By Marc Gordon
Who doesn’t like to be number one? Let’s face it, being number one in a search result is very cool. There’s nothing quite like seeing your name, or your company, sitting up there in the top spot. But for some, there’s more reasons to be number one than just ego.
If your business is dependant on web traffic, then being listed ahead of your competitors is more about survival than appearance.
And while many experts might downplay the importance of even having a web site, instead encouraging people to put their efforts into blogs and tweets, the fact is that a web site is still the backbone of your internet marketing.
No matter how much you tweet, blog, maintain your Linked In profile, or contribute articles to sites like Biznik, your web site is the ultimate destination. It is the place where you come clean with the reasons why anyone should be doing business with you. Your contact information, promotions, company history, and products and services are all showcased and presented on your site.
But this article is not about the merits of a web site in a Web 2.0 world. It’s about getting your site as high as possible – the reasons for it can be your own.
But before I get into things, a word to the wise. This article will walk you through the steps I took to make my site, marcgordon.ca number one in the top three search engines with a search for “marc gordon”. It took just under 60 days from the time I uploaded my site to the time I hit number one in Google. Yahoo and Bing followed about a week later. How long I will be at number is anyone’s guess. The last time I checked was April 16, 2010.
Your site might hit number one sooner, later, or perhaps never. The fact is that the search engines decide who should be number one, not you or I. They use ever changing algorithms to filter what they deem the most relevant sites based on search queries. And while you may be number one today, you may fall to number 10 tomorrow, all because someone else made a small change to their site that made it appear more relevant than yours. Or because the search engines just chose so see it that way.
These algorithms are unique from one search engine to another. Search engine companies are secretive about how they filter and sort queries. As such, be leery of companies who claim they can make you number 1 in just a few days, for a fee.
None of these methods will cost you money. None of them are sneaky. None of them are secretive. All of them are deemed acceptable practice by the search engines. And together, they’ve worked for me. Let’s get started.
Relevant copy
This is the most important element in getting a high page ranking. Search engines love rich, relevant content. If your site is about cars, then talk about cars in all shapes and forms. Name manufacturers, and models. If you sell clothing, describe styles, materials, colours, and brands. But remember, your site should be written for visitors first – not search engines. So avoid dumb tricks like using your company name in every sentence, repeating the same phrases, or making certain words bold. If your site is awful to read, people will leave it, never to return. And then it won’t matter how high you rank in Google.
Updates
Having a blog or an articles pages is great. Just remember to keep them updated with new content. This will get the attention of both the search engines and visitors.
Minimal flash
Sure, flash can be cool. Who doesn’t like animated titles, buttons and cool effects. But beyond the fact that most people do a lousy job of integrating it effectively into a site, search engines cannot read it. So text written in flash looks more like white space when the search engines look at the code. While html might seem boring, remember that a great looking site has nothing to do with the code and everything to do with visual style and functionality.
Minimal PDF files
While search engines can read PDF files, they don’t come through as clear as good old fashioned text. And if the text has been converted to a graphic prior to saving, then the file can’t be read at all. Combine that with the fact that most people don’t always feel comfortable downloading files, and you’ve got two big reasons to add another web page instead of creating a PDF document.
Page titles
I have found the most success by having a detailed standard page title for every page, preceded by the name of the specific page. For example, assuming your home page title is ABC Company: Makers of the world’s best widgets, then the title for the products page could be Find the widget that’s right for you - ABC Company: Makers of the world’s best widgets.
Alternate text (alt="ABC Company logo")
Back in the olden days, some browsers could not display graphics properly, if at all. So alternate text would be attached to the html code. That way, if a photo of a house could not be displayed, you could at least see some text that would read “photo of house”. Even though this is no longer an issue, I would encourage you to continue this practice. For every photo or graphic, insert descriptive text. A photo of you should have your full name as alternate text, product photos should have their full name and product number as alternate text, navigation buttons should have the name of their respective pages (see Page Titles), and so on.
Page Description (meta name="description")
The page description appears under your site listing when it shows up in a search. Your description should be an objective description of your company, or you, and written in proper sentence form. For example: “ABC Company, located in Long Island, New York manufacturers widgets for the automotive and aerospace industries. The company was founded in 1981 and has received numerous industry awards.”
Key words (meta name="keywords")
Many experts claim that meta tags such as keywords are no longer relevant as search engines stopped acknowledging them due to abuse by sneaky designers. Whether this is true is open to debate. But I believe that since they take so little time to insert, why not? Simply list every word you can think of that someone might enter into a search engine query, separated by a comma. You can also use what’s called long tailed key words. These are mini phrases that people might enter such as “widgets for cars”, or “widget supplier in new york”. Avoid sneaky methods such as inserting the names of your competitors, or URLs of other sites.
Site map
Search engines love sitemaps. A sitemap is simply a text based file that lists all the pages in your site, when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important each page is in relation to other URLs in the site. The file format of a sitemap is generally XML. There are lots of free sites that will create an XML sitemap file for you that you can simply upload to the same directory your site is currently hosted. The one I use is www.xml-sitemaps.com.
External links to your site
If a lot of people link their sites to your site, it must mean you are pretty important. And search engines like important people (or at least their web sites). While you can always pay others to link to your site by placing ad banners on their pages, I always like to encourage people to do it for free. This can be done by reciprocating with links to their site, or having content relevant enough that people choose to link their sites to yours on their own.
Search engine submission
Search engines have what are called web crawlers. These are little programs that scour the net looking for new sites. If you upload a site, eventually these crawler will find it. But if you want to speed up the process, you can submit your site directly to the search engines. This is free to do and takes just a few minutes. I would encourage you to concentrate your efforts on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Then hit the others when you have some time to kill. Here are some links that will get you started:
http://www.google.com/addurl
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
Patience
The most important part of getting a high ranking is patience. Search engines do what search engines want. Popular sites like CNN, ESPN, and Playboy will always get noticed first because they are relevant, popular, rich in content, and continuously being updated - just like what we talked about. In the mean time, plan your marketing program, refine your services, and even try working the phone. Remember, there’s a whole lot of marketing tools available to you outside of the internet.
I use Adobe Dreamweaver for designing both my sites and those of my clients. Regardless of what software you choose to use, the option to apply the methods I’ve discussed here can easily be done. If you have someone else design your site for you, you can request these methods be applied. Any respectable designer should implement a number of them on their own.
One final note, to see how I’ve implemented these tool into my own site, visit http://marcgordon.ca and select View>Page Source in Firefox, or View>Source in Internet Explorer. Good luck!
Marc Gordon is a professional speaker and marketing consultant based in Toronto, Ontario. His firm, Fourword Marketing, specializes in helping businesses create a brand identity and developing effective marketing campaigns. Marc can be reached at (416) 238-7811 or visit www.marcgordon.ca