Over 85% of people online use search engines on a daily basis. As online search becomes more efficient, Internet users have grown impatient with anything less than great results. An emarketer.com study showed that while almost 70% of respondents click a search result within the first page of results, very few venture beyond the third page of results.
This has many companies working hard to increase the visibility and ranking of their sites. Yet, as I've discovered, great rankings on the World Wide Web are not of much value if your company only does business in a limited geography.
For example, when I went to Google.ca and searched for "Marketing Magic", my site snagged spots number one and two on the first page out of 819,000 hits. After a momentary wave of euphoria, reality sank in. While it's great to have high rankings, my business would be a lot healthier if my site attracted more local target audiences to use consulting services or attend an upcoming Marketing Mastery Workshop instead.
For me, this meant figuring out how to increase my local visibility on the web. To do this necessitated acquiring a more in-depth understanding of search engines and search engine optimization (SEO.) There's lots of information available on these topics. Unfortunately, much of it is full of technical jargon, too complex for the layperson.
While I don't profess to be an SEO expert, I thought I'd share some insights I've learned that may help you in your efforts to increase your company's visibility on the web. Since the subject is too broad to cover in one article, I'll be tackling it over a series of articles.
The first article will look at a few search fundamentals. In the future, I'll examine On Page tactics, Off Page tactics, and strategies for attracting local traffic. (Don't worry if On Page and Off Page sound like Greek - I promise to explain them in a future article!)
Let's start with some basics. Spiders, or crawlers, build a search engine's database by visiting web pages, reading text, meta tags, and following links. This information is stored in an index. When people search for a topic, the search engine refers back to its index to find matches and then presents them ranked in order of relevance.
Although you might be thinking this is pretty straightforward, it raises some questions. Perhaps the most important question is whether search engines have been able index all the pages in your site. If your site isn't fully indexed, not all of your pages show up. This means prospective customers searching the web may never find your company.
SEO TIP: If you don't know if all your pages are indexed, it's easy to find out. Simply go to any browser (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, msn) and in the search box, type Site:www.marketingmagic.ca substituting your own web URL of course. It will give you a list of all the pages from your site that are indexed.
SEO TIP: If they aren't all listed, there are ways to fix this. The easiest approach is to simply show links at the bottom of every page that link to other pages. Click on this link to see an example. If your site is large and has too many pages for this approach, you can add a site map that includes a listing of every page on the site that spiders can read and index.
SEO experts claim you need to have an XML Site Map, which requires more technical skills than most lay marketers have. My site does not have an XML Site Map yet all pages are indexed so I'm not 100% convinced of this claim. (I'll let you know if I learn more about this in a future article.)
SEO TIP: You should also check to find out the last date your site was indexed just to make sure that search engines aren't using out of date pages. To do this, follow the same procedure as above and key Cache:www.marketingmagic.ca using your own company URL.
As an example, there is a page on my website for the Marketing Mastery Workshop. It's recently been updated to reflect an upcoming workshop on June 18 so I checked to see when this page had last been indexed. I learned that the last cache date was February 24, a date that doesn't reflect the most current information.
In my case this hasn't caused a problem because the descriptive information the search engine displays doesn't include the workshop date. And if people click through on the link provided, they land on the updated page. But this might present a problem for other pages.
SEO TIP: If, like me, you are working to increase your knowledge of SEO, you can find free tools at Google Webmaster Central that will help you understand what Google knows about your site. These tools answer your questions about crawling and indexing and so on. There are also good resources, for example Google Analytics, to help you optimize your site so local traffic can find you.
This has many companies working hard to increase the visibility and ranking of their sites. Yet, as I've discovered, great rankings on the World Wide Web are not of much value if your company only does business in a limited geography.
For example, when I went to Google.ca and searched for "Marketing Magic", my site snagged spots number one and two on the first page out of 819,000 hits. After a momentary wave of euphoria, reality sank in. While it's great to have high rankings, my business would be a lot healthier if my site attracted more local target audiences to use consulting services or attend an upcoming Marketing Mastery Workshop instead.
For me, this meant figuring out how to increase my local visibility on the web. To do this necessitated acquiring a more in-depth understanding of search engines and search engine optimization (SEO.) There's lots of information available on these topics. Unfortunately, much of it is full of technical jargon, too complex for the layperson.
While I don't profess to be an SEO expert, I thought I'd share some insights I've learned that may help you in your efforts to increase your company's visibility on the web. Since the subject is too broad to cover in one article, I'll be tackling it over a series of articles.
The first article will look at a few search fundamentals. In the future, I'll examine On Page tactics, Off Page tactics, and strategies for attracting local traffic. (Don't worry if On Page and Off Page sound like Greek - I promise to explain them in a future article!)
Let's start with some basics. Spiders, or crawlers, build a search engine's database by visiting web pages, reading text, meta tags, and following links. This information is stored in an index. When people search for a topic, the search engine refers back to its index to find matches and then presents them ranked in order of relevance.
Although you might be thinking this is pretty straightforward, it raises some questions. Perhaps the most important question is whether search engines have been able index all the pages in your site. If your site isn't fully indexed, not all of your pages show up. This means prospective customers searching the web may never find your company.
SEO TIP: If you don't know if all your pages are indexed, it's easy to find out. Simply go to any browser (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, msn) and in the search box, type Site:www.marketingmagic.ca substituting your own web URL of course. It will give you a list of all the pages from your site that are indexed.
SEO TIP: If they aren't all listed, there are ways to fix this. The easiest approach is to simply show links at the bottom of every page that link to other pages. Click on this link to see an example. If your site is large and has too many pages for this approach, you can add a site map that includes a listing of every page on the site that spiders can read and index.
SEO experts claim you need to have an XML Site Map, which requires more technical skills than most lay marketers have. My site does not have an XML Site Map yet all pages are indexed so I'm not 100% convinced of this claim. (I'll let you know if I learn more about this in a future article.)
SEO TIP: You should also check to find out the last date your site was indexed just to make sure that search engines aren't using out of date pages. To do this, follow the same procedure as above and key Cache:www.marketingmagic.ca using your own company URL.
As an example, there is a page on my website for the Marketing Mastery Workshop. It's recently been updated to reflect an upcoming workshop on June 18 so I checked to see when this page had last been indexed. I learned that the last cache date was February 24, a date that doesn't reflect the most current information.
In my case this hasn't caused a problem because the descriptive information the search engine displays doesn't include the workshop date. And if people click through on the link provided, they land on the updated page. But this might present a problem for other pages.
SEO TIP: If, like me, you are working to increase your knowledge of SEO, you can find free tools at Google Webmaster Central that will help you understand what Google knows about your site. These tools answer your questions about crawling and indexing and so on. There are also good resources, for example Google Analytics, to help you optimize your site so local traffic can find you.