Toolkit: Getting found online

Phil H · Posted: 24th May, 2007 8:02 am UTC Post subject: Toolkit: Getting found online

Marketing & PR. Getting customers and keeping them without breaking the bank. (2007) Philip R Holden and Nick Wilde. London, A&C Black.

Toolkit: Getting found online

If you’re concerned that your website isn’t being found often enough, there are some simple steps you can take.

The first is to check to see how well connected your website is. Typing ‘link:www.yourwebsite.co.uk’ (with the name of your site) into Google shows how many other sites link to yours. For most websites it’s a low number; Google itself only has around 15,000 such inward links.

You can also refer back to the searches you did (in Toolkit: Putting together a website) and see how well such searches bring up your website. Try looking at www.wordtracker.com and using its free trial. This simple tool enables to you see how popular certain keywords are. The next stage will give you an indication of how much competition there is in cyberspace for particular search terms. It’s probably worth paying for the Wordtracker service to get the full list here because these terms can easily be added into your website.

The next bit is more technical, but if you’re editing your own web pages, or you have a designer on hand, you can use the keywords from Wordtracker in the title of your web pages or in ‘meta-tags’, hidden pieces of codes such as a ‘description’ tag or tags which give text alternatives to images. These tags are not seen on the finished pages, but search engines read them and compile their results on that basis.

Incidentally, search engines other than Google do exist and the ‘keywords’ meta-tags are important for them (Google apparently ignores them). Most of these sites use ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers’, automated programs to pick up on these keywords, and so rank your pages.

A good web designer will be able to offer much more help on getting your site noticed and should be able to advise on how you can optimise your site. A good source of help is at Seth Godin’s site: www.squidoo.com/webtweakers/.
Also consider exchanging links with other relevant sites (try www.superlinks.com if you want thousands to choose from) and you must submit your website for inclusion in the main search sites such as Google, Yahoo and others. Look at www.dmoz.org/add and in Yahoo – simply select the right category and then click on the link at the top right that says ‘suggest a site’.

Perhaps the most important factor in the popularity of your site is to make it the authoritative site for the needs of your target customers. So if you sell architectural salvage, for example, you should give them tips on hunting for items, negotiating on prices, lists of local restorers, help with dating items, style guides etc, as well as the option to discuss related matters with other enthusiasts and experts.

Now, please post your comments and experience. Have you a small website? How have you generated interest and 'traffic'?

(c) 2007 Philip R Holden & Nick Wilde