Lost in (hyper) Space

I have no idea how Google even counts the eight billion pages published on the web, never mind searches them all in 0.25 of a second, and quite frankly I don’t care.  But, what does concern me is how increasingly difficult it is to find the things I want, and of even greater concern, is the potential difficulties new clients may have in finding me. Are you concerned too?  If not, I think you should be because chances are your company is not the first one to appear on a web search, or even on the first page for that matter - and that’s when you actually type in your business name!  Don’t believe me? Well, if you really want to give yourself a scare, then open up Google and type in a one or two word description of your business, for example; ‘florist’ if you sell flowers, ‘insurance’ if that’s your game, or ‘business magazine’ if you’re the editor or publisher of Real Business. Now, where do you rank?  If you’re not on the first page then you’re invisible – hardly anyone bothers with page two and onwards.

I don’t know a single businessperson who doesn’t regularly use the web to find companies who can service their immediate needs.  In my survey for this article, every person I asked confirmed that when considering using a new supplier, they automatically check out their website. However, my survey also revealed that many often struggled to even find the web address or URL (which stands for Uniform Resource Locator don’t you know?…I didn’t) of the company that they were searching for in the first place. 

So, what can you do to improve your performance on the search engines?  The good news is that there is a lot; the bad news is that there are few guarantees and the playing field changes daily.  As is the case with many things marketing related, the whole process is shrouded in the cloak of the dark arts, indeed there are now entire companies set up just to help people optimise their website. However, before you search for them, let’s start with the basics that all Real Businesses can, and I suggest should, do.

1. Your domain name should be relevant to the words that people will use to search for you.  So that’s why this magazine can be found at www.realbusiness.co.uk, and comes up first or second if you search for ‘real business’ or ‘business magazine’.
2. Don’t be tempted to just have a flash site; it’s better to incorporate flash into your HTML site. Most search engines can now read the text within the flash files (also, make sure you title and tag each page) but you need HTML to be sure you are covered. 
3. Consider which keywords people will use to try and find you or your competitors and repeatedly use them throughout the copy on your web pages.
4. Although increasingly it’s the visible web pages that take priority, search engines also scan the source code (the invisible text behind your website) for ‘meta’ keywords, so where relevant, litter the text on your web pages with them, as well as hiding them behind the pages.
5. Include misspellings in your meta keywords list along with unusual words relating to your business which you haven’t used in the page text.
6. Keep keywords relevant to each individual page’s content as engines are sophisticated enough to assess significance in relation to other words in the text.
7. Make sure keywords appear towards the top of your copy and include them in your page title. 
8. Keep any one keyword to around 3-4% of the web page copy – you may be penalised if you have a higher keyword density.
9. Include keywords close together, e.g. ‘business magazine’ rather than, ‘a magazine that addresses today’s business issues’.
10. Where possible use your main keyword in your domain name.
11. In the search listings, whilst some engines generate their own ‘description’, most will lift either your title and the first couple of lines of copy, or your hidden description tag, so keep these up-to-date too.
12. Try to include a site map on your website which links back to all your other pages and is accessible from the home page. Some search engines give prominence to pages only a couple of clicks away from your homepage so that this helps register your more ‘buried’ pages.
13. Be aware that some search engines use your web ‘popularity’ as a ranking criterion, so get as many of your clients and contacts as possible to link their website to yours.
14. You can submit your site to search engines for free, but for best results it is advisable to use one of the paid programmes of submission, and then re-submit your site whenever you make major changes to it.
15. Appoint someone within your company to keep on top of this. The search engines change their criteria all the time and you could find yourself going from number one to 100 in the space of a day or two.

At the risk of making the editor and publisher of Real Business blush, I can state categorically that this publication is an excellent example of how to do it.  Real Business comes up on just about every search engine’s first page in response to the most common key words. But, can the same be said of you? Are you easy to find or lost in space?

Peter Knight is chairman of Phoenix, a communications agency, and author of the best-selling “HEMP: Highly Effective Marketing Plans”. If you run a real business and have come up with a stunning marketing plan, or you want help to create one, Peter would love to hear from you at pk@phoenixplc.com