Web Site Design and Search Engine Rankings
I often receive email from new website owners who are frustrated because they cannot achieve the visibility they desire on the major search engines. If you are serious about your online business, you must deal with search engines. You have my sympathy in this endeavor.
When it comes to search engine placement, all manner of advice is out there on the internet. If you have the time, you can educate yourself on all the latest rules and quirks of the search engines, and submit your Web site to the search engines yourself. You may prefer to save time and use the services of a search-engine optimization company. Of course, the quickest, easiest, and most expensive option is to pay to advertise directly on the search engines.
The time to think about search-engine placement is when you are building the Web site, because where you put key words and how you describe your business influences where you land in internet searches done by potential customers.
The real search engines, Google, Alta Vista and Excite, use complex automated systems to evaluate sites and determine how high to place them in a search. These systems are often referred to as “bots” or “web-bots”. The bots scan your Web site to figure out where you belong and how important your website is. Getting the right key words onto your web pages is critical.
Yahoo, LookSmart and others are actually "directories." Paid staff evaluate the submitted Web sites, to determine whether and where they should be added to their directory.
One important option, of course, is to pay to advertise, much as you would the Yellow Pages. Google displays sponsored links on the right side of their search listings. These listings allow you to pay as you go. Your location on the search results depends on how many people click on your link and how much you are willing to pay per click. A link on Google's home page explains very clearly how to participate in this program. Google claims a click-through rate five times the industry average.
But if you would prefer not to pay, then submit your site to the top five search engines. Don’t waste your time with the others. Make sure that you are submitting your site to the appropriate category on those search engines.
Don’t let your webmaster waste his time and your money on a fancy website. The top websites in the world are not fancy at all. Check out Yahoo!, Amazon and Google. This site could have been designed by any high-school student. In fact, my first website was developed by a high-school student and it was earning six-figures two years after start-up.
Remember, it's more important that the person or software evaluating your site understands immediately where it belongs. Keep your website and your text simple, but convey as much information as you can. Avoid drop-down menus unless you also include a site map for the web-bots so that they may crawl your website.
Link wherever you can. Google's web-bots add up these links as one measure of the popularity of your site, and places you higher in search results.
Be patient. It takes a while for all of this to come together and propel you up the rankings.
If you wish to avoid many of these problems, then buy an existing website using VotanWeb.com Existing web sites come with a known ranking, visibility, links and traffic.