For example if I wanted to
promote my web design business in Chicago USA then a top way I might get
people to find my site is to make sure that my site comes up when someone goes
online and types in “web design companies in Chicago”. This person may have never heard of me and
may not be specifically looking for my company. They are just looking for any
company that offers the service they seek and if my website comes up then they
will check it out.
Most people familiar with the
internet are aware that Google is by far the most popular search engine in the
world. If you rank at the top of Google for the search terms that your potential
customers are going to use then they will probably find your website because
they are most likely going to use Google as opposed to any other search engine
and they are most likely to view a website at the top of the Google search
results as opposed to lower ranking sites. Being the #1 result (top of the
search page) means most people will view your site. The other results at the
top of the page like #2 or #3 also receive their fair share of visitors. But
very few people view the results at the bottom of the page. The following pages
of search results receive even less. For this reason there can be a lot of
competition to achieve a top ranking on Google.
Due to this competition some
people choose to try to rank high on other search engines under the thinking
that these other search engines user base isn’t as big as Google’s but that the
competition isn’t as stiff either. If you can’t rank high on Google but you can
rank high on another search engine with less competition then you might as well
choose a search engine with fewer users but ones that will actually view your
site because it’s at the top of the results as opposed to being buried on
Google. This can be a valid method of site promotion. In this article I am
going to concentrate on Google since if you can get your site listed high on
Google then you will by far exceed the number of visitors you would get from
anther search engine.
Making sure that they deliver
the sites that people are actually looking for is of vital importance to Google
(or any other search engine). If the people searching for “web design companies
in Chicago” got back search results for farm equipment dealerships
in Michigan then they probably wouldn’t be happy with the search results and
they would quit using Google. So Google is always changing the way that the
return search results to ensure that they are giving the user the exact results
that they want. For this reason Google is much better now than it was in the
past. Many times when a user mistypes something when searching on Google as
Google is smart enough to show the user what they wanted to spell and not what
they actually wrote. Of course Google is only so good at this.
You can’t choose what search
phrases on Google return your website. Basically Google takes the search term
that you enter in and looks all over the internet for sites that contain those
words. They then try to direct you to the ones that they feel are most likely
to satisfy the purpose of your search. But just using synonyms might confuse Google.
For instance I worked on an exercise website for getting sixpack abs. But,
there are too many phrases that a person might use while basically looking for
the same thing such as “how to get sixpack abs”, “how to get six-pack abs”,
“how to get cobblestone abs”, “how to get washboard abs”. These are all
basically the same search but because they use different words or maybe a word
with a – in it every search may return different results because even Google
isn’t smart enough to know that “sixpack abs” and “cobblestone abs” are really
the same thing.
If you have a website that uses
the term “sixpack abs” and doesn’t have the word “cobblestone” anywhere on the
site then Google won’t return this site in the search results for “cobblestone
abs” cause that term isn’t found on the site.
So it’s important to know what
phrase a potential visitor is most likely to use and ensure that phrase is
found on your website. For this reason you really need to research your target
visitors and choose the words that you use on your website accordingly. Another
example is a barbeque business I built a website for. The name of the company
featured the word b-b-q. I felt that to promote the website it was very
important that it came up on Google if anyone looked up the phrase “hire bbq in
Fargo” but if the person searched for the phrase “hire barbeque in Fargo” or
“hire b-b-q in Fargo” I wanted to appear on those listings as well since those
terms meant the same thing just using an alternate spelling.
In order to ensure that this website
was listed under all three of those search terms I had to make sure that I
included all three different ways to spell “bbq” somewhere on the website. I
felt that changing the way I spelled “bbq” throughout the website was a little
annoying as a reader but felt the advantage of getting listed for all three
search phrases outweighed this annoyance.
You can include several
different terms on one page such as “Do you want to get sixpack abs? Read more
to find out how to get a washboard stomach”. This text could come up if someone
searched Google for “sixpack abs” or “washboard abs”. Notice that “washboard
abs” isn’t technically in that sentence. It’s actually “washboard stomach” but
both those words are found in the same sentence. Google can include a result as
long as the words are found on the page, not necessarily in the exact phrase
being searched for. Though the closer, you can come to the identical phrase
with the words actually in the right order the better for getting a good search
engine ranking.
So if you want to get your
website listed for a particular search term then you need to think like the
searcher. What exact phrase are they likely to type into Google? Then make sure
that phrase is found on your webpage. If they are looking for “bbq” and you
wrote barbecue on your website then yours won’t appear on Google when they
search even though it’s really the same thing.
One tool you can use to help you figure out what keyword to use is
Google Trends. You can type several different phrases and see which ones are
more popular. It will even break down the recent trend of the phrases so you
can see if one term is going out of use. It also shows phrase popularity by
region so you can tell which phrase is more popular in your target market.
In my bbq example I found that
“bbq” was by far the most used term. “Barbecue” was a distant second and
“b-b-q” was the least used search term. I felt I could include all three terms
in my website. But if I would have felt that I needed to stick with just one
term I would have spelled it “bbq” since that was by far the most used term and
therefore the most important one to make sure my site got listed for on Google.
