What can you do to get your Website found by Search Engines?

Story by: Colophon Editor
July 1, 2008

Google and Yahoo are the big names that we all know. Google is still currently the frontrunner in the search engine world. Their names have grown through the years due to the excellent quality search results they have offered their users. Getting your website to appear on their search engine results pages can become an involved task, but it is most certainly possible. First of all, you need to understand how the search engine results are selected.

Put yourself in the shoes of the user, as if you were searching for something specific on the web. If you were looking for your product, what keywords or search terms would you type in, so as to find it?

You need to ensure that your website is informative and interesting and that it captures the essence of your product or service efficiently. If search engines were to direct users to your page and they found it to be difficult to use, uninformative and not targeted at their needs then they would not return. Not all websites that rank well are well constructed. Some have many years of content behind them and are so large with so many inbound links that they rank well. However, new websites must be well constructed and maintained if they expect to enter the market and compete.

So your main tasks are to make your site have quality content, be well programmed and have a maintenance schedule in place.

To get search engines to direct to your page in the first place you will need to put in a little bit of extra time and effort. Google should be thought of as a blind person, and you need to describe your website in certain ways in order for Google to be led to it. There are two main factors to consider for this:

1. The content of your website must be informative as mentioned before, but the copy also needs to be carefully constructed with good keyword and key phrase density. The keywords need to be implemented in such a way that the site still reads well and naturally. Regular updates and changes in your keywords are necessary as search engines return to index the site and seek new content and links that are arriving from other websites.

2. You need to try and get as many solid and high quality websites to backlink to your site. The more quality links that are directed towards your web pages all count towards the popularity of your website. Especially if those sites that link to yours are well ranked. Then automatically it is assumed that your site has a lot of superior content to offer the world of web users.

There are a lot of requirements that need to be put in place before your website will be regarded as an authority within your field. These elements all take time to implement, but are worthwhile in the end when you see your website listed as one of the top ten on a search engine results page.

You need to employ the correct tagging, meta tags, titles and descriptions for every page. You need to constantly update your information, keeping it fresh and informative. By updating your pages on a regular basis, Google will also start to take notice so ensure that you have the appropriate tools in place to be able to execute these changes frequently.

Once you have set the correct foundation with all the necessary elements in place for a search engine friendly website, put a maintenance schedule into place so that updates to your site are performed on a regular basis. From meta tags to your page copy and images, fresh content will not only be appreciated by your customers and prospects, the search engines will like it too! With fresh and exciting content comes the tried and tested traditional method of marketing: word of mouth!