Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Ranking are very important terms that an online business who wishes to succeed will quickly get to know. But as you research and implement the various methods of SEO that work for you, stop and think about how today’s search engines are working and evolving.
The rankings themselves have always been a valued metric used in search marketing. Rankings have a lot of importance placed upon them, and have been long used to determine a website’s worth, and how well it is doing in search engines and general marketing tactics. But if you want to make sure that your SEO campaign ultimately succeeds, you need to stop obsessing about individual rankings, and instead focus on the larger picture.
Rankings should not be the end-all, be-all, and that is because search engines themselves are not always consistent with ranking. As pointed out in the first paragraph, think about how today’s major search engines are performing. Many of them, including Bing, Google and Yahoo, are taking into account an individual user’s history with them, search preferences, keyword usage and frequency of searches to tailor search results accordingly. This means that a website that would rank at number three for one user may rank at number eighteen for another.
Search engine ranking results differ based on personalization options set by users and the search engines that are in frequent use. The number of results displayed may also drastically change from one search engine to another. Most search engines will display ten results by default, but can be customized to display a hundred or more. When you factor in paid ads and special placements, it’s easy to see how results might differ. Data centers, too, can also affect how quickly results are served and in what order they are offered up in.
So before you panic and think that your business is beginning to fail, take a deep breath, step back, and look at the larger picture. Make sure you can see the forest, and not just the individual trees. Search engines are tailoring their results to the needs and habits of specific users, so try not to focus so much on individual search engine results. While they are important, they do not set the definitive for your website. They should be used as a general measuring tool that can help you create a more specific SEO marketing campaign for your website.
