Getting High Rankings in Search Engines

Many feel that once their websites are completed, they can sit back and wait for the customers to roll in. If only it were that easy! Unfortunately, marketing your website takes a lot patience and months to see results.

The first step is simple, but an important one: Before you can show them your website, before you can state your case for your product or service, you must get people to visit your website.

One of the most frequent questions we are asked is “How do I show up high in the search engine rankings?” And with good reason: search engines, such as those from Google, MSN, and Yahoo, are used by everyone on the Internet, and offer a huge audience for you. While the techniques behind each search engine is different, they act in the same basic way. They look at websites and build an index of their content — basically, the text. The search engine determines which webpages are the most relevant for a given search phrase and presents those listings to the end user.

So how does this apply to your site? Because search engines base relevance on the content of your site, optimization of the text on the site is crucial. Studies have shown that search engine users rarely click beyond the first page or two of results. Each search engine determines “relevance” in its own super-secret way, but there are several general ways that a website can improve its odds of getting a high ranking.

A frequently overlooked step is phrase research and targeting. Often businesses will say, “We sell shoes, so let’s market our website for the phrase ‘shoes’.” But with millions of other sites (about 269 million, according to Google) competing for this same keyword, some of them with multi-million-dollar marketing budgets, is it worth spending money and time to beat them in the rankings? And just how many people are typing in only the word “shoes”into search engines? Are there better phrases — ones that are more descriptive and fit your niche?

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that a search engine will index your site, and it can take months for them to get around to you. In the end, the best way to get search engines to come to your site is the same as the best way to get people to come to your site — provide lots of free information and tools that are useful and relevant to your product or service. Companies hate to hear this, because it often means more work or more money from them. They like to think there are “secret tricks” to get ahead in the rankings, but like other business efforts, a little bit of hard work can go a long way.