I can’t find my site! Search Engine Help

Ok, I’ve gotten two different requests in the last five days to help a customer understand why their website is not prominently listed in search results from search engines.  Here’s my quick reference card for you:

1. The first step is NOT to pay for search ranking (Google Adwords, Yahoo paid search, etc.)
2. The second step is NOT to pay for somebody to “submit your site with keywords to 20+ search engines for $29.95″
3. The third step is NOT… Just kidding, I’ll give you some prescriptive guidance now

What SHOULD you do to gain preference with the search engines (Google, yahoo, bing, ask, cuil, etc.)?  First, what does “preference with the search engines” mean?

If your site is to become a popular destination for 100 visitors a month, 1000?, more?  You will most likely be getting those customers from a search engine.  For example:

You have a site for your home building business.  When someone does a search for “custom home” the search engine will return results including web pages with the words “custom home” in them.  If your site has one page talking about your custom homes the search engines may know about your site but assume that one page about “custom homes” is only slightly interesting.  Many other sites (a million?)  have the words “custom homes” in them… I just did a google search for “custom homes” and got 36,800,000 results.  Yeah, there are a couple other sites out there.  Some of those sites have hundreds of pages of information about custom homes.  They talk about how they build, how to buy, case studies, plans for homes, and so on — these sites will be seen by the search engines as having interesting content.

Summary: A search engine wants to provide the MOST interesting results relating to the search terms FIRST.

So, how do you make your site interesting so that it shows up in the first few pages of search results?  You’d really like to be on the first page, right?  Here’s my list:

1. Assuming your site has already been online for a few months, make sure it can be seen by the search engines.  Do a site search.  At a google search type in “site:myhomesite.com” and see how many of your pages are turned up.  This tells google to ONLY search for results from your site.  If your site does not show up you may have a problem — talk to a web pro who understands search engines (cough, I think I know one contact us )
2. So, the search engines can at least see your site, they just don’t rank your site as interesting.  This is an important step.  Our sites are based upon wordpress (wordpress.com) and, as such, are readily visible to Google.
3. Next, make sure the words on your site highlight your services, products, and interests.  It is words that search engines learn for each site.  Conversely, they don’t know what is in an image, they don’t know what a “flash” intro (or whole site) looks like.  No, they can’t even watch videos!  Search engines need WORDS.
4. Ok, so you’re at the 60% mark.  Your custom homes site is probably ranking about 10,000,000 by now)  How do you get higher?  Keep the content updated.  The fresher your content is the more “interesting” it will look to the search engines.  Note: Search engines will not see new content immediately without some special work — not covered here.  Let’s just say if you add a blog to your site and keep it up to date with weekly posts the new posts will be picked up pretty quickly.  Maybe days.  Maybe less.
5. Wow, your site is growing in popularity every couple of weeks!  Now you’re at maybe 99%!  Congratulations!  You now rank in the 99th percentile of 36,800,000 so you’re…  consulting my calculator… Eww, 360,000!  Wow, what do you do now?
6. Don’t panic!  You probably don’t care to be on the first page of those results.  You only build homes within a 40 mile radius of Newville, Pennsylvania.  Google will automatically do some localizing of results but many good customers will search for “custom homes newville” or “custom homes Pennsylvania”  Or “granite counters newville” maybe “new construction pa”  You get the idea.
7. So now, maybe, for “custom homes pa” you’re in the first page of results after all this work; congratulations!  Keep it up!
8. Maybe you’re still on the third page of results?  In that case don’t despair.  Keep up the updates.  Spread the word online — when others reference your site online (link to it) it ads “interestingness” in the eyes of the search engines.  You’ll keep moving up in ranking
9. You still want more?  Try paid search.  Google adwords is a powerful tool.  You can decide how much you’ll pay for each “click” you get on your ad delivered for certain search word combinations.  This is called “Pay Per Click” advertising.  With this technique you pay to be listed in the “sponsored search results” areas of Google.  You can pay for any volume of traffic you want.  Just remember to make sure to limit the geographic area you advertise in if your business only sells locally.  If you’re based in Newville, PA you probably don’t want to pay for clicks on your ad from Iowa, Alabama, and so on.

Hope that helps!

If you need help with this contact us we can help.