The natural results are the ones which have ranked highly because their sites are seen by the search engine to be the most useful, while the sponsored results have paid to be at the top. The studies of user habits would suggest that people realise that sponsored results have paid for their position but do the results transfer to real life?

Do you really choose the natural results which a search engine presents or do you go with the first site you see? Or maybe you try to choose the natural results but sometimes you just see a listing in the sponsored links which seems more relevant to what you were looking for, because let’s face it, there are times when Google can let you down too.

Websites organise link exchanges and pay per click advertising so do we just assume that search engine optimisation is no secret anymore? Well it is no secret that it exists and that, when done properly, it works. But like anything that is the true secret – how to make it work, and work better than everyone else.

Like with anything – any marketing campaign, any advertising – there are people who are average at it and there are people who are the best. And you know this is true otherwise we would buy every soft drink we say an ad for and go on every holiday we saw on a travel show but we don’t.

SEO is just the same, the secret is to do it well, do it so it is targeted and do it better than everyone else.

In fact Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an entire, very important and ever growing industry which your business, and your new website, needs to become a part of. The premise of SEO is to increase the traffic to your website by using the most appropriate keywords to describe the content of your site and your business, and match it to what a potential customer has typed into their search engine of choice.

Search Engine Optimisation will require you to add META tags to describe the content of your site, and make submissions to all of the major search engines, asking them to include your site in their search results. But with the end goal being to rank high on the first page of search results in your keyword categories, you site and your keyword focus simply needs to rank you above the competitors in your industry with sites structured better than your own.

Therefore the first step in SEO is not submit your site to search engines, but instead you should focus on creating a relevant and informative website and then submit this complete and polished site to the search engines which will then snap it up. In business, and in life, you have probably learned that it is always best to learn from others’ mistakes where you can.

Well in learning from your competitors’ mistakes, you can also identify what they are doing which is working well for them too. Look at the content, the design and the keywords which are being targeted on the sites which are ranking at the top of the searches you want to dominate. This can also form part of your market research as you will find the marketing tools and techniques which have worked to target the same type of customers you are trying to appeal to too.

Well yes, by their nature you can trust them. The very fact that they exist and that you have found them means you can trust them because if they were crap, you wouldn’t have found them because the search engine wouldn’t have directed you to them because the search engine is there to protect you from crap.

During the late 1990s search engines were severely manipulated by crap which people thought would help their sites rank better. Well the search engines have learnt their lessons from those ‘dark ages’ and makes a point to ignore crap, ensuring that the sites, the SEO articles and the information which ranks where you can find it, is useful, correct and pertinent to your search.