Top 10 Google Ranking during the Credit Crunch

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a much misunderstood and frustrating area for many companies trying to achieve their share of on-line business.
During the current "credit crunch" it is anticipated that there will be many businesses struggling to survive and a high search engine ranking in many cases may be the difference between closure and continuing survival or even success.

Any article relating to SEO must focus with Google as that is the search engine that conducts over three quarters of all web searches on the world wide web. There are other searche engines of course such as as Yahoo!, MSN/Live, and Ask, but their search engine share is 18%, 4% and 3.5% respectively for the last quarter of 2008. They appear to barely make a dent in Google's dominance.

Google's meteoric rise has often been attributed to the "Google Algorithm" which ensure that searches by users bring up highly relevant sites, ranking the most relevant the highest. This has even led to the phrase "Google it" which has become synonymous with the act of searching via a search engine.

The "google algorithm" is focused on ensuring that the results that come top are in fact organic rather than being a search engine optimisation short cut. However even within these constraints a company wishing gain a high ranking in Google must know what to do, when to do it and how much to do to meet the crieria of what Google determines is the activity of an organically developed site. Many business are do not have the time to spare from their core business activities and utilise Search Engine Optimisation experts, or seach engine optimization experts if you are in the US.

Such web marketing professionals look at and deal aspects of your site such as:

1) The amount of relevant content your site contains

2) The value web users give to your content (links to your site from other high respected sites, that is sites with a high PR.

3) The relevancy of these links, if you sell electronic products a link from an Architects site will have less value than a link from a electronics industry body.

It is possible to become a member of a link exchange but this in itself can in many instances have a negative effect if it is not done properly and in a manner consistent with organic growth of links to a site. If for instance your site suddenly has 5,000 links over a week the Google will have an historical index to determine the age of these links and would conclude that these have been purchased rather than growing naturally. Some companies do specialise in providing related links in an organic manner that is over the space of several weeks.

Getting to the top of Google is perfectly achievable provided that you work hard and spend a significant amount of time, that is nearly the same as a full-time job, in optimising, or optimizing if you are in the US.

In your own line of business you will have experiences that any professionally provided product of service can only be obtained through hard and professional and not a quick fix which invariably costs more in the long run. In Search engine optimisation failure to use "white hat" or organic techniques can ultimately result in the banning of your site that would mean that an hard work or financial commitment made to that date has been wasted.