Search engine rankings can mean different things to different people. Some people may think they rank number one in the search engines. However, they actually only have one keyword term that has a number one position in Google. And that keyword may not receive actually add any real benefit to their website at all. Which is why every site owner needs to understand the difference between ranking well and gaining a few good keyword page positions.

So, what exactly is a search engine ranking and how can it benefit your Internet business?

In general a search is conducted in a search engine like Google using keywords that represent the information the user is seeking.The results of that keyword search is a listing of websites that contain related content of the keyword searched.

Many times this is where the confusion starts. If a site appears in the top of these results some might think this means their site has a high rank. However, obtaining a high position does not mean the site is ranking well. It simply means it ranked well for a single search term.

I personally like to refer to each of these results as page positions because a few years back Google introduced a system that gives each page of every website a page rank. And it can become confusing to talk about achieving a high page rank when it can refer to either a high page position or a high Google PR (page rank).

It may be more helpful to think of ranking in a more general sense. A site that ranks well will have many traffic generating keyword search terms that obtain a high page position in the search results

When you understand page rank in this way, you will not fall for some of the more unscrupulous SEO services online that promise to help your site rank high in Google or any other search engine. Many SEO services will offer to rank your site well for keyword search terms like, “Sam’s Pest Control, San Francisco”. The price for this service can be anywhere from $60.00 a month to thousands of dollars a month.

Offering to get your site to rank well for 10 or 20 keyword search terms that drive little or no traffic to your site is worthless as it offers absolutely no real value to the site owner at all. What a business owner needs to understand is that obtaining a high page position for any keyword search term is only beneficial if it is a keyword term or phrase that their clients are using to find their type of business.

What good does it do for your business to have the number one position for the keyword search term, “Sam’s Pest Control, San Francisco, CA” if no one ever uses it to find a pest control business in San Francisco, Ca?

On the other hand obtaining the number one position for the search term, “San Francisco Pest Control,” a keyword search term that people do type into Google could be worth the time, money and effort to achieve it.

Sam’s Pet Control, San Francisco, CA is very easy for any SEO savvy person to achieve. In fact it could be done in less than 15 minutes and the SEO scam artist doing it could continue to charge poor Sam a $64.00 monthly fee for seemingly maintaining that number one position month after month.

The more you understand the basics of search engine optimization the more equipped you will be to spend your money wisely on SEO for your own business website online.