How to get noticed
Your potential audience should be able to find you easily through keywords in a search engine, if not through a URL that is memorable and easy to guess. Therefore, you need to put as much information into your website as possible:
- Ensure all pages have titles
- Register your website with search engines as people do not search for your URL only
- Update that registration on a regular basis (usually monthly)
Plan your strategy
Evaluate where you currently rank within a search engine. This is your baseline measure for success. Make a comparison with a key competitor, try and establish what they do better and adopt best practice where you find it.
Research a target list of keywords or phrases. What are the likeliest words someone would use if they were looking for you? This is not necessarily as obvious as you might think. Try getting someone you know to come up with a list of words.
You might want to buy pertinent domain names, e.g. .org, .org.uk, .co.uk, or variations on a name, e.g. mediatrust, media-trust, themediatrust. In other words, anything obvious that you think might be used to guess your website address.
Site submission
Search engines will not necessarily find you automatically. Therefore, you should actively go out and register your site. Submission services are available but they can be expensive - 72% of submitters do it manually. Using an automated service is only really suitable for the many ‘smaller' engines.
Each engine has a different submission process. For example, Yahoo! screen each submission for individual merit. The time it takes for your site to get registered can vary significantly between search engines, ranging from a few days to four weeks plus.
Persistence is key. Keep monitoring where your site appears on search engines. If drastic changes occur, try to find out why. Try to keep abreast of developments in the strategies search engines use when listing sites.
Meta tags
Meta tags contain information about a web page which is hidden when viewed with a web browser. They contain keywords and descriptions of the content of a page. This information is used by search engines to rank sites.
In the early days of the Internet they were crucial, now some search engines don’t support them. However, it is still important to identify relevant key words for each page on your site, and a succinct description.
Linking strategy
The number of links to your site is particularly important to 'popularity' engines such as Google and Northern Light. Major search engines count the number of visible links to your site as a measure of its 'popularity' and adjust its ranking accordingly. Developing a linking strategy is vital to ensure a higher ranking. Look to link with relevant sites, but be creative. Return the favour by adding their link to your site.
Keywords
The placement of keywords is important in page titles and in the first paragraph. Search engine needs differ:
Some engines like keywords to be mentioned four or five times.
Others look for keywords up to eight times.
Some prefer keywords to be in the last paragraph.
Search engine characteristics
Don’t be tempted to cheat! Increasingly people try and cheat search engines through a number of methods: page cloaking, keyword cloaking, or false use of keywords. However, search engines are catching up with this and discovery could lead to search engines removing you from their listings.
Handy resources
There are companies out there who help with search engine optimisation:
www.netbooster.co.uk
www.stickyeyes.com
www.bcentral.com
www.submitexpress.com