Getting the search engines to work for you

Which search engines?

Despite some claims that you must submit your website to 1000's of search engines, there are only a select few that you need to worry about, particularly if you’re focusing on the Australian market. The obvious one that everyone talks about is Google, but don't discount are Yahoo7 and Bing (formerly nineMSN). Sensis (the owner of Yellow Pages and CitySearch) is also making a play in the Australian search market, but has not been as popular as the big 3.

Getting your website listed on the search engines

The best thing about search engines is that listings are free! However you may have to wait anything from 4 to 12 weeks to see your website listed for the first time. This is because when you submit your website to the search engines, you are merely sending a message letting the search engines know that your website exists! The search engine ‘robots’ (computer generated programs that search the internet) have to find your website and then store your website information in their database before your website will show up. You can speed up the process a bit by getting relevant links to your website as soon as you can.

Ranking well in the search engines

Just being listed in the search engines is not enough to drive visitors to your website. The search engines are no value to you if your website ranked 576 for your important search terms. Everyone is fighting for the coveted top spots, and there are only so many top spots to go around. Generally, you need your website to be in the top 20 rankings (on the first 2 pages of results) in order to generate significant visitors.

This is where search engine optimisation comes into play. Optimisation of your website involves establishing the structure and content of your website to get the best possible rankings for the search terms that are relevant to your business. There are many factors to consider, such as the penetration and placement of keywords in your content, use and placement of graphics and headings, titles, and structure of the underlying website code. Many people wrongly assume that meta tags are the magic bullet. While meta tags do serve a purpose, they are ignored by most of the major search engines for ranking websites. Instead they are commonly used as the basis of the snippets you see in the search engine results pages.

Search engine optimisation takes time and hard work. Be careful of those who claim they know tricks or promise you #1 rankings. Using such tricks can actually get your website banned from the search engines! This can and does happen, just ask BMW Germany!

Search engine advertising in the mix

If search engine optimisation is not getting the rankings you need, you can buy your way to the top of the search engine listings. While banner ads are expensive and increasingly annoying, pay-per-click advertising through Google and Yahoo is becoming increasingly popular. It can be very cost-effective, for any sized business, costing anything from 10 cents per website visitor. For more information on the ins-and-outs of how these programs fare against each other and specifics on how they work check out our article called ‘Buy Your Way To The Top’.