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Found On Search Engines! Ten Tips for Getting Your Site Found by Customers Who Matter
by Eva Chiu, President and Chief Client Officer, InfoAdvantage
One of the biggest hurdles standing between businesses and the results they deserve from their Web sites is that invisible barrier that seems to stand between them and Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, and all the other search engines their target audiences use.
How do you break through the invisible barrier? Here are a few things you can do to get your Web site on stage, in the limelight, where it belongs - and where you'll see the results in your bottom line.
1. Do you write copy that Google can use? Search engines examine the text in your Web site looking for words that match the search terms customers use to find you. So you need to think like your customers - what are their perceived issues, what is important in their buy process, and what solutions do they think would fit the bill? Most importantly, what words would they use to describe those solutions? Consider both the technical and business decision makers. Take those words and use them in your Web site. Your text can still sparkle - the art is to speak compellingly to both humans and search engines. Shoot for at least 100 to 200 words of meaningful text in your home page and each of your content pages.
2. Your Web site's title is like the cover of your book: make it stand out! The few words in the title of each page of your site are some of the most important you will ever write. Search engines use them to judge the relevance of your Web site to what searchers are looking for. Craft them to include important words and phrases that describe your solutions - the ones that customers will likely use to find you.
3. Pictures don't always speak a thousand words - so help them speak to search engines. If you turned off the graphics in your Web site, what would you see? In the early days when bandwidth was at a premium, sites used few graphics to avoid the long and slow download. Today, graphics and Flash are commonplace. The drawback is that on their own, they are invisible to search engines, which only read words. To compensate, add to your graphics meaningful words, or alternate text, which search engines can read. After all, the more customers find you in the first place, the more people will see the graphics you've used to say so much.
4. Dress up your site with invisible text. Some search engines love meta tags - the titles, descriptions and keywords embedded in the codes of your site. Humans don't typically look for them, but search engines do. The strategy to use, just like writing copy for the search engines, is to think like your customers: include the words and terms they would use when you craft titles, descriptions and keywords.
5. Make sure the road to good content is clear of potholes. One of Internet users' biggest pet peeves is sites that are hard to use, with navigation that seems designed to block, not ease, their way. Likewise, search engines follow their crawling instincts, usually starting from the home page and navigating to the real content in the lower level pages. They look for easy-to-see links, typically text links that are not embedded in scripts, to investigate the rest of the site. Be sure to provide links, such as a text link to the site map, that are easy for search engines to see and follow.
6. How do you find what's good in a book with no Table of Contents? Much like flipping to a table of contents, many Internet visitors use your site map as their guide. So do search engines. A text link to a site map on every page provides search engines the guiding light they need, irrespective of where they enter the site. Help them chart their course easily, and they can index your site's good content while they are there - just the way you want them to.
7. Don't be shy; announce your presence. The vast majority of searchers use the most popular search engines. Search engines also feed on one another when they look for sites to be included in their databases and evaluate their relevance and popularity. For manufacturers, submitting their sites to the major search engines and to relevant industry and trade association directories is the prudent thing to do. You wouldn't wait for customers to wander into an unmarked storefront - don't wait for search engines to take a random walk into your site.
8. If content is like good bait, fresh content is like good bait covered with honey. If your site offers little meaningful content relevant to what customers look for, it stands little chance of being considered highly relevant, and thus highly ranked, by search engines. For exactly that reason, home pages aren't always highly ranked - search engines hone in on the pages with the content searchers are looking for. Sites with regularly refreshed content are more attractive to search engines than sites with stale content. Fresh content makes great carrots for human visitors, too!
9. If other sites think your site is worth referring to, search engines think so too. Popular sites are usually connected to plenty of other sites that include links to them. If the referring sites are popular sites with great content, this will increase your site's relevance and ranking. Good tactics to consider include developing reciprocal linking relationships with other strong, well-visited sites, and offering great content and useful tools to entice other sites to provide links to yours.
10. Like good wine, Web site rankings benefit from time. Submitting your site to search engines and waiting for it to rise to the top of the line does take time. Longevity often works in favor of sites that have been around and been indexed in search engines and referenced in other sites. For sites that need to be placed quickly on page one of Google or MSN or Yahoo!, buying their way to the top may well be the answer.
Making search engines work hard for your Web site goes a long way toward getting good returns for the money and time you invested. Getting the search engines on your side begins during site planning when you prioritize objectives of the site, identify your target audience, craft the site's message, build the site structure, design the navigation and develop the content.
To be found high and prominently on search engines your customers use, be sure to include making search engines your friend an important part of your Internet strategy. The same tactics that help bring Web searchers to your online door will also help turn those prospects into paying customers. That click on the search results is the best first step.
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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About Eva Chiu
Eva Chiu is President of InfoAdvantage, an Internet marketing and Web development firm specializing in delivering expertise and resources for growing companies to maximize their Internet advantage. Find out how winning Web sites leverage their Internet marketing at www.infoadvantage.com. Eva can be reached at echiu@infoadvantage.com
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