Website content
One of the things that has come up a lot recently has been the value of content in a website.
One of the things that Google and other search engines look for is the words and phrases you use in your business websites content. When, where and how often you use the wording affects the way in which your page is indexed. This is often called SEO, or SEM. That is Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing. Google in particular looks at not just the structure of a site but the way the content is arranged, its readability, length, the page content, and phrasing. They use this to help score your site and thus rank it on search results.
Website Linking
Yes there are plenty of companies out there spruiking the use of backlinks, guest blogging, and paying for links from authors to build your sites rankings. This is not a long term strategy that will get you very far. In fact done repeatedly on low quality sites links like this will get you banned from Google until corrected. An example of this was Interflora UK who paid for 150 advertorials in the lead up to valentines day 2013 in regional papers all linking back to them. This promptly resulted in a ban from search results until they at least applied a nofollow on the paid links.
Results require work
Keeping your website in a decent search engine ranking is hard work. It isn’t easy and requires constant effort.
- Publishing new content
- Refreshing outdated content
- Making sure your legitimate links still work
- Competitors working harder
- Search engines updating there rules
These are some of the things you and your business website need to contend with. And yes there is a lot of on going work that is needed to maintain your site’s relevance and rankings. With more and more customers and orders flowing in from the web who would you prefer to get the call (email, IM Facebook message etc)? You or your competition?
The Wrap up
Essentially the take away from this is, Work. Gaining, maintaining and improving the position of your business website, your businesses online reputation and the amount of potential customers seeking out your business requires constant ongoing effort. There are no short cuts. If some one is offering to get your business on page one of search results for $X amount each month your scam alert system should be at least starting to sound. Achieving a good ranking in Google search results requires consistent, repeated work on your sites, content, links and structure. SEO and your business website’s content go together in producing a page, a site and content you would be happy to have reflect on your business.
It takes time, often lots of time and with attention you and your business should see steady growth in the traffic hitting your website.