“I want to set up a site so people can find me.”
I’ve been getting lots of questions lately about being found on the web and when I try to answer them I sound like I’m talking in circles. What sounds like a perfectly reasonable question like what domain name to choose is the wrong question to be asking. Instead you need to know how you want to use the Internet for communication and develop a strategy to make it work. Search engines, web sites and computers in general tend to seem a lot smarter than they are. While technology as come a long way it’s good to remember that things are simpler than they seem. Here are a few things to keep in mind when contemplating your web presence.
Google is not the phone book.
Google searches are geared toward finding content – not people or companies. When google indexes a site – it indexes the content of the site and gears it’s search results to what it deems to be the most relevant information related to the search terms someone has entered. It does a really good job of sifting through an amazing pile of text and coming up with a page that probably has something useful – but the results are based on content that google has indexed. If you’re searching for a product, you can find it on google because someone has written something useful about the product. If you’re looking for a person, you may find them because something’s been written about them. Just having an email address or website though won’t help you a bit unless you say something with it.
You are not just your website.
If you’re looking to establish a presence on the Internet, you need to be where everyone else is. No one is going to ‘hang out’ looking at your website unless you have something really interesting to say or look at. That doesn’t mean you’re not interesting and people don’t want to find you – but if you’re not out to publish something you’ll want to be findable on sites where people are looking for you. That means having a profile on social networking sites and being listed with any professional associations that are relevant. If you’re trying to promote your company, make sure it’s listed on index sites like yelp.com and dmoz.org. It’s just like being listed in the phone book – you need to put your name out there for people to find it.
Don’t expect instant results.
It takes time for a site to build a reputation. If you’re launching a new site – it will take a bit for your ranking to build. Getting some links to information on your site from other highly ranked sites will help a ton. A successful web presence requires a lot of work – your presence. If you’re trying to promote your brand, someone needs to be online talking it up. If you’re looking to sell a product you need to be positioned so that someone looking for that product will find you. If you want your expertise recognized, you need to show the online community that you are worth listening to. While there are a lot of bad SEO firms out there who are selling smoke and mirrors, a good SEO firm or Internet marketing company will help you identify where your audience congregates on the web and should help you make your presence known.