You’re competing in a popularity contest
So you want to build your presence on the web? One of the best methods to increase your exposure on the web is to raise your ranking with major search engines. It may sound simple—you work on SEO (search engine optimization) for your site and you rank better—but this has been an ongoing science since the dawn of search. Search engine companies use web search results as the product that they deliver to their users and they want to make sure that it is high quality. Search engines try to optimize the results for their user’s query to the best of their ability. But how do the search engines know what is high quality? Well, one of the methods they use is to measure the amount and quality of backlinks to your web page.
“What is a backlink? A backlink, also called an ‘inbound link’ or ‘incoming link,’ is created when one website links to another. The link between the two websites is the backlink—so named because it points back to the linked-to page.” (1)
The theory is: if peer sites view your web page’s content as valuable, they will want to share it by linking to your site within their content. Therefore, the search engines will use the number of backlinks you have to gauge the value of your site’s content and affect your rank. For example: Assume you have two websites about dogs. Both have comparable information. One site has ten other websites backlinking to it for it’s information about dogs, while the other only has five. To the search engines, the site with ten links looks more relevant than the one with five, and thus ranks higher in the search results.
Website owners used to be able to employ methods (sometimes nefariously) to rank higher with the search engines. The search engines in turn have done a great job of removing a lot of what the site owner can do to affect how they rank anymore. Because the search engines pay close attention to the number of other sites with backlinks to yours when ranking, they have removed a lot of what a site owner can do to affect their ranking.
Major corporations have spent millions on marketing and publicity campaigns to make sure that they rank high in search results, so how can you rank high for the product you offer? This quandary is one major reason why many small players in the market start blogs and social media campaigns (present company included). The quantity and more relevant content that you can offer on the web, the more opportunity you have to direct traffic to your site and links to your domain, which means a higher ranking from the search engines.
There has recently been talk about how much social media will affect SEO. While there is no evidence that social media links to your site lead to any boost in ranking, neither is there any proof to the contrary. This means you can consider social media links a plus when building any marketing campaign but not a guarantee.
We have only scratched the surface for search engine optimization. In the next blog post I will discuss what aspects of SEO the site owner can control. I highly recommend reading the Beginner’s Guide To SEO (2) at moz.com for a more complete understanding of the basic principles of SEO. Take note that I have given two links to moz.com here, thus increasing their ranking for search results.