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| You decide to get a website. And then you expect new leads and customers to come through the website. No one shows up. You lose interest. You decide you are better off paying folks for leads. |
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| This is a story that repeats itself. There are millions of sites online now. How do you make sure that you are able to get your customers online? |
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| Here are three basic things to do to optimize your site better: |
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| Know your keywords: Keywords are words that your customers use to search for your products and services. People often make the mistake of putting together a general list of keywords that they try to optimize for. For example, a contractor in Edsion, NJ decides to optimize on the keyword “Contractor”. Well, guess what? About a million other contractors are trying to do exactly the same. |
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| The most effective way of getting better search results for your site is to know your customers and think like them. What are the key words they are likely to type? If you are in Edison, NJ, your customers are likely to be around that area. They are unlikely to be searching generally for contractors all over country. So you may need to optimize for locations. What would they type into the search box- the name of the town they are in? The general part of the country? The state? In the same vein, would they generally type for a contractor or would they search in the specific category that they are looking for? So you need to optimize on “roofing contractor Edison NJ” and sometimes even long strings like “fixing roofs central NJ”. |
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| Being very specific about your key words can help you improve your search results. |
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| Get a higher ranking on search engines: Knowing your key words is just the first step. What next? There are many search engines but really two matter- Google and Yahoo. And of these, Google has been increasingly gaining market share. So if you have to optimize for one search engine, focus on Google. |
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| How you optimize for Google is an entire industry. And folks at Google try to stay ahead of this industry. Ironically, the way to beat this game is to really play it honestly. Google’s job is not to bamboozle a bunch of self-styled Search experts, irrespective of what these “experts” may believe. They are trying to get users to the most relevant content. So is your site most relevant for the key words that you have identified as the ones that users are looking for? How would an outside person figure out if your site is relevant? Here are some of the options: |
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Does your site have robust content against the key search terms you have identified? |
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Does your site always have the same information or does the information change so that users can find new information? |
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Is your site considered important enough that other sites link to you? |
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Do you link to other relevant sites? |
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Does your site have videos and other materials which add to the robustness of the content? |
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| Try not to beat Google. Try to create the best site to meet the needs of your customers and make it Google’s job to find you. |
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| You have to make it easier for Google to find you. You can structure your site better so that Google can accurately characterize your site. Small Biz Express as a part of its regular offer builds sites in a search friendly way. It’s not nuclear science and you can do it. Or if you don’t want to spend time on it, it may be money well spend to get someone who is an expert to build and maintain the site. |
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| Use search and Paid search in combination. Paid Search is ads put deliberately on search engines by paying a fee. Natural Search is the results that automatically come up. You may feel that using natural search by itself could work and you could save money on paid search. Experts have found that the best way to maximize your return is to use paid and natural search in combination. (“Paid Search” is advertisements that Google and Yahoo place on your search words and these are shaded and look different from your “natural” search). |
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| Google charges per click – so you do not pay unless your ad is clicked on, and your ranking depends on some formula which gives weightage to both your content relevance as well as your bid for each key word. You can write what appears on your paid search campaign and optimize it over time. |
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| Optimizing your site for search engines is not difficult but it is hard work. There is no secret sauce – underlying all the hype is good old fashioned customer focus. Understand what the customers are looking for and be the best in meeting their needs. Just add a little search savvy to the mix and you will see a stream of leads coming your way as a small business owner. |
