“How to increase your rankings in the search engines” has to be one of the most common questions on the Web (and for good reason). Companies of all sizes spend considerable time and money investing in a Web Site that looks great and that will (hopefully) make them money, make them more competitive and really impress their site visitors. But why is it that all too often, even great looking sites are ranked low while a plain looking site that took a fraction of the cost is ranked number one? Or how can some guy’s blog post be the number one or number two-ranked result about your company when you have all this great content? These are exactly the kind of issues that so many Web Sites face today and I will try to help shine a light on some if not most of the reasons as we move along.

By the way, if you haven’t put your Site together yet, you are fortunate to be reading and researching the subject well in advance. Counter to the cliché’ of “Brick and mortar vs. Online”, I tend to think of the Online presence as needing the same sort of treatments as a great building to be successful:

1.  A good plan

2.  A strong foundation

3.  Built right (and with the right tools)

Sure, these three items may sound rather simple or old fashioned but it is my experience from the past 15 years talking. And trust me, you need someone with experience to give it to you straight.

I have consulted to all sorts of businesses (small and large) and there is always a common goal when it comes to Web Sites: to “look good”. While that is not a bad thing (we all like things that look nice), it is amazing just how often the priorities are not where they should be when it comes to a Web Site. It doesn’t help much either when the owner or management calls in local experts who are focused on making a sale on just one element of the Web Site and marketing experience.

This is what I call the “narrow focus problem.”  Here are a few examples of the “narrow focus problem:”

1. The Web Design Company does not understanding the hosting environment and sticks your multi-thousand dollar Web Site on a cheap shared-hosting environment that shares the same IP address as 5000 other sites.

   You may say, “Hey, they got the Site up and it looks good. What’s the problem?”

   Not knowing the benefits of a dedicated IP / server leads to poor QOS (Quality of service), uncontrolled bandwidth (slow load speeds for your site pages) and poor rankings.

2. The Web Design Company didn’t understand SEO (Search engine optimization) and now your rankings are low and you find yourself needing an SEO expert (after you just paid the Web Design bill) to get your Web Site ranking where it needs to be. From a marketing standpoint, this should probably be number one on the list since it happens too often to businesses.
   
3. The Web Design Company isn’t up to speed with E-marketing.

   Many businesses are left with trying to find experts in several areas to accomplish their Web marketing needs. And since many companies are focused on a single aspect of the Internet, the business is forced to find additional vendors or partners to accomplish their total needs.

So, as you put your punch list together, consider the benefits of an established company with the expertise in all required areas.

Here are the top 10 things that will get your Site rankings moving in the right direction.

And (as I have noted to those of you who don’t have a Site yet) the items I list here are good planning blocks for new Sites as well.

Top ten requirements for Search Engine results

1.  Write a Web Site plan

Write out what your Web Site needs to accomplish and (as much as possible) write out the content that you want for it. This generally is broken down into categories, then into pages and then into sections of a page and so on. Think of this item as the “Structure” of the site.

2.  Focus on seven to ten primary categories.

Search engines are smart and they know that business cannot be good at 100 different categories at the same time. So, write out (by priority) the top 10 primary categories that you want to market on your Sites.  Note that this includes services and products and sometimes both. For example, if you are a service business, list your top 10 services and the areas that you provide these services. If it is an occasional product that represents 5% of your sales, chances are, you are not including this in your top ten list. This list will become your “Web Site development priority list” and it will affect everything from your page titles to your key words, as well as your actual content and the names of your Web Site images. Even if you have hundreds of products and dozens of services, you should be able to reduce them into seven to ten primary categories.

3.  Integrate forms and E-marketing to your Web Site design

One of the biggest mistakes still being made is a two-fold mistake:

1. Companies are not using forms for contact areas on their Web Site

   I am referring to sites that either have an actual e-mail address listed on a page for contact purposes or that are using a script that sends an e-mail but is not connected to a database. Forms should be used on Web Sites for contact purposes, inquiries and as often as possible, there should be an opportunity to obtain the contact information of the Site visitors. This will allow their information (and some key demographics) to be stored in a database for future use.

   Forms are the “front end” on Web Sites for gathering visitor information, which then passes the information to a database for marketing purposes.
   

1. Companies are not making contact with visitors who have trafficked their Web Site.

   I recommend marketing to your customer on a regular basis. The newspaper industry called (I intentionally use past tense since we are loosing our newspapers to Internet marketing) consistent small advertisements “TOMA” or top of mind adds. However it is referred to, you need to stay in front of your customer. More often than not, there is an opportunity to put some sort of sign up on your Site and to begin marketing to people who desire to hear from you. This could be in the form of a newsletter, monthly special, E-Club, promotions, industry related articles or updates about your business. Think of it this way: wouldn’t you prefer a long-term client to a one-time visitor? The way to do it is to stay in front of them, reminding them that you are there and “convert and keep them!”

   E-mail advertising is the fastest growing marketing outlet on the planet and for good reason. It is affordable and it works.

4.  Good, relevant content

Search engines love good content and reward ranking based on (among other things) good, relevant content. While you may already know this, you may not know that it is no longer as important to have long, wordy paragraphs that contain your key words over and over. Search engines are focusing much more on other critical components in your content such as geographic location. Think of it this way: If I live in New York and I am looking for a Medical Spa, then I don’t want results for a medical spa in London or Paris. Thus, “declaring” your geography is important. The search engines are looking to provide the best “match” for a search, not the wordiest. This often explains why some simple sites that are only one page can outrank a large site with lots of content, which brings us to number five.

5.  Purchase extra sites

Search engines generally rank Sites on the first seven (but not more than ten) key words and phrases. So how do you grab ranks for specialized and miss spelled phrases and words? Buy them. Let me explain this by way of example:

Let’s say the name of your company is BroadbandPC. And your primary domain is medicalspa .xxx

So the first set of domains to pick up are the common miss spells like medcalspa and medispa.xxx then lets say that you have a business focus on a particular product and want to own and outrank the competition on as many top ten ranks for this particular product as possible. Then you will want to not only have great content on the site and an SEO designed around the product but also to own industry buzz words around the product as well and have landing pages devoted to the product (specifically) and pointing to the main (top level) domain from the landing pages. This will provide you with greater reach as well as depth while adding incoming links to your top level site. It is important that the entry page or landing sites be specific and relevant and not saturated with key words. The results from this simple low cost approach can be fantastic in terms of rankings. And finally, get the other extensions for your domain name. Example: (and this is to protect you from someone taking your identity online) buy the .NET, .BIZ, .US and possibly other domain extensions for your top-level name.

6.  Keep your Site updated

Search engines are looking for good Sites that keep the reader informed and seem “alive”. The Internet is not a static environment and neither should your Web Site be static. Regular content updates are a highly recommended practice for successful search engine rankings. This may require some creativity but it is extremely important, so it is worth making plans to do so. Example: we implement a Master marketing schedule for two of our niche markets (shopping centers and Spas). For each of them we maintain a plan for Site updates that will occur throughout the year for seasonal and holiday changes. The result is a schedule for the entire year with an average of one Web Site update per month. The search engines then get trained to expect the changes and the results are very much a part of successful results.

7.  Have a Blog

Blogs are an amazing tool of the trade and there are a lot of ways to make one work for your Site. The Search engines love Blogs and for some time have awarded blog results above some of the best Sites! Why? One school of thought is that Blogs are “real” since they are generally interactive and involve the input from real people on the Internet who are visiting the Blog. But whatever the reason, Blogs are Hot in terms of search engine rankings. One creative way of integrating a Blog into your Site is to convert your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section into a blog.

8.  Pay attention to results

Have analytics integrated into every page of your Site and watch your results. There are scores of companies providing result tools out there to code into your Site. The most popular tool is a free tool (for Gmail users) called Google Analytics. This tool will provide you all sorts of metrics about your site visitors and help keep you (and your Marketing company) informed of key factors such as: time spent on the site, how many pages a visitor sees, where they are searching from (City, State and Country) and much more. This item is normally referred to as “Search Engine Management” and will include reporting and recommended adjustments based on the results being studied.

9.  Focus on Geography

Increasingly, search engines are paying closer attention to Geographic code declarations and actual physical location of the servers.

We now integrate Geographic code that declares the location of the Web Site to the search engines. And in the UK (this is not the case in the US) results are limited (based on some search engines) to sites living (residing) in the UK. So, geography is important in many ways and is becoming a foundational component for your Web Site search engine results. Get it wrong or don’t declare it and you will not reach your market.

10.  Use a real server and Dedicated IP Address

Having your site hosted at a “bottom of the cost barrel” hosting company will get your Site put into a mix of thousands of other sites on a shared server. This will create QOS (Quality of service) issues and bandwidth (slow page time) issues. Bottom line: if you are serious about your Site’s Reach, get serious about your hosting. Acquire a dedicated server on a dedicated IP Address for high performance Web Sites.

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