Google dominates 80% of search queries on the Internet, so we need to primarily target Google, however, the information on this page is relevant for any search engine, as modern search engines work in very similar ways.

If you haven't read it already you may want to read our 'Secrets of Google Search Engines' blog post.

Google works in 4 ways.

1. Backlinks, the number of quality websites which are linking to your website and the text that they use.

2. The number of people searching for and clicking on your website in Google's results.

3. Feedback from the Chrome browser on usage.

4. On-site content. Primarily the title tag and URL but also other content on the page.

Backlinks

This is the most important part of Search Engine Optimization and is essentially what the entire Google system is based on. Google will rank your website based on how many other quality sites are linking to your website with the keyword as the anchor text.

The best example of this is the text 'Click Here' which until a few years ago appeared all over the internet if a page contained a .pdf document. There would be a link saying that you require adobe acrobat reader and to 'Click Here' to download it. Of course, there is no advantage of getting the term 'Click Here' to rank, however, it exposes the way that Google works. Even to this day the Adobe Reader download page still appears on the first page of results on Google for 'Click Here'.

If you are selling bean bags then you would want to get as many sites to link to your website with the term 'Bean Bags' as the link text. If you could get those links on quality sites then your ranking in Google will rocket upwards for that term.

Whilst this seems simple, the difficulty is that Google is constantly restricting the sites which count as backlinks. There use to be entire sites known as 'link farms' which would provide back links. Or alternatively, groups of sites would get together and provide links to each other sites. Google has clamped down on this now, so in most cases, such links do not count. However, visit any forum or comments area on a website and you will likely still see comments such as 'This is such an amazing post' which will contain a link back to the website which is attempted to be promoted.

You need to find quality sites which will publish articles from you about the items that you are selling. Or, you need to pay sites to publish your articles. The important thing is, that those sites need to rank highly in Google themselves.

For example, with your bean bags, you might write an article for a home design website saying how great bean bags are. Or write a guest blog for an online lifestyle magazine. The more times you do this, over time your Google rank will climb higher and you will reap the benefits. The great thing is that in most cases your articles will be in place for a long time and so the effect compounds.

The Number of People Searching for and Clicking on your Website

If you do some successful offline marketing for example on television or radio, and thousands of people suddenly start trying to find your website, then Google will notice and your rank will climb higher. This is Google's primary job and it does it well. To help people to find what they are looking for as easily as possible.

As well as advertising you might get key influencers to promote your items. For example, look at the success of Superdry once David Beckham was pictured wearing their clothes.

Chrome Useage

This in many ways is the same as the previous point. Google are widely rumoured to monitor how many people are visiting your site through the Chrome browser. Therefore even if your visitors are going to your site directly rather than searching for it in Google, Google will know about it and it will help you to rank higher.

On Site Content

Your Sellr site will already be optimized for on-site content. If you look at the URL of each page, you will notice that it contains the item name. There will also be hyphens and numbers but these are ignored by Google.

Google likes relevant content, so you should make sure that your item descriptions and content on your web pages are unique and descriptive for the items that you are selling. Cutting and pasting the descriptions from manufacturer provided infomation may be a disadvantage as you will be competing directly with other sites which have also done this, and who may already have higher rankings. It is, however, something to experiment with.

It can be difficult to directly compete with other more established sites who already rank highly for the content that you are trying to rank for. There is another solution to this however. Instead of trying to compete with the same content, create more content on your site. If you were selling Bean Bags, you might have pages on 'The History of Bean Bags', 'People who have Owned Bean Bags', 'You Won't believe what happened to this Bean Bag' and hundreds more similar articles. Over time they will be picked up by Google, people will read the articles and it will bring more people to your site, therefore increasing your ranking and ultimately increasing your sales. For an example of this see https://blog.sellr.com where many of the pages have had thousands of reads. This uses the Sellr Content Marketing and Blogging System which you can access by clicking 'Website'> 'Manage your Blog' on the Sellr control panel. Of course this entire help system is also built using this system and it brings people to the Sellr website as well.

Summary

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process for which there are no short cuts. You will see companies offering to write articles for you, linking to your site, or to perform an on-site audit, however we have yet to see one which makes any measurable difference to a website. Ultimately you, the business owner, are far better placed to write articles and to work out a link building strategy with other websites. As with any marketing, the more marketing methods that you put in place, the better the over all effect. As your other marketing methods increase, you will find that your search engine ranking also increases, as more people search for you.