Basic Tips for
Getting Your Web Site Found

This article, while written primarily in a non-tech fashion, contains a small amount of "tech-speak" understood by website designers. If you have or plan to have a website, but don't know anything about HTML (the code used to create most websites), this information will still help you to understand how to make the most of your online investment. At the very least, make sure that your designer is following the basics outlined below.

You can have the coolest website on the Web, but if no one can find it, it's a wasted effort.

One of the problems faced by many small business owners is that they retain Web designers (often friends or relatives) who create nice sites but don't really understand how to get the search engines to list them.

People find websites by going to, for example, Google and typing in words like "lawn care" and "(your city)." The sites that best meet the search engine's standards appear higher in the results. And as you know from conducting your own searches, it's unlikely that someone will delve much past the first page of listings.

When the Web first came on the scene, search engines could be fooled into ranking websites higher in the results pages due to design techniques such as "keyword stuffing" (loading words dozens of times on a page), "keyword cloaking" (typing in keywords in the same color as the background so as to hide them from view), and several other dubious methods.

No more. The search engines now use constantly evolving algorhythms to locate and list "legitimate" sites, and remove offenders altogether. Today, in order to get your site listed -- and by extension found by prospective customers -- you need to make sure that your website will pass muster.

Here are the basics:

1. WRITE GOOD CONTENT AND UPDATE YOUR SITE REGULARLY. This is the single most important factor and there's no shortcut. Make sure that each page on your site focuses on one or two key elements that can be defined in one or two words (hence the term "keywords"). The more specific and informative your content, the more value to your site visitors ... and to the search engines. Check your spelling carefully and be willing to rewrite as often as necessary to hone your message to its potential.

2. USE DESCRIPTIVE PAGE TITLES. The search engines need to know what each page is about -- and so do your site visitors. The first few words in your page title are what appear in the search listings, so make them tight and focused. COMMON ERROR: using the same page title for all pages on a site. Think of each page as an article, and each page title as the summary. Those few words will either entice or deter someone from clicking through to your site from a search engine.

3. WRITE GOOD HEADINGS. These are your actual headlines and need to include the prime keywords for your page. EXAMPLE: "Fertilizing Tips," or, more descriptive, "Fertilizing Tips for Gilroy Lawns."

4. USE SEARCH ENGINE-FRIENDLY URLS. Example: www.yoursitename.com/fertilizing-tips-gilroy.html. Don't abbreviate or "code" your page URL (i.e., "fertips.html", "page6a.html"). You may know what it means, but the search engines won't have a clue.

5. GET A FEW INBOUND LINKS TO YOUR SITE. Overall, the more sites that link to yours, the better (search engines see inbound links as "votes" for your site). But even more important is the relevance of the sites that link to yours (i.e., another landscaping-related site as opposed to a vacuum cleaner site). TIP: Write a few basic articles for online article banks, and participate in a couple of industry-related online forums that will allow you to include a link back to your site.

6. LINK YOUR SITE TO A FEW GOOD RELATED SITES. Both site visitors and search engines place a higher value on websites that provide useful resources related to the same topic.

WARNING: Don't participate in "link farms" or other linking schemes, such as where you exchange links with anyone with a website who agrees to it. Someone who wants to can link to your site without it affecting your standing with the search engines. But if you link to a lot of unrelated sites, you risk getting your site blacklisted.

7. DON'T "ORPHAN" ANY OF YOUR SITE PAGES. Make sure that every page on your website can be accessed from at least one other page. Best if all pages link back to your index (home) page.

8. SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO THE SEARCH ENGINES. Actually, this isn't really necessary because your site will be found by search engine "spiders" and indexed if it doesn't violate the rules. But if you want to help speed things along, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and follow the very simple steps found there. CAUTION: Google allows you to submit your site as often as you like without penalty, but some other search engines aren't so kind. Make sure to carefully read the rules before submitting your site to any search engine. BETTER APPROACH: Just submit your site to Google. The rest will find it soon enough.

9. IF YOU FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE, just remember to add good content regularly and make sure that your site is built well.

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© Copyright 2007 Michael Riley. All rights reserved.