Most Web site owners are obsessed and extremely frustrated with their natural (free) search engine rankings. They want to pull for every word combination someone may use to find them.
Better rankings, “Top 10″ or at least top page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are important. It is possible, but not probable for most sites because although the site owners want those rankings they are unwilling to do what is necessary to attain them.
Great search engine rankings don’t happen by osmosis, simply because you want it to, or because you are good at your profession or because you think you have a better site than those above you. Even having a great looking site if not planned, structured and written, marketed and grown with rankings in mind — in the first place — will not attain the listings everyone salivates over.
It is what it is folks! You need the code and structure the search engine crawlers can read. You need to be relevant to what you want to be found for — extremely relevant to get on that top page. You need concentrated targeted content that caters to customers and crawlers alike.
Most of all you need to be realistic about the competition and saturation of the market you are trying to penetrate. You have to be prepared to be as aggressive as necessary to reach your goals or it simply doesn’t happen. Without this methodology; you’re lost.
Yes, you can spend time and money looking for “solutions” that negate the facts of how to get great rankings. But you’ll just be wasting time and throwing good money after bad. The sooner you embrace the reality of what it takes to attain great rankings over the long haul, the sooner you will enjoy ROI.
At your service,
Judith
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When your site was in development your consultant should have worked with you to determine what the keyword phrases were that your target market would likely use to find a site such as yours. If they didn’t, you now know for a fact that your site is not in a position to have a chance to pull relevantly for your targeted keyword phrases.
See, optimizing a site when working with those who really know what they are doing, begins even before a bit or byte of code is typed. Your top keyword phrases need to be considered during the design process to give you a running start when you launch.
Several times each week I get contacted about why a site isn’t pulling for a phrase that either isn’t searched (or researched) for properly or wasn’t considered during the development process. Time to do some educating on how search engines work and a bit of tweaking on the site to compensate for new targeted phrases!
Ever wonder how you rank with Google, Yahoo and MSN? Check out Marketleap who has some free nifty tools that can help you can get a better idea of even if you are being found by the phrases you want and how the search engines list your site differently.
Then, get to work optimizing your site!
At your service,
Judith
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I was recently asked “If a new site owner wanted to know how to start increasing traffic to their site, what would be first 5 things you would advise them to do?” Hmmm… As far as I’m concerned it is tough to limit to 5 things because their are literally hundreds of things you can do. Let’s start with the the basics below as a new site starting point for increasing visibility and therefore ROI:
- Make sure you get listed with the major portals and search engines and then monitor and track your listings to ensure you can react to any changes or drops in positioning. This can take up 6-9 months or more for new sites. Getting listed is one thing; then attaining the top page positions is another that requires various other criteria be met, updated and improved upon continually. It’s called a long term plan. Have a written strategy and follow-up program in place.
- Request reciprocal links or also called “smart linking” with complimentary sites. Don’t fall for linking schemes or link farms — those will do more harm than good. Many of the top engines use an algorithm that gives your site a popularity boost if you have sites linking TO you. And they can detect linking “programs” in place purely to manipulate search engine rankings. Avoid getting penalized by working on your site as one way links TO your site because of all the valuable information you offer is what is best! A properly executed linking campaign should be part of your marketing strategy.
- Advertise your dot com in local newspapers if you are seeking a local market. Advertise in industry publications or topic specific magazines if you are going for a wider audience. Off-line advertising is imperative to building awareness with folks who may be interested in your site but may not have thought to look for you. This becomes critical if you do not keep up with your Search Engine rankings. By the way, relying on Search Engine free/organic listings as your sole venue of exposure is no longer considered a viable business methodology.
- Offer a content rich valuable newsletter each month and daily postings on your Blog that folks can sign up for and also recommend to their friends. This type of viral marketing has proven to be extremely effective in building awareness for your site. Be careful though, your newsletter and Blog must contain needed, unique and valuable information and not be a hard sell of what you want to commercially gain from. No hypey sales pitchy stuff!
- Invest the time and the money necessary to reach your goals. This could include a budget for Pay Per Click Campaigns while your site is new and not yet indexed by search engines. (This depends on your market — I’m no longer an across the board fan of PPC services as of late.) Getting found online doesn’t just happen by osmosis and in actuality is getting more complicated each day — and it isn’t free. Ignore the hype out there that makes getting found sound as though all you have to do is have a dot com, stuff in some keywords and millions of Netizens will contact you. Keep in mind there are literally billions of pages online and you have to continually, consistently work at getting exposure - for perpetuity moving forward.
These 5 tips, when integrated properly, can help to produce increased visibility for your program and should be applied with a long term point of view. They are not the end-all-be-all but should be at the nucleolus of any online businesses core strategies. Most importantly realize that online marketing is a never ending effort!
At your service,
Judith
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