Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, 5th Edition

Introduction

Welcome to Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, 5th Edition. What on earth would you want this book for? After all, can’t you just build a Web site and let your Web designer get the site into the search engines? Can’t you simply pay someone $25 to register the site with thousands of search engines? I’m sure you’ve seen advertising stating, “We guarantee top-ten placement in a gazillion search engines!” and “We’ll register you in 5,000 search engines today!”

Well, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. (Okay, fortunately for me, because if it were simple, Wiley wouldn’t pay me to write this book.) The fact is that search engine optimization is a little complicated. Not brain surgery complicated, but not as easy as “Give us 50 bucks, and we’ll handle it for you.”

The vast majority of Web sites don’t have a chance in the search engines. Why? Because of simple mistakes. Because the people creating the sites don’t have a clue what they should do to make the site easy for search engines to work with. Because they don’t understand the role of links pointing to their site, and because they’ve never thought about keywords. Because, because, because. This book helps you deal with those becauses and gets you not just one, but dozens, of steps ahead of the average Web-site Joe.

About This Book

This book demystifies the world of search engines. You find out what you need to do to give your site the best possible chance to rank well in the search engines.

In this book, I show ...