Introduction to Keywords and Web Page Titles

It is possible to rank highly on search engine results pages using only the keyword approach to web design. However in highly competitive arenas you have to make sure that your web is made popular to other websites. This approach along with keyword analysis, and web page structuring is what gives you a good chance of page 1 slot 1 success on the search engines. This chapter will also introduce you to important search engine thinking

Apart from the actual search engine designers/managers no-one knows exactly how any search engine works for deliberate reasons. Some search engines are better than others because their search technology is better. Consequently they guard their technology with great jealousy. Despite this a great deal of information has been gathered to allow good assumptions to be made.

Anything I present in these next few paragraphs is therefore very educated guesswork. But by the time you have finished reading you will I am quite sure agree with what I say in terms of the usefulness of the information to sell products successfully on the net.

A search engine is only as good as its results. If a search engine continuously returns inadequate results to its surfers it will die. It will die because it will no longer attract advertisers or any other source of income because people will stop using it.

Conversely good search engines will garner more and more market share because they will provide their customers with what the customer wants namely relevant results or SERPs.

3 years ago Google was an unknown virtually. Today (December 2002) it accounts for up a major share (about 80%) of all search engine query results. There is no guarantee that this will remain the case. Only a few weeks ago Google had approx 35% - how on earth did it get such a massive extra share so quickly?

Take a look at the next 2 pictures. In both cases the search was for good cheddar cheese. For the first search I used Yahoo and the second Google. They are both the same the descriptions are different, thats all

Google managed to convince (and so charge) Yahoo to return its (Googles) own results and not the traditional Yahoo results. Google also produces results for AOL and others. It is now even more true that your site should be optimised for showing up on Google.

The probable reason for the Yahoo shift in strategy: they were more relevant to searchers and Yahoo probably realised it was losing market share to Google maybe it was a case of join now or pay later, who knows.

It certainly makes one thing very obvious to web marketers. Google was the most important search engine on the web and now it is by far the most important for the time being at least. Consequently if you intend to sell using search engine assistance internationally then knowing as much as possible as to how Google operates is absolutely essential.

Yahoo has just purchased the search company Inktomi, probably to make itself less reliant upon Google. Inktomi is a very important pay for inclusion search engine which we will discuss later. STOP PRESS: In July 2003 Yahoo announced intention to buy Overture which had already bought Fast and Inktomi. A battle between Google and Yahoo at some time is in the offing.

Keywords and titles article continued here