The Opportunity
Don't skip this chapter. Despite some unavoidable (but mercifully brief) technical content, this chapter on Search Engine Optimization is written for you, not your programmer.
In fact, you may find this treatment of "Search Engine Optimization" to be demystifying and actually quite refreshing, because I'll tell you the truth, which could save you tens of thousands of dollars.
Simply put: The goal of Search Engine Optimization is to fine-tune a webpage so that it ranks first in the search results at Google and Yahoo for a targeted search term.
For instance, if you want to convince as many internet users as possible to favor lowering the voting age to 16 years old, your goal would be to optimize a webpage so that it appears at the top of the results at Google and Yahoo when a search-engine user enters "voting age" as the search term.
To achieve that goal, you'll need to convince the search engines that your webpage is the most authoritative source of information on "voting age." Since internet computers aren't human, they don't understand English; yet, they are responsible for presenting search results in order of relevancy and end-user satisfaction.
To determine relevancy, search engines use pattern recognition. Search engines will look at the number of times the phrase "voting age" appears on your webpage and where the phrase is located. All elements of your webpage will be evaluated for patterns: from the title to the words used in the URL (e.g., http://yoursite.org/voting-age.html). Search engine spiders will also identify the patterns found in links to your webpage. If several external websites link to your webpage using the text link "voting age," search engines will assume that your webpage is highly relevant to that term.
But if search engines relied solely on pattern recognition, then it would be easy to spam their results simply by "stuffing" keywords into the places that they look to evaluate relevancy. Therefore,, smart search engines like Google consider additional factors, such as end-user satisfaction.
For instance, when Google displays search results, it measures click-thru rates on each listing. Listings with comparatively high click-thru rates are subsequently displayed higher in the search results, while listings with comparatively low click-thru rates are displayed lower in the search results.
Google also measures how often searchers use the back-button to return to the search results and make a different selection. When that happens, Google concludes that the user was unsatisfied by the first listing. If a listing has a worse-than-average bounce-back rate, Google will conclude that the content at that page is lacking and will lower the listing of that page in subsequent search results. However, if you develop a terrific webpage with a comparatively low bounce-back rate, Google will reward that webpage with higher listings in subsequent search results.
Search Engine Optimization is Easier than You Think
When you know what search engines look for, you can easily tweak your webpages and website to rank higher in the search engines. Many SEO techniques are so simple they can be done by an amateur in just a few minutes. A single SEO improvement may not have an immediate effect, but continually working toward an optimized site can have a dramatic affect on both your webpage rankings and your site traffic.
