Custom Websites and Designs: Fast & Affordable

We've been inundated with calls from frustrated website owners experiencing low traffic to their sites due to not showing up in prominent search engines. The questions we've been asked sound like, “Do you make websites show up on Google?” or “How much would it cost to have my website on Google?” These questions reflect a general misunderstanding of how search engines function. I hope to clarify that all here.

Website owners want to be prominently displayed in all searches even remotely connected to the subject in which they operate. Those searching for information generally don't care where the information comes from, as long as it is valuable and answers their questions. When search engines first entered the market, their algorithms were simplistic and website developers could easily manipulate certain components of the site in order to be “found” easily. Using search engines like infoseek.com, dogpile.com or even google.com could often lead to search results that had very little to do with the original search.

Over the years, the searching mechanisms of Google and the like became more refined and it is now much more difficult to simply manipulate a few aspects of the site and find yourself on the top of searches. In fact, Google doesn't disclose the specifics of how their search engine really works, hoping to curb abuse from savvy web developers. However, that's not to say we don't know the basics.

Blogs and/or Forums.

Google loves websites that have constantly refreshing information. In Google's eyes, a website that is constantly refreshing most likely has up-to-date information and they know it cannot be easily manipulated. Having an active forum community on your site or maintaining a daily or weekly blog can do wonders helping your search engine optimization. In fact, you are reading this right now because we know the value in it.

Links

While Google knows you can easily edit the links on your site to other pages, it knows that it is difficult for you to add links to your site on other people's pages. If you have multiple accounts in various social networking sites like linkedin.com, facebook.com, or myspace.com, it helps a lot if you can provide links to your site from their site. Also, you should consider writing testimonials for local companies you have good dealings with who not only put those testimonials on their sites, but link the contact information of the person who gave the testimonial. The more links you can get to direct people to your page, the better.

Words, not Images

Far too often, websites use images such as .jpegs or .gifs to display text. Usually this is because they can find an ornate look that cannot be duplicated in the conventional fonts used in web browsers. Although sometimes this is inevitable, do remember that Google or any other search engine cannot “read” the text on the image. To them, it's just a picture. Do your best to use the regular fonts so Google can effectively read your page and help direct people to your site.

There really are many, many different ways to help your site be found on search engines and the importance of which should not be underestimated. There are companies you can hire that specifically look into every facet of your website, including the very coding itself, to optimize its chances of being found. But the bottom line is to keep your page informative and helpful. Doing so will make everybody happy.

Tags: Blogs | SEO | google | search engines

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