Doing Well In "The Google": Search Engines Are Your Friend
First, let's start with a brief glossary: rank: a generic term used to describe relative authority or placement with a search engine. If you have a higher/better rank, you will appear closer to the top of the first page on search engines. juice: the amount of a bump an inbound link will give your site. No one knows the actual numbers involved in the formulas the search engines use to determine search rankings, so people in the biz talk about relative juice associated with links and linking strategies.
First Lesson: Original content is king.
End of lesson. No, really. The toughest part of ranking well in the search engines is creating relevant, unique content. But it must be done. Don't have the time? Hire someone. Don't have the money? Barter for writing. Don't have anything to barter? Do it yourself. Already written all there is about your organization? Start a blog on your site. Write about your customers, your industry, and anything else that will help your potential customers relate to your organization.
Second Lesson: Make your site useful.
Your site should be geared for what you want to rank for. For example, if you wanted people to search for 'local seafood restaurant' and would like to see your name at or near the top of the list, you will need to focus on that concept. Having a writeup on how your restaurant is nestled along the coast and you get your fish right off the boats in the harbour is a good start. Having information about seafood restaurants in general is also good. Having news about the local seafood scene is even better.
Third Lesson: Get INBOUND links.
Google (and just about everyone else) gives credit only when other people link to YOU. So, the question always becomes "how to I get people to link to me?" There are no hard and fast rules to get this done, but there are some tips:
- Paid links fail. Anyone offering to put you link on their site for money is scamming you. You might get some juice in the short term, but the search engines are constantly hunting down "link farms" and can actually punish your site's rank for paying for a link on one of them.
- Make sure you are registered with the local phone book and any other directories (real or on the Internet). If you are a member of the local Chamber of Commerce, they will likely have a link to your website on theirs. So, make sure they update their site or get them to put up a members page if they don't have one.
- Help dictate the form of the link. The anchor text (the text which can be clicked to activate the link, like so) helps Google key into why an INBOUND link is relevant. In other words, if you got a link like HGC put on a random page on someone's site, that link will help you but it won't have any context. A better link would be on your own page talking about who you are and how you relate to the site's purpose. You could even write this up for them. Then the link in this section could look more like Hired Guns Branding and Graphic Design. (Notice how this looks a lot like the phrase you might want to rank for?)
- Links to your site from more important sites provide more juice. Getting featured on a news site like CNN.com or on a social aggregator like Digg.com will provide much more juice than your nephew's blog (unless your nephew happens to be Kevin Rose). If you have a blog for regular content updates, submit your posts to social aggregators and any relevant publicity avenues.
Fourth Lesson: OUTGOING links don't do anything for your rank.
When you link to other sites, THEY do better. It can still be useful to have pages of links but only if your website visitors will use them.
Fifth Lesson: Be patient.
Good things come to those who wait. All things considered, a website which has been around longer will rank better. And a continued effort to rank well (especially one which doesn't involve any quick fixes or cheating) will eventually catch up with someone who is not making the effort. Think of it like advertising and capturing mindshare with branding: Coke is the biggest name because they have been around forever and continue to re-enforce their brand. Make plans and budget for your online marketing effort.
Sixth Lesson: Prioritize your content.
Search engines rank content and links based on how much attention they will receive. In other words, if you put content on your homepage it will be more important for ranking than content hidden on a page deep within your site. As well, when people link to you from their homepage you will get better rank than if they link to you from an obscure page on their site. But, don't get caught in the trap of overloading your homepage with content. You CAN overdo it. Sure, if you have a blog and a job board and a user community and reference content and and and... you will want to have some of that on the front page. Keep it to featured content and keep it fresh.
Seventh Lesson: Hire a pro.
All of these are great tips on how to do it yourself, but who has the time? Hire someone who ranks well for terms like 'search engine optimization' or 'internet marketing' (because it means they are good at their job). Do your research too. See who their clients are and how well those sites rank for their areas. Do some digging for bad comments about their work and how they treat their customers. Price compare. Find out about their methods and operations.
In Conclusion:
A little education and a whole lot of effort and time can turn your site from an invisible hole-in-the-wall into a dominant presence on the web. Hired Guns Creative makes no guarantees as to the accuracy and/or effectiveness of the above advice or techniques. They are purely for educational purposes. Do not operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of Hired Guns Creative. Hired Guns Creative may cause delusions of grandeur, heart palpitations, and acute profitability and brand envy.
- By Reed
