Search engines do not like casual sex
by Joi Murugavell / Joi Design
For years, companies have been trying to add the right keywords, the right page titles (et cetera) to rank better and search engines have been coming up with stricter rules so only websites with good/appropriate content rank well. If you have good content, you will rank well and you will enjoy more traffic to your website – without spending thousands on search engine optimisation.
What on earth does book marking have to do with ranking better?
Have you heard of social bookmarking? Try this website http://del.icio.us/ Del.icio.us (now owned by Yahoo!) allows you to keep all your bookmarks in one place. Simply sign up for a Del.icio.us account and you will be able to access your precious bookmarks from any computer.
This is fantastic! but its not the real power behind a website like Del.icio.us. You are also able to search for content bookmarked by other Del.icio.us members. And here lies its power : websites that have been bookmarked the most appear on the top of the list! No meta tags in the world could put you on the top of Del.icio.us’ list, as you will be ranked by how many people have bookmarked you. Social book marking is not a new trend, to gauge the impact it has made on how we search, go to http://del.icio.us/ and do a search on your favourite topic.
Here's a Scenario: You want to find out what the best news website is. You do a search on a search engine like yahoo! or Google, you get a whole lot of links, you go through all of them, its pretty confusing, there are so many options and time is precious. You then do the same search on del.icio.us and the first item was bookmarked by 23828 people, the second 9758 people. They are ranked by real people, not robots, or a whole bunch of clever people who have put the right keywords into their websites. Our need to save time, our constant exposure to advertising, being spoilt for choice when it comes to products will and is changing the way people interact with websites. Search engines do not like casual sex and you can see why.
How to wine and dine a search engine with Business Catalyst
1. Rely on good old fashioned ‘honesty’ not trickery, if you provide good information people will bookmark you and you will rank highly. A rapidly growing number of people now look for information via these ‘social bookmarking/networking’ websites (see snapshot from www.addthis.com for a list of some fantastic social networking sites). Use web aps for articles, maintain a blog, add a forum (if it suits your business). Grow your website with the right tools, so you each page has a purpose (to convert browsers into clients).
2. Lets say you hired the best SEO, your ranking is brilliant. A potential customer gets to your website, has a quick look (most people have a very limited attention span on the web), they find nothing they are looking for so they leave, ranking well did absolutely nothing - they got there, they saw nothing, they left will be the story of your web audience.
Turfgrass sells ready-made lawns, they have a great section on their website on 'how to protect your grass from common residential pests'. Good information for the right target audience is like chocolates and wine to a search engine on a date with you - relevant content is king, connect with your audience and take great pains finding out what they want to read about, what they need to know. Browse through your Business Catalyst user manual for ideas on the best tools to use for each type of information.
Here's what Google has to say on the matter in answer to the faq question : Why doesn't my site show up for a specific keyword?
"If you create an information-rich site that clearly and accurately describes your topic, it'll likely return for your desired keywords"
3. Do register your website with yahoo! and google, they are popular. If you can't figure out where the submit button is, simply do a search on submit google and submit yahoo! it will take you to their submit pages. Also register with www.dmoz.org an open source directory.
4. Submiting your sitemap to google and yahoo! will help these search engines find all the pages on your website, and this is ALL content, your blogs, articles, pages (if you are using Business Catalyst that is, not all content management solutions are search engine friendly). If you have an online business with Business Catalyst email them and ask them to 'turn on your sitemap'. Next, submit your sitemap to Google and Yahoo! To find out how to do this, simply search for submit sitemap google or submit sitemap yahoo. (everything is searchable :)
What else is Google up to: (to make sure you don't 'cheat')
Reviews and ratings
Over the past few months, Google has been hard at work making it easier to find and compare local businesses and services right from the standard web results page. They've added reviews and ratings to searches. So pretty soon, when you look for a restaurant, you can at a glance compare them by how many 'stars' people have given them. Search engine optimisation isn't going to give you stars. Google says "We're really excited to offer this easier access to qualitative information about local spots. We find the reviews and ratings generated by others in the know to be quite useful when we want to head to a restaurant, catch a movie, or stay at a hotel -- and we hope you will too".
Personalisation
If you get an account with google, over time, as the search engine learns your preferences, you will enjoy a personal google butler service. Sep Kamvar an engineer from Google explains: I (Sep) am an avid Miami Dolphins fan (no joke). Searching for [dolphins] gives me info about my favorite football team, while a marine biologist colleague gets more information about her salt-water friends. Read more.
If you do not have the right content on your website, (even if you rank well) what a shame! - it's no different from having front row seats on the only day you forgot your glasses.
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