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Search Engine Basics
Search engines and electricity have a great deal in common. When we turn on a light switch, we don’t often think about how the light came on. When we make a search in Google or Yahoo we don’t often think about how those results are compiled.
Search engines regularly go through a process called ‘indexing’. Indexing involves the use of software ‘robots’ also called ‘spiders’, that go out and ‘crawl’ the Internet, compiling information about every website they can find. Since the Internet is a ‘web’, the search engine robots are able to follow links and literally read billions of pages.
The websites that have been found are then ranked. Websites are ranked based on one factor, relevancy.
Unfortunately, the weight that different features are given varies from search engine to search engine. Major search engines frequently change the algorithms or the formulas they use to measure and rank relevance. Therefore, search engine rankings are constantly in a state of flux. This constant adjusting of algorithms and re-indexing of the Internet is done in an attempt to improve search engine results.
Search engines exist for one reason, to provide the most relevant possible results for the search term that has been entered.
To have a top ranked site, you do not need to be the largest company or spend the most money. You just need to have the best built website.
Search Engine Optimization:
One key to effective search engine optimization is to know which features are currently important to the search engines.
EXAMPLE: At one time the ‘keyword meta tag’ was considered to be very important to search engine ranking. It is now largely ignored by the search engines. Misuse of keyword meta tags can result in reduced ranking or being banned from the search engines.
Another key to effective search engine optimization is to build websites based on how people search.
EXAMPLE: If you were in charge of building a patient education website for a new cholesterol drug, would you select the term ‘reduce cholesterol’ or ‘lower cholesterol’ as your keyword term? Do you think it would make much difference? In fact it would make a huge difference - There are 215,000 searches a week for ‘reduce cholesterol’ versus 18,250 weekly searches for ‘lower cholesterol’.
Mistakes in search engine optimization choices can greatly impact your search engine visibility.
Pharmaceutical SEO can improve your search engine visibility by combining search engine optimization and complete analysis of consumer search activity. High rank for highly searched terms equates to greater web traffic and improved ROI for your entire internet marketing investment.
SEO Action Plan
The outcome of each client engagement is the ‘SEO Action Plan’. This comprehensive report (details here) includes competitive analysis, keyword analysis and step-by-step instructions for optimizing a new website or for improving the ranking of an existing website.
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