Today I had to search for a particular book which everybody told me cannot be found. I of course did not go down the street looking for it in the local book store. I found in Australia never bothering to make sure there was no seller closer to me. Maybe they had it in a neighboring town or in Germany for example but I did not know about it. Then I started thinking about the crucial importance internet has for the success of business today. It allows for a virtually unlimited market on minimal cost. It connects a seller and a buyer. It boosts brand communities. It increases the awareness. It allows us to talk directly with our consumers and understand in a crystal clear way what they want, need or think.
Businesses use internet in many different ways – websites, blogs, commercials, social media, newsfeeds, email marketing, recommendations and references, networking, sourcing, researching, etc., in most of the cases combining them. All of these tools have as a purpose either profit by sales or profit by efficiency.
To achieve those goals though a company should make sure that it’s content is visible. In other words, when people type a search for your kind of a product or company you should pop us among the first search results. That is what guarantees you success.
If we focus on websites visibility that at first seems to be mission impossible – internet is flooded with similar products, services and companies. So you should either be truly unique or smart.
There are several tips repeated by specialists which should help you increase the visibility of your website:
1. You should make sure that enough websites and publications are linked to yours. Search engines discover content by “crawling”, a process of accessing billions of pages with interlinked content. More links equals more visibility.
2. You should optimize keywords according to expectations (even better research, for example through Google AdWords or trough testing keyword effectiveness on different search engines) about what key words consumers would use while searching for your type of a service/product. Key words repeated many times on the website give better discovery results. “Long tail” keywords will reduce general traffic but will direct those who know exactly what they want (and that they really want to have it) to your pages.
3. Give a title to each page according to its content. Be precise and short as that will ensure you better discovery by search engines. Concentrate the important content in the first three words as search engines read the first 70-75 characters of the title tag.
4. Provide quality content. As increased traffic is perceived by search engines as increased importance of the search result, it as a rule increases traffic further. You should make sure that visitors get what they want. Do not alienate readers with overwhelming selling efforts.
5. Use text links. When explaining content by referring to a different web address, use a hyperlinked text instead of typing URL strings. It is not a good idea using your keywords as links to other pages or web addresses. Be warned that too many links on a page mean that they will not all be searched.
6. Make sure that the structure of your website is accessible through linking all pages. If not, you risk that search engines will not find the not-linked pages. This will greatly lower the chances of your content being found.
7. Content which requires a login is generally skipped by search engines. If you aim for visibility, avoid that kind of barriers.
8. Get listed in as many relevant directories as possible. They exist in different shape and size and provide different options for listing. There are also paid options, however, as a consumer myself I have my doubts about those few search results that appear as first and are marked “sponsored”.
9. Use HTML coding for your main content in order for it to be visible to search engines. Java, Flash and images are still ignored by them. Check how your website is read by a search engine to ensure it will be read and listed. That you could do with a tool as SEO Software tool.
10. Research by SEOmoz shows that social features on the site and the domain are becoming increasingly important. However, it is still the link metrics on page level, the link authority features on domain level and the page level keyword usage that count the most when it comes to search engine ranking factors.
11. Search engines guidelines read that URLs should be created with appropriate and human friendly keywords.
12. Aside of key-word-rich content ensure regularly new content.
Those are just a very few ground rules as ensuring website visibility is a process that goes all the way to programming the website and to agressive marketing on the other end. However, I am sure that most of you are already lost. That is why I am going to say it as simple as possible:
What you are really supposed to do as long as you do not possess IT qualifications is to make sure that your URL is user-friendly, maximally descriptive and clear; that all relevant keywords are listed and repeated as much as possible in the relevant texts; that the website is listed in as many directories as possible; that content is readable by search engines; that meta description tags provide clear and appealing description of your content; that every page is titled accordingly and linked to the website; that there are credible external links to your site which you can ensure by negotiations and networking; that keywords match consumer search.
The rest I would leave to the IT specialists.
DIDI
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