Smart Deal Shop

If, like me, you have a website that you spend hours of your time developing, you may also be wondering why so few people come across it. It can certainly be frustrating after the effort you invested in it. The graphics look fantastic, the menu makes sense, the text is clear and easy to read, there’s plenty of content, and of course the actual product or service you’re offering is good. Of course, no one expects overnight success – it takes a little time for the search engines to find you, and unless you’ve invested heavily in marketing and advertising using billboards, posters and so on, then obviously it will be a while before your site is even found.

After some time you will, almost certainly, start to welcome a few visitors to your site, and maybe a few of them will spend their hard earned money there as well. But you’ll probably find that you get terribly excited if you have a few visitors, and a little dejected when you start to work out how much the current rate of visitors will earn you, and dreams of the Mediterranean cruise next month might have to be put on hold. If this sounds familiar, ask yourself what you have actually done to ensure that your site does become a success? Other than a slick design, nice graphics and a catchy address, what practical measures have you employed to ensure success?

Perhaps you have come across websites that talk about how to make sure your website is optimized so that it is more easily found. This mainly reflects on the way in which search engines find you and list your site in their search results. Bearing in mind how many millions of searches are carried out every day on the internet, making sure that the major search engines know your site exists, and list it, will be of huge benefit. However, being listed is one thing, being high up on those lists is quite another.

When someone carries out a keyword search for, say ‘empty egg timer’ and you just happen to sell these handy devices (useful for those who don’t have to worry about how long anything takes) then you will need your website to be right at the top of the list, so that people will find you easily, and come looking to buy from you. On Google alone, a keyword search for ‘empty egg timer’ generates nearly half a million websites! That means that there are approximately 50,000 pages of results. Incredibly, only 3% of people ever look beyond the first page of results, which means that 499,990 websites will be missed, and only 10 sites seen by 97% of visitors! You can see just how important it is to make sure you’re on that first page, and preferably at the very top of the list. If your website is on page 2, it might as well be on page 49,999, since almost no one will ever find it.

Possibly you might have heard of tips or companies that can rocket your website skywards and make sure your site is listed right near the top. Perhaps you’ve tried a few of these tips, and wondered why your site didn’t suddenly become the hottest place on the net? Maybe you even forked out a small fortune on a company that promised you the world and delivered you maybe a few places higher, rocketing you all the way from 164,378th place to 153,735th? Yes, 10,000 places higher, but the only difference is that number. Remember, unless you’re on the first page of results, it makes almost no difference where you are, so even if they had rocketed you to 1000th place, it still isn’t go to make much difference to your business. The thing is, that there is no single way of achieving this, and any company that takes your money on the premise that there is, is one to avoid. There are a whole range of factors, many of which are easily achievable yourself in a few hours, or even minutes. The other thing to remember is that this progress in rank doesn’t happen overnight. For many reasons, search engines don’t respond to changes immediately, and it can takes many months to achieve a high rank.

So what are these factors which affect the rank of your website? There are many different ways to win over the approval of a major search engine. The big factor used to be keywords, with search engines scanning through the pages on your site and identifying the relevant keywords. Unfortunately, many people took advantage of this and simply inserted great blocks of keywords, whether they were relevant or not, just to grab the attention of the search engines. This technique is more likely to lower your rank these days. One of the biggest factors is how many websites link to yours. Obviously if several hundred sites all have a link encouraging people to visit yours, that tells the search engines that your site must be pretty good, and so increase your rank.

I have actually come across a website which is able to analyze your website against these, and the myriad of other factors which affect the ranking of your site. I was surprised to come across it because it actually offers its service free of charge. All you do is enter your web address and contact details, and they carry out a whole range of tests to assess how well your site does for certain keyword searches, and what you could do yourself to improve it. Of course, they offer their services as far as making these improvements is concerned, but this is optional, and if you’re happy doing the work yourself, it’s a really handy service that will save you a lot of time, and a very great deal of money.

Once you understand what can be changed about your site to help improve its position, it’s obviously up to you what you do. Picking and choosing at features that you can easily apply will certainly help. Over time, you can start to implement more of these suggestions, and little by little you should see a difference. I’ve done this myself – I used to be a keyword freak and just include as many as I could think of, but it started to make no difference. I’m trying things now such as amount of text per page, position of text on the page, number of links I include and so on, and I can see the increase in rank each day. My advice to any website developer is to keep a tight grip on your wallet and don’t pay companies to fob you off about magic solutions. Try a valuable free assessment today, it will pay dividends in the end.

1. Garden Bridges With a Artistic Touch!
   But it's the exteriors of a home that separate it from a house. And, perhaps, the most visible among the exteriors is the garden that gives...
    
   

Tweet This Post