Search engine ranking and your website.  A search engine doesn't have obligation to rank a site highly.     By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

Many people are surprised when I tell them that their search engine ranking doesn't matter to the search engine companies. They seem shocked and ask why not. We have a good website with great information and it's a real service to people online. That all may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that a good search engine ranking is not an obligation to website owners, it's an obligation to website searchers. It's important to understand this distinction because it will better help you to understand what the search engines are really about.

When webmasters create a website for themselves or someone else, they believe they are offering the best service, product or information on the web. Really they do. And it may be very good information worthy of a high search engine ranking, but there is one problem. There are millions of other website owners that think the same thing about their site. People will always believe that what they have to offer is the best, that's what makes us human, to believe that we are unique, and we are in some ways. That's where there is tunnel vision. This occurs when we don't consider the true length and breadth of this thing we call the Internet. In fact, no one can get their minds around how big it is. There are so many good offerings and sites worthy of high rankings that it boggles the mind. Admitting that we probably have nothing to offer that is totally unique can start you to the correct mindset that will bring a better search engine ranking.

That's why search engines are such a great tool. They give the searcher the ability to find what they're looking for based on a relevancy algorithm. It's the algorithm that decides what deserves a higher ranking, not humans. So understand that search engines want to produce the most relevant results for people using their service. This means people will use them more often and they can charge more for advertising and make deals for other technology. That's how they make money, it's the searcher not the company who has a website and wants a high ranking. All they care about is relevancy, that they're delivering the best content and that the searcher finds what they're looking for quickly.

Now that I may have demoralized some of you who thought search engines cared about your ranking, take heart, there is another side to the coin. Knowing this, you can take steps to make your website more relevant to the search engines. It's up to you to increase your relevancy and search engine ranking in accordance with the guidelines of good website design. You see, some of you put the information that you have to offer in a way that the algorithm sees as not very relevant, hence low search rankings. You must change your website to give people the same content that you want people to see but make it correctly for a search engine to understand it's value. If you create a website with the web surfer in mind, then you will be more likely to get a higher search engine ranking. Many websites present content the way they think it would be found, but not the way searchers would. So you can have all the great content in the world but never get a high rank because you don't understand the rules. 

When you understand that search engine ranking is based on relevancy, then you can start to create your website, not for search engines, but for the people that are using them. If you take your excellent content and present it in such a way that searchers will find it useful, then you will have online success. The search engine ranking is based on many factors in the algorithm and all of them are important for a website to rank high. That's why it good to find a search marketing firm to help create content that's relevant with the end user. But if you only remember one thing about this article, remember that a search engine is not obligated to give your website a high ranking!