Web Hosting SEO

Keywords, Key Phrases and SERP

Your company has a web site, it's a well designed and expensive site developed by experts from a
popular web design company. It's easy to find by using the company name as the keyword at all major
search engines. This should get you great search results and bring lots of buying customers to your site,
right? Nope, your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is buried somewhere well below page one or
two.

You should understand few people will come to your web site this way. Most of your potential
customers will arrive at your web site by using unique keywords or key phrases and the SERP provided
by their favorite search engine. These keywords will relate to the type of products and services you
provide and will land a customer on a targeted page within your site.

Nine of ten users visiting your web site get there by means of search engine results page (SERP). These
are people that want to quickly find information about a product or service, who would like to obtain a
identification of the providing company and determine if the web site is friendly and easy to use.

There is a critical need to understand that sites located on the first page of a SERP get more visitors than
those who are listed on page 2 or beyond. The rating of a site in the search system has a profound affect
on the success of your business. If your company lands on SERP page two or beyond you get little to
no traffic, land on the first page of a SERP and you may get all the available traffic. Consequently your
sales are directly related, no traffic no sales.

This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) becomes critical. Every search system determines the
usefulness of your text in relation to the search inquiry made by web visitors. In order to satisfy a search
engine, you must analyze the market you operate in to determine the best keywords and key phrases
people use to find your product or service. Once you define the keywords, and key phrases you then
have to integrate these into the content of your site. This is where the real challenge lies. The textual
content on your site has to be clear for both the customers understanding and usability as well as for
SERP. Placement of the keyword/phrases within the web text is critical to the success of your SERP.

Gaining top SERP is an ongoing process. Sometimes measurable results can be achieved in several
weeks but more often takes several months to gain good SERP. As a rule people use the first words
occurring to them when searching for information. Over time, people change ideas and concepts and
therfore change the keywords/phrases they may use. So, SERP optimizers have to concentrate on these
changing words or phrases and make adjustments as needed to remain on the first page of a SERP.

Wikipedia definition of SERP