Fiction: “If you build it, they will come.”
Sorry, my friend, that was just a myth created by Hollywood.
Reality: Most websites don’t do anything but sit there. You pay thousands of dollars (or $199 for a template) to have your website look good but — no joy. No one mentioned that just putting up a website doesn’t generate traffic. Your site needs constant promotion in multiple avenues.
Reality: Decent SEO firms charge thousands of dollars to optimize your website and get it to show up in the search engines. SEO is nit-picking, time-consuming detail work. We are not an SEO firm, but we structure your site so that it is SEO-friendly, help you with content creation, add you to local directories, set up Google accounts to cover analytics, map inclusion and Google+. These are the fundamentals that get your site off on the right footing.
Reality: There are a lot of different factors that play into how well your business ranks in searches and the hard nut to crack is that this changes constantly. In 2009, Google was chasing down ‘article’ sites – websites that posted a lot of content in the form of news articles. After a couple of years, people just became frustrated when they searched for solid information that wasn’t generated or copied by an article mill. So Google changed its tune. Today, Google is hot on the trail of ‘fresh content’ that is posted frequently – that means that blog posts are being shown before informational sites.
Reality: Backlinks are king. Another major factor in how well a site ranks is how many other sites are linking to it. This is called backlinking. Google perceives the internet as an inter-related web and so it is important to have connections with other websites. These connections can be made by including your site in industry-related directories and actively participating in conversations on forums and blogs.
These are some factors that affect search engine ranking:
- History – a domain name that is older gets ranked better
- Number of backlinks – how many other sites link to your website
- Keyword density – the repeated use of key words and phrases your customers will use to find you
- Domain names with the subject of the website in the name
- Relevant content and lots of it – an active blog with frequent posts
- Reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Insiderpages
- Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter links and recent posts
- A lot of traffic to your site – this can be created with email marketing campaigns that link to your site – or Facebook and Twitter posts that link directly to the site
This is a lot of work. Too much work for most small business owners to do themselves. It takes anywhere from 3 to 6 months to properly position your business online before you begin to see results. So the time to start is now.
