look at the content of the links to help further elucidate the purpose of the page they point to.

I Need Traffic Now!

Where a number of people get it wrong when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation is in thinking high search engine positions can be achieved overnight. Before embarking on any SEO campaign be sure that it suits your needs. SEO is a long term strategy and not one suited to time critical traffic generation. If you seek traffic that can be turned on and off with little more than your say so then perhaps it is time to consider other options such as Pay per Click marketing.

However, in the long run, the effort you put in to improving your site's search engine positioning through SEO services such as those offered by Alkemi is one of the most cost effective and enduring means by which you can boost your site's traffic. If you are looking for a long term approach to improving your site's traffic levels don't hesitate to contact Alkemi today.