You have a website and need to know how to “get in the search engines.” Or, you are just starting a website and need to know the same thing. The bottom line is, whether you have a website or just beginning, you need visitors.
Conventional wisdom says get listed for some search terms and you’re all set.
This isn’t necessarily the case, however. Search engines have a business too. Their business is in giving their users the most relevant results for their search. That means the role of the search engine is not about marketing your website. It’s actually about meeting the needs of their customers - everyone who is looking for something on the internet.
I often tell my clients, don’t expect help from the search engines. And certainly not right away. You won’t begin to see much traffic from the search engines until your website (and your business) have a level of relevancy on the web for your products or services.
So how do you gain relevancy? By getting lots of visitors to your site.
I know, I can hear you saying, “Wait a minute! If I’m going to get no help from the search engines in getting visitors until my site has some relevancy, but most people use the search engines, how will I ever get rankings? And actually, I’m not even sure what ‘relevancy’ means.”
Well, being a relevant website first means that the content of your website is consistent with your business focus and that you’re using key terminology in your content to describe what your business. Secondly, it means that within your business niche you are mainstream enough to be important to potential clients while being unique enough to set yourself apart from the mainstream.
So how do you ‘convince’ Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others. Here’s some beginning tips…
- Content - Make sure your content is consistent across you entire website. Use similar terms throughout the site. Whether you have high search rankings or not, having great content is vital to your potential clients.
- Freshen it up - Along with great content, update and refresh you content constantly. The more pertinent information on your website about your business and services, the more relevant your website will appear. Plus, it keeps visitors coming back.
- Link it - Frequently check links to other websites to be sure they’re current. Broken links is one way that search engine will consider your site less relevant.
- Link up - Get reciprocal links from other relevant websites. One great way to raise in relevancy is to have links from pages in your business field that already have high relevancy. This shows the search engines that you have an importance with other websites that they find relevant. And, the more sites link to you, the more likely you’ll draw traffic from those sites as well.
- Write Away - Write articles for other websites. Everyone needs great content. Write and submit articles for other websites and newsletters. This is a great way to not only market but to network as well.
- Blog it - Starting a blog is a great idea…but not the only way to gain relevancy. Get other popular blogs to link to your site. Or better yet, write posting with your links that point traffic back to your website. You can do this by submitting comments and also by writing blog entries.
- Opt-in - Of course, a great strategy, if you’re not already doing this, is to offer an email newsletter from your website. Visitors sign up and regular installments of your newsletter. You then post your newsletter articles on your website, giving you more site content - which is great in making you relevant. Newsletters are great ways to keep your content fresh.
All of these options are available to you with little or no cost. You find other sites to link to by using the search engines and writing to the owners (free). Update content using content management system (free - if already setup). Newsletter list (free or little cost, if already setup). Subitting articles to other websites (free).
Of course, if you need to add features to your website, such as content management (giving you the ability to make your own content updates) or adding a newsletter sign-up form, there will be some initial cost - which usually pay for themselves very quickly.
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GREAT post and relevant for me as getting visitors is something I am working on.
It also makes me think of my art website that needs serious updating.
I think this is a good checklist to have on the desk both for your blog and a website
Yeah, I can certainly feel #2. Recently I’ve been bogged down by a bunch of things and wasn’t able to update much. Some search terms that can make my page pop right up don’t do so anymore. I believe I can be back when I’m consistently updating again.
Kelvin Kao’s last blog post..Seamus and Magellan - Day 2
Hello Dawud. Useful post. I’m asking this because I don’t know the answer - How is opt-in newsletter content different from blog content? Does subscribing via email have a different effect on search engines than subscribing via feed? If you don’t have an opt-in newsletter or a blog, which would you suggest doing first?
Kara Soluri’s last blog post..Why I don’t scale.
I wish I’d had an article like this a few years ago. I had a client who wanted 100% of his business to come from the search engines to his static site, so people would *call* him on the phone, and didn’t see the need to put his URL on all his materials. But hey, he offered a whole $75 to me to get on google’s front page for his terms.
I’d love to see an article on how to tell clients they are asking the impossible or have a complately wrong idea.
Andrea’s last blog post..Integrating bbpress
I really enjoyed this post as it tells you if you want to be successful you have to be part of the solution. I spend at least 6 hours a day reading and contributing to other sites and you just verified its the right thing to do. We are building unique visitors so we can begin the monetizing. And I continue to read and post. Thanks for the good information.
My best,
Dorothy from grammology
remember to call gram
http://www.grammology.com
Dorothy Stahlnecker’s last blog post..Children leaning to Save and Balance Check Books
Dawud- The quality of links cannot be stressed enough. Link quality is the key to search engine relevancy.
Nice post.
ourmonmouth’s last blog post..Browser compatibility
Dawud, I just met with a client for over an hour trying to explain these things to him. I spent some time in his site as he wondered about stats and thins that he doesn’t need to think about right now. In fact I think I will send him this post. It really very simple, find your passion, write to your passion, the other things will follow.
I think we often try to trick it up more than is necessary
Making Sales Making Money’s last blog post..Uh oh, What Is Don Doing Now?
Hi Dawud - This is brilliant advice. One of my businesses is a local plumbing business and we have a website. We also have a blog. But we’re currently changing our strategy.
Blogging has done wonders for our search engine rankings. The trouble is, because we’ve been blogging a lot about our industry, we’re actually attracting a lot of people who work in the industry, as opposed to potential customers.
We’re now planning to do something which will appeal to local customers. Really, we’re aiming to be a place they want to go to, to share local information and keep our brand in their minds when they’re looking for plumbers, if that makes sense.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Is The Information Business Worthless?