Search engines are the first place for people on the Internet searching for goods or services, the position your website or blog appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL doesn't show up on the first or second page of results, chances of a consumer finding you decrease dramatically. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is fundamental that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked hard to achieve.
You must come up with a strategy to monitor and maintain your search engines positions. Your strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. You need to be on the lookout for is the second that upward climb in search engine rankings reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into monitoring and protecting this position.
Analyzing the long-term trends of your search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change over time. If you are not monitoring your ranking and are unaware of these changes your position may drop. To prevent this kind of drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a daily/monthly basis. Create a graph to keep tabs on your top search engine ranking positions.
Each search engine uses a different formula to rank your website or blog. When a search engine changes this formula, it may raise or lower your ranking. This is why you must check your positions frequently in order to monitor when a search engine changes their formulas and what effect it has on your positions.
Word rank competition is a crucial factor you must always be aware of. Your competitor's position may rise, automatically lowering your rank. Or their position may drop, pushing your website or blog higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitors position, and be prepared to modify your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search engine results.
Use the most popular search engines for your monitoring. Right now, there are five popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top five may change over time. Realistically Google followed by Yahoo are the two biggest. This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present.
* Google: Shows searches at any Google-branded web site such as Google or Google Images.
* Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-branded web site such as Yahoo or Yahoo Local. Does NOT include searches at the Yahoo-owned sites of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture.
* MSN: Shows searches at any MSN-branded web site such as MSN Search. It does not include Windows Live Search data (0.02 percent of search share in July 2006), but it will include that going forward from August 2006.
* AOL: Shows searches at any AOL-branded web site such as AOL Search. Does NOT include searches at AOL-owned Netscape Search (this is on the chart separately) or probably other AOL-owned sites.
* Ask: Shows searches at Ask but not other Ask/IAC-owned sites. For example, does NOT show searches at the sites of MyWay, iWon and My Search. These are included in the Other category.
* Other: Shows searches that occur at other search sites not named on the chart. Any site not listed on the chart can be assumed to have a share that is less than the smallest named site (IE, Ask is the lowest named search site with a 2.5% share. Other sites will have shares less than this).
Pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation of the search engine system, if you have found that a number of your positions have dropped, it may mean that a page of your website has become inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently been the target of a search engine campaign. Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis you must also invest time and effort to protect your investment.
At this moment, in every small town across America, more and more people young and old are logging onto Google, Yahoo and MSN to find local products and services.
This is called "Local Search" and it provides a massive opportunity for small businesses savvy enough to score leads in this arena. Here is a simple step-by-step guide that every local business owner should know to get the edge in their local markets.
Right now your strongest competitors are implementing these strategies, and you should be too!
1. REGISTER YOUR SITE WITH THE SEARCH ENGINES Google, Yahoo and MSN are more-than-anxious to list your information as they build local search directories. This is their job. After all, they're search engines! So make sure you're listed. Search engines like Local and TrueLocal, as well as Judy's Book, Craig's List, and Insider Pages are rapidly building directories with user-generated reviews, so make sure to get in those as well. Now is the time to start building your web presence.
2. OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE AND GEAR IT TOWARD LOCAL SEARCH Put local terms in your page titles. Don't write: Kitchen Cabinets. Write: New York Kitchen Cabinets. Also, put the same local terms in your anchor text. Put the same local terms in your H1 and H2 tags. And, finally, put the same local terms in your body copy.
3. INCREASE YOUR INBOUND LINKS All the top search engines look very favorably upon links that are coming back to your site from other websites. The more important that other website is, the more favorable they look at that inbound link. Do your best to find some local directories or strategic partners that will link back to your site. Now, don't just have them link back to your business name. Ask instead if they can link back to your website with a local search term like "affordable custom website design" as we've done at the bottom of this article.
4. PUT A BLOG ON YOUR WEBSITE Free blogs won't help you here; the blog has to reside on your own domain. This is one of the most powerful and most secret local search tools around today. There are plenty of things to talk about if you think creatively. For example, you can post info about local community events, school gatherings and events, neighborhood block parties, local sporting activities, concerts, theater, shows. Of course, it's better if you can link this content so that it's relevant to your business, but as long as the towns and neighborhoods you want to score well in the search engines with are in your posts and titles, you should rank highly for those terms.
5. CHECK YOUR INFOUSA LISTING InfoUSA is a website that compiles detailed lists for the purpose of direct mail and telemarketing. However, the company also provides directory listing info for many of the smaller search engine directories. Go to the website InfoUSA to make sure you're listed and to make sure that your listing is updated with the correct info. It would also be a good idea too add as much as you can about you and your company to your profile, things like your website address.
6. ADD LOCAL CONTENT TO YOUR WEBSITE Your website should have a series of pages filled with interesting and relevant content that's focused on local angles. You can report local news (perhaps as it pertains to your company), describe your company's history in the town or county, offer a briefing of non-profit activities that you or a group you belong to partake in, even provide info on the suburbs or local cities that your staff live in. It's also a good idea to put your physical mailing address on every page you can because that's local content too.
7. PUT A MAP ON YOUR WEBSITE Google and Yahoo Maps give you the opportunity to link to maps you create. There are also plenty of simple tools available out there that will customize a map for your business. It's also a great idea to include very specific driving directions to your location or locations. This way you can include street names and major landmarks (local content) that can be read by the search engines.
These are only a small handful of ideas to help you build up your ranking in the search engines. Obviously you must have foresight to take the time to do this. These strategies might not pay off today or even tomorrow. But in the not-too-distant future your ranking may soar because of it and you may very well be topping the search engine results pages.
Both Brandon Paige & Richard Cagney are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Richard Cagney has sinced written about articles on various topics from Marketing, Internet Marketing and Kitchen Home Improvement. Richard Cagney heads the SEO/SEM division of the All Access Unlimited (. Richard Cagney's top article generates over 4400 views. to your Favourites.