Few people understand what makes a search engine tick. Me included. You might as well ask a third-grader what the Medulla oblongata does! As complicated as the human brain is, I think the Search Engine is running a close second for most complicated item we must put our fingers on… Ok that’s gross.
However, there are a few basic and simple ideas that go along with getting your website listed on the first page of a search engine directory such as google.com and Yahoo!. Read this article to understand a little of what goes into making yourself visible on the web and what TopSoft endeavors to make happen.
1. Location, Location, Location!
Location has always been the coveted among real estate and is the difference between mediocre living and high living. The internet is no different. In the early days of internet usage it was a phone number, a high-pitched handshake and BBB (bulletin boards) style communication and gaming. Now, with domain names, sub domain names, sub-sub domain names, location ( domain name ) is highly important.
Whole libraries could be filled with the number of domain names currently in use and reserved for use. This makes picking the right one for your company critically important! How many times have we looked at a website or email address that looks like: js.smith@jo-the-plumber-online.com. Worse, try through a radio commercial telling your audience what your website is! No one would ever make it to your website simply because most people wouldn’t type the right address and give up after 3-5 attempts. As river front property makes money in real estate, easy and appropriate domain names enhance the ease of which customers find you, increase the rating of modern search engines and makes promoting your site and handing out email addresses easy.
For instance, if I told you that our website was www.topsoftdesignstudio.com, it makes sense! The search engine matches topsoftdesignstudio much easier with semantic searches for design or studio, users can easily enter that in by hearing the phonics and without hypens or periods to detract from the spelling challenge, it’s no problem!
2. Get Exposed!
Owning a website domain name, hosting or even having a great website means nothing when you consider the fact that there are millions of websites online today. With giants like Yahoo!, FaceBook, MySpace and many others, your fighting for the attention span of a world that thrives on Starbucks and 30 minute fixes.
So how DO you get noticed? A part of search engine marketing is getting your name and site linked in as many other locations as possible. Most people don’t know that Search Engines rank your ‘friendliness’ by how many other sites refer to yours. Those referrals equal friends, and businesses that get a lot of referrals make money! This is relatively easy to do, it just takes hours of monotonously typing your company name, address, phone number, hours of operation, website, email address and primary business categories into dozens of FREE online directories like Google business center, Yahoo! Business link, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN accounts are also taking hold to produce more exposure without monetary costs.
3. Content is King! She who writes the copy controls the world!
No really, search engines are three-year olds that put the square block into the square hole. If it were so easy I wouldn’t have a job. The amount of work that goes into making your site search engine friendly would boggle most people’s minds and make them feel a little better about paying for the service. However, when the website project is approached with a content first mentality, the design will flow around the copy and make this part easier.
There are grading algorithms used by search engine tools to grade your website by several factors. A) What reading / comprehension level is required to read your website. (I’m not kidding…) B) How does the content match up with domain name and listing categories, C) How many images vs. plain text on your page. SEO used indexing words to make the most use of search engines.
We revere the King, President or Emperor above all things. Likewise, the content of our websites must match what we are selling or offering to the general public, otherwise we lose attention spans and potential clients.
4. Be Specific! Remove the ‘um’ from your online speech!
Your site content has to be relevant! If anyone searches for a particular product or service and clicks through to your website you have achieved 50% success. If your landing page content doesn’t match what was being searched for, the most important 50% was lost! What people search for MUST be directed to pages that match the content!
If you’ve ever google’d for a manual or recipe or something you really wanted to know and clicked the first result in the list and spent 5 minutes clicking through the sites pages looking for the answer to your question and then finally gave up, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Poorly designed sites that don’t have specific page content on every pages description meta tags and content destroy the possibility of quick conversions.
5. Think Long-Term: If you build it, they will not come
‘My websites not working.’ – ‘You can’t even find my website by searching for its domain name!’ – ‘I’m not paying for a website when I can’t even get a couple hits on my free website!’
We’ve probably all heard and/or said these. The bottom line is, websites and marketing are like a good diet. Not a pill or miracle hormone, but a diet. It’s a lifestyle not a quick fix. Often times people will post up a quickie website and look the next day to see how many people looked at it! They get excited because the web stats show 14 page visits! The next day? Nothing. That’s because the 14 visits was you refreshing the page to see your creation!
This thing of the internet takes time. Search Engines first have to be told you exist and then they have to fit you into the job queue to come check out. From there it depends on your ‘grade’ how you get noticed. The most important factor is to ADVERTISE your website! I know…. You paid for the website so you did advertise it! Right. That’s like saying when you have flyers printed that they should hand themselves out!
Search engines actually grade you on current hits! Yea, I know that sounds completely backwards, but it’s true! If your site hasn’t been looked at in a few months and the content of the pages hasn’t changed in a few years, you start getting ignored. Just like that ad in the yellow pages, that is yellow with a black border on it and words that mumble something non-descript.
If you build it, they will NOT come. If you tell them that it is there to be looked upon, they will come look upon it! Use online resources to advertise your website. The irony of the whole thing is that there is an ethereal tipping point where once you reach a certain level of traffic, the momentum keeps itself. FaceBook didn’t bloom overnight, it tooks years of advertising. Getting 10 people using it and they told 10 more…
So concludes my top-five hot points to using the web in your favor. After the dot-com boom, the world of websites has settled down into a mildly competitive place where a few make it big and many more sit out there doing something. Every project has to start with a clear objective. Every new business that succeeds has to use some form of business plan or model to build. A website isn’t a weekend project but months and often years of practice, trial, error and renewed vigor to make it big!
