We will get
your site listed #1 on Goggle!!!
Impressed? You shouldn't be, at least not yet. The value of a web
site's search engine listing is relative to the keyword or key phrase
used to find that listing. Your web site will have different search
engine rankings for different keywords or key phrases.
Say you have a web site for your T-Shirt store, and the title of
your web site is"Frank Flanagin's Wacky and Wild T-shirts".
It is no big feat to get listed number 1 on Goggle for that key
phrase, because the likelihood of someone else having that title
would be slim (zero competition for for a search term usually guarantees
a #1 listing), but guess how many people searched for "Frank
Flanagin's Wacky and Wild T-shirts" on Goggle last month....
1, and it was you. A keyword or key phrase's value is measured by
how often it is being used by internet users.
If Frank Flanagin's web site listed number 1 on Goggle for the
keyword search "T-shirt", then he would have something,
with 1000s of people searching using that keyword daily, his site
would be getting loads of traffic.
If you are going to build a web site with the goal of getting significant
search engine traffic, then you need to first look at the market
you are going for. For example, if you wanted to build web site
for your vacation home in Mazatlan and you wanted your web site
to be found when search terms like "vacation accommodation
mexico" are used, you would be looking at keywords and key
phrases that are relative to the general vacation market. This is
an example of a market that is highly saturated and extremely competitive
as far as the internet is concerned. The web sites that list well
for these search terms are web sites that have either been around
for a long time or have massive marketing and search engine optimizing
budgets that allow them to penetrate the top listings. It would
be a major undertaking to try and get this vacation home web site
to compete and list anywhere worth while. In this situation the
only purpose this web site may serve would be to showcase your home
to visitors that have been directed from other sources such as print
ads or from other web sites that add links to other sites (directory
web sites) or sites that charge for advertising.
Going after search engine traffic is easiest in a niche
market or one that is underexposed with regards to the internet.
Say you have a kayaking tour business in Port McNeill BC and you
are wondering if a web site could help you get more business. The
first thing you do is determine if people are using search engines
to find what you offer. Using a
search term selector tool, you see that "kayaking
vancouver island" (searched over 200 times a month) and "kayaking
british columbia" (searched over 800 times a month) are widely
being being used as search terms through Yahoo (it is safe to assume
that roughly the same amount would be using Google as well). So
we know people are looking for what you offer and we can safely
assume that because these terms are specific enough (geographically)
that this market is most likely not targeted on a large scale. Now
the next step is to use the search engines with these search terms
to see what people are actually seeing for results. This is where
you asses your competition. Ideally you would want to consult with
a professional web developer at this point to have them asses the
top ranked sites. It is not always easy to determine if a site is
worthy of top ranks because it is well designed or if it just there
because of a lack of competition. Many factors are considered: How
long the site has been up for, is the site specifically targeting
the search terms it is turning up on (if not, a site that does target
them might do better) How well is the site designed with regards
to search engines, how large the site is (amount of content), how
many sites link to this site (a big factor with Google.com, know
as page rank) and others.
So with the help of your web developer you determine that the top
two competitor sites on Yahoo are going for "kayaking vancouver
island" and "kayaking british columbia" as their
primary search terms and these sites are well designed with respect
to search engines. Although, everything below the number two spot
doesn't appear to be targeting these search terms but was most likely
indexed by Yahoo as being semi-relevant. A good indicator that a
well designed relevant site targeted to this search term could do
better. So a number three spot looks quite achievable and with over
two thousand people a month searching for these terms you could
expect to see 800 - 1000 visits at the number three spot. Not bad.
Now you have the traffic, all you need to do is convert 3% (a conservative
conversion rate) of your visitors to customers and your web site
would be generating significant business for you.
Tricks and Secrets
Are there tricks and secrets for getting an edge in the search
engine placement wars? Yes, but their overall effectiveness must
be weighed against the risk of getting banned by a search engine
for "search engine spamming". Search engines are getting
smarter all the time and the big players (Goggle, Yahoo, MSN etc.)
are continually developing new methods to detect tricks intended
to spoof search engines. The definition of search engine spamming
and what can be construed as "tricks" changes frequently.
What might be a commonly used, innocent trick for boosting search
engine listings today, may be a classified as spamming and cause
for banning tomorrow.
Our experience and research has helped us develop a philosophy:
The easiest and most logical way to build a web site that lists
well, is to give the search engines what they are truly looking
for, original, relevant content that is updated regularly (search
engines now know how to spot stale web sites).
Outside of "tricks" there are basic design principles
used in addition to good content, when building a search engine
friendly web site. These are acceptable "good design"
techniques that search engines recognize.
So you have a market to work with and you have relevant original
content. Great! Then get us to build you a search engine friendly
web site, you should see results in the form of significant search
engine traffic.
Brendan Reilly
igwd.com
|
