Does Your Web Site Deliver Maximum Search Results?

Achieving good and consistent search results is somewhat of a mystery to all but the well-studied on its most basic principles. Basically, search engines reward pages with the right combination of ranking factors and quality content. Unfortunately, it is a full-time job that most businesses do not allocate enough resources or budget.

Douglas USA maximizes its client's search results by strict adherence to search engine rules, populating its web site with branded "editorial quality" content, thus creating an important resource to customers, potential clients, industry influencers, and the media.

Most Important Search Influencers | Douglas USA Recommends All of the Following Search Components for a Company to Remain Competitive and Gain Market Share

• Quality Content
• Accurate Information
• Newsworthy Announcements
• Constant/Consistent Updates to Content
• Pertinent Images with Accurate Descriptions
• Video Footage of What a Company Does or has Achieved
• Power Point Presentations
• Links and Relationships with Industry Leaders, Vendors, and Governments
• Identification of and Marketing of Its Industry Experts to Pundits, Influencers, & Analysts

Understanding Search Engines

A search engine is the main starting point for most people attempting to find products, services, or information on the Web. Just think how many times you've used Google, Yahoo, or MSN to find an item yourself when unsure of where else to start. Since about 1993, demand for search engines has exploded.1 To ignore search engines as a part of your marketing mix is like forgetting to zip up your fly when
you dress in the morning—you just end up looking silly.

The Role of a Search Engine

Search engines have played one of the biggest roles in the growth of the Internet. The sole purpose of a Web search engine is to help find the most relevant web sites for a user. When a user enters a search term or a phrase into a search engine, the search engine examines its database of known web sites, decides what's most relevant, and returns the results to the user. When you consider that there are billions of web sites in existence, search engines allow us to find that needle in the giant haystack that is the Web.

Search Engine Results Pages

Search for "SEO" in Google, and you'll receive over 267 million results. As I mentioned earlier, part of the search engine's job is to list all the records it finds, ranked in order of what is most to least relevant, grouped into pages. We call these Search Engine Results Pages—or simply SERPs. Your objective in search engine marketing is to increase your site's ranking on the SERPS for keywords that are important to
your business—preferably making it to the first page, and ideally nailing the top spot. Needless to say, the distance you end up from first place can make a huge difference to the amount of traffic you gain from search engines—let alone being the 267 millionth!

Search engine marketing

Search Engine Marketing is any kind of activity that's intended to bring traffic from a search engine to another web site. A common source of confusion when discussing search engines occurs within its two
main disciplines: search engine optimization, and search engine advertising. While both relate specifically to search engine applications, their techniques and goals are quite different.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the function of improving a web site's position in the results of a search engine query for a target set of keywords. This includes optimizing your own pages—making your site attractive to search engines, as well as encouraging other sites to link back to you.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine advertising is when advertisements are displayed to search engine visitors when a defined set of search terms is requested. For the most part, these advertising campaigns are based on a Pay Per Click model where you pay a set amount each time your ad is clicked on.