SEO & SEM
A lot of web site owners don’t realize how much expertise and hard work goes into valid Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to get your website found on page one of Google, Bing!, Yahoo or any of the many search engines out there, but there are a few things you should know and a few things you can do, whether you are paying a monthly marketing budget or nothing at all.
- The best thing you can do is educate yourself. Whether you are paying someone else to do the work or not, the more you know the better. There are many resources out there, in print and on the internet. You can read a couple of useful articles on our website at 2113web.com or just google away and you’ll find plenty. Our SEO specialist Tom Elliot is the author of the book Website 411. It’s simple and informative. Read it. It’s available online or from booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
- The number one factor determining your Google rank is the number of hits your site gets. The number two reason is the number of other sites linking to your site. Work towards increasing these two factors, but do it with an informed mind and/or with a professional.
- When a spider “crawls” your website, it sends back information of every kind, including your copyright date, the number of web pages on your site and how many years you have your domain name reserved. It looks to see if you have any fresh content on your site. All of these things say that you are not another fly-by-night operation; you are serious about your site and you maintain it. So:
- Make sure the copyright date is current on your site.
- Have at least 5 pages on your website. Less is considered unprofessional.
- Pay for your domain name for at least 5 years. Many sleazy sites are put on the internet by people who pay for one year and are gone in less time than that.
- Above all, try to put fresh content on your site as often as possible. Changing even one word or punctuation mark (we don’t recommend you do only that!) says ‘I am serious and I am maintaining my site’.
Hope this helps!
