What are Search Engine Optimization and Internet Rankings Really About?

When considering if search engine optimization is the right marketing facet for your company, one must first consider what search engine optimizers do on a small, and larger scale, and how internet rankings can play a crucial role in optimizing brand awareness and ultimately gross profit margins. It is also important though, to understand the deficits of this system and what has resulted from it. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a company’s visibility on major search engines such as Google which would result in the company to be listed higher or earlier on the search results page.

The importance of this as a marketing tool is that based on a web forum’s internet ranking, the company significantly increases their opportunities of being viewed by the consumer. This is a process that Search Engine Optimizers have honed into an art, by using “meta tags” which are essentially key words used as tags to link to a page, which are utilized in order to improve internet ranking. Another popular process is image search optimization which organizes content in order to increase the search relevance by attaching key words. This is how large fashion retails stores such as lululemon, Zara, and H&M, to name a few, remain to be the link that we see when we do a web search containing their label.

Although these benefits optimizing consumer viewing of a product or service which in tern create brand awareness the system of manipulating internet rankings also has it’s flaws. In 2005 Google began personalizing internet rankings based on the individual users most common searches, in order to more effectively generate results that catered to consumer needs. This however has created a redundancy for implementing search optimization techniques, as the highest ranking search results will contain meta tags that were most popular to the consumer. The reasoning for google to take drastic measures in stopping this type of marketing is because companies use meta tags which are unrelated to the public forum in order to improve their search engine optimization. This is a common occurrence with web searches, where a number of search results will show distasteful, undesired content.

However, despite these efforts to stop the practice of search engine optimization, it remains to be a make-or-breaking factor for the online success of any company. It has also become a large money making enterprise for many experts willing to offer the services to improve a companies exposure, by offering software, techniques, tips, and tutorials on ranking optimization. It would seems that despite it’s deficits, search engine optimization has become a leading marketing tool in the world of business and will continue to generate product loyalty. Whether a company likes it or not, it has become the principle way in which we recognize brands and services and must be considered by any entrepreneur.