Take for example a picture of a cat, a cute one at that; you think it’s adorable and you want to share it on the Internet because something that is so irresistible should not be kept to oneself. The picture shows the cat trying to catch a flying dandelion that’s being blown by the breeze while one is stuck in its whiskers. So, how do you programme a search engine to identify such a unique picture? How does the myriad descriptions of that particular scene relay back into that one picture stored somewhere in its index.
• Objective and Subjective
The robot will treat the picture as an objectively defined item that it has crawled over and indexed. The definition it may give maybe just, “a cat”. But that wouldn’t suffice would it, we know that the picture shows and makes us feel more than an article and a noun; we know that it’s a remarkable picture full of life and innocence that says more than what these simple definitions could possibly tell.
The difference between what people say and what people could possibly mean is transposed into the virtual realm by the incongruence between what people type into the search engine and what they actually wanted to find. The search results are often out of context or wrong, and for these reasons humans working with SEO consultancy firms are needed to draw a better conclusions form these results. Their insights would be absolutely priceless when taking into consideration the sheer breadth of pictures being posted every minute from around the globe.
• Metadata
A website will have a number of things that will be striking to the eyes of the viewer. It may have a dazzling external template, designed to excite the senses of the eyes and leave an indelible image in their consciousness; pictures of beautiful locations thrown in the mix and worthy quotes from by gone greats lay there to keep the viewer interested throughout the spaces of the page, but to a search engine, they are nothing but white noise.
The ghost is in the details, what makes you most optimized are those tags and headings that define your website. Those things spell out the main purpose of your business and the service that you’re offering them and where your company is located and most importantly the name. These tiny details are imperative to be able to track yourself in the maze of the search engine and the more websites having the same titles are found in the search, the more optimization you’re going to need to rise above your competitors in the same niche.
• The Source
“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.” – Diane Setterfield. Diane’s words rings true for web content as well, because if you see, the fact that you’re reading this article would itself be ample evidence about how much enticing content or more precisely words manipulated to serve a singular purpose could draw in a viewer.
Great web content has an innate power to leave an impression in the viewer and instead of the content being driven by the keywords, like in the cases of those desperate optimizers looking forward gaining traffic while compromising the coherence as well as the integrity of the article, the content should itself naturally have the right keyword or should be the point of origin for several of the valued keywords.
• The Web
Content from the website is a great way to boost your onsite SEO ratings which in turn will provide hefty returns in traffic, but of course we are living in a web- the World Wide Web – where everything is connected to each other. This ubiquitous characteristic of the internet has been a most stimulating and attractive way for people to get to know each other and have a conversation, know each other’s history, exchange ideas, and share information about the things which catch their mind’s intrigue.
The secret to have traffic diverted towards your site is to be an integrated presence in social media. This is the platform that is being used by most of our generations and we have to be absolutely mindful about the streams of information being porously exchanged, and somewhere in there we must get our services visible so it comes to the surface among all the other things that lurks below the dense torrent that sweeps the cyber realm.
• Top of the Charts
Everybody loves being the winner and to those who’ve gets placed behind the foremost one will nevertheless feel a sensation of disappointment and regret, and most often people tend to remember only those who’ve retained the first position and perhaps the succeeding two would get a mention in their thought. This is how the minds of most people in the world operate, and on this basis they will pick the top two or three positions for their every need, because they feel an inherent trust and a feeling of authority.
This feeling of trust goes a long way in building a brand fan base, and when the viewer sees your website at the top of the pages, they instantly aggregate an intrinsic value of authenticity for your website. So whenever they think of the item that you specialise, they will instantly recall your name because of the impression that the website made in their minds; thereby, increasing your reputation and strengthening your consumer base as well as market share.
• The Flux
There is always a flux in the stream, change is constant, and there’s no place where that philosophy is embodied more than the virtual realm of the internet. One moment we’re living in the world where the smartphones are in our hands and the next thing you know they’re right beside us in the form of a robot that does anything we command. So, if we take into account the exponential increase in intelligence happening right now, the methods of optimizing search engine optimization has to change alongside.
• Cognitive Dissonance
Once we understand what drives a user to click a certain link and share it elsewhere, then the job for search engine optimizers is almost through. The crux of finding the things that will capture their attention is to understand the psychology of the users who visit the sites. The users these days are more than reliant on instant gratification for their results and their attention spans are not something that they’re going to dedicate to you for free; you have to give them something that they won’t forget, but be careful if the user wants to find something when they search something really bad and you bomb them with unrelated contents and ads they will surely get out of there and never to return. This is the theory of cognitive dissonance.
And it is getting more and more obvious as time goes by, that people are looking for a sense of control in their searches and of course a faster results when and wherever they need it, be it on the desk, on the mobile, or even if they want to access it from a voice control mechanism, they are looking for the best results based on their expectation and those are the links which they will bother to open.
So in summary, you should spread your influence to all possible outlets of capturing viewers and then send them back to you – social media, link building, directories, blogs, etc.- should all be utilised to give the maximum reach. But that shouldn’t mean compromising on the essential elements that will produce quality results and substitute them for cheap marketing ploys. In the long run, those who stuck to cleaner tactics will be the only one who will eventually ramp up more organic searches results and those who have earned the trust of the masses will get traffic no matter what the future holds; so, you better get most of their attention now before uncertainty or monopoly makes you crash down.
