You’ve got a website. You’ve put countless hours into it, tweaking
look and feel and making sure all links work. The bad news is there are a gazillion other websites out there. The good news is there are many things you can control to make sure your site isn’t lost in morass of dot coms.One of most important is showing up in search engines, and getting listed in top 20 for your subject. This article covers steps you can take within your site.
First things first: Just like there’s no “get rich quick”, there’s also no “get listed quick” (unless you pay for it).
Getting top listings in search engines is an accomplishment. It gets you traffic and it gets you credibility. You can buy sponsored listings – you can’t buy credibility.
Always Remember: Search engines base their usefulness on quality of results they give. You want people who are searching for your product to find your site; they want people who are searching for your product to find relevant sites. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about making sure you both get what you want.
SEO requires many steps. They pay off, but not immediately. Once you’re “spidered” you’ll see effects of changes you make pretty quickly, but getting “spidered” (sorry to all arachnophobes) can take awhile.
Spidered: Search engines search sites throughout entire World Wide Web (if that sounds a lot like Sally searching for seashells by seashore, it’s intentional). But, to search for your site, they have to know you’re there. So, these benevolent spiders send their hairy arms searching through Web and whatever sticks to their spindly legs they keep.
If you create a web these spiders might want to visit, this process gets you a more desirable string on their web. You want to create a spa for spiders.
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
Think about it: how do you search for something on Internet? You put in a few words that say succinctly what you’re searching for, i.e. downtown Chicago restaurants.
So, when you design or revamp your site, consider keywords anyone would use to find what you offer. The beauty of Internet is ability to target niche markets. You don’t need a gazillion hits a month. You need people who are searching for YOUR product to find YOUR site. To illustrate above example: if you search for “downtown Chicago restaurants” in Google, TheLocalTourist.com is first listing. If you look for “Chicago Restaurants” it’s aways down list. But that’s perfect. Because The Local Tourist only lists restaurants in downtown Chicago. If The Local Tourist had a high listing for Chicago Restaurants, then someone looking for a place to eat in one of outlying neighborhoods would be disappointed, and we don’t want that.
By focusing on your niche keywords, on your target market’s desires, you’re forced to evaluate what you have to offer and best way to present it. When you designed your product or service, you (hopefully) had end-user in mind. So you know what they want.
As you’re starting out, don’t use most popular keywords; use ones that don’t get as many searches because there won’t be as much competition. You’re just trying to establish a presence. A good resource to find popularity of keywords is http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Type in keywords you think people would use to find your work and this tool will show you how many people have searched for it in previous month through Overture. Google searches are approximately 12x that number.
Scope Out Your Competition
Go to your favorite search engines and type in your chosen keywords. Now visit top three for each set of keywords from each search engine. Try to figure out how they got such high listings.
An easy way to keep track of this reconnaissance work is to create a simple spreadsheet and use a different worksheet for each search term. You’ll want to have a row for each of following:
1. Search term
2. Search engine
3. Your ranking: a. If I’m not in top 50, I simply write that. b. Add a date next to ranking so you can track your movement up listings
4. Overture traffic (number of times term was searched for last month)
5. Repeat following 3 times, for top 3 listings: a. Listing URL b. Title c. Description d. Keywords
When you visit each of your competitor’s sites, you’re going to use a wonderful tool called Source Code. Copy and paste their URL into your spreadsheet, then in your browser click on View…Source. A new window opens with their HTML. (I always feel a little dirty when I do this, like I’m a voyeur or a spy, which I guess I am. That being said, it’s completely legit.)
