Maximising Your Website Listings Within Search Engines - The Truth About Search Engines

Article Details
URL: http://support.freestart.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=152
Article ID: 152
Created On: 18 Sep 2008 12:28 PM

Answer If you have access to the Internet, chances are you have heard of search engines and have used one to find exactly what you are looking for online. The most popular search engine this day in age is Google, however there are hundreds throughout the entire Internet such as Yahoo, Ask, MSN/Live Search, and Alta Vista to name a few.

At the end of the day, search engines make searching for things on the Internet much easier however, due to the ever expanding nature of the Internet and businesses with presence on the Internet, search engines have become an extremely competitive market for small and large websites/businesses alike.

Many businesses now offer a service allowing them to optimise your website for a fee. Whilst this might seem like a good idea, it is not entirely necessary to achieve the best results from your Freestart website. They may ask for the FTP details for your website however, if you log into your website via the Control Panel section, you will not have nor need these details.

At Freestart Plc, we offer a variety of facilities to assist you in optimising the best results from your website online. Here are some suggestions on obtaining the most out of your website in relation to search engines:


Domain name

The domain name for your website will play a part in your search engine listings, however this is not to be considered the deciding factor of whether your website is a success in terms of search engine listings. Consider registering a completely appropriate domain name that identifies your business well.


General website content

Search engines thrive off the textual content from within websites. The richer the text content of the site, the better the chance of it being found in search engines. It is a good idea to have a lot of text content on the first (home) page of your website as this is usually, but not always the first page found using search criteria.

It would also be ideal to occupy any unused pages of your website to expand the general content overall.

It would not be recommended to purposely build up pages using a list of keywords alone as this may be deemed as keyword spamming and could actually result in an adverse effect on your website instead. You must never restrict the visibility of any content placed on your website, especially if it is intended for keyword purposes (this includes changing the colour of the text to match the background colour).


Keywords

The more specific the keywords are to your business, the greater the chance of your website being found in search engines. You can add keywords to your website by logging into the control panel and clicking on the Site Settings button at the top left of the page. You can also add keywords to specific pages throughout your website by going to Page Builder and clicking on the Settings button of each page. Please note that keywords (being either individual words or phrases) must be separated by a comma in the Control Panel to be correctly recognised by search engines.

The keywords in the Site Settings section are applied to all of the pages in your website by default. Should you wish to give each page individual sets of keywords, these will overwrite the keywords within the Site Settings section for the page in question. Adding keywords to the individual pages of your website is encouraged as it is more efficient with regards to relevance of the page to search engine results.

I would recommend trying and testing each of your keywords within search engines to test the significance with regards to your website and the competition you are up against with other sites using those words. Ideally, you want to narrow down the search results for your keywords to become effective.

Please note that keywords are not all that effective on their own. Providing the actual words/phrases are mentioned within the pages on your website, this will help to reinforce the keywords with regards to search enquiries.


Image Descriptions

Supplying image descriptions to the images within your website can help image search engines (ie Google Images) to pick up on them through specified search criteria. You can reach this option by clicking on Edit within Page Builder and then by clicking on the Image (camera) icon to the right of your paragraph/s. Simply enter a description for your image and hit the Update button to save the changes.


Meta Descriptions

The meta description is a general description of the page and its purpose. You can add meta descriptions to your pages by clicking on the Settings icon next to each page in Page Builder.

Whenever you enter a search enquiry into Google, you will be presented with the Title/Link of the website page and a short description beneath the link (this is your meta description).


Browser Titles

These can be found in the Settings section of each page of your site and can contribute to the title of the link in the search engines (outlined in the Meta Descriptions section above).



The sections highlighted in green above are examples of Meta Descriptions and the sections in blue are examples of Browser Titles. Notice how all instances of the search term are shown in bold. This demonstrates the significance of entering these details on your website.


Website Slogan

You can access the slogan for your website by clicking on the Site Settings button at the top left of the Control Panel. The slogan can also play a part in search results by doubling up as the browser title. If you have already entered browser titles for your individual pages, the website slogan will not show within search results.


Sitemap & Verification Code

This is an optional feature to the website that comes at an additional fee. Here is the lowdown on what each of the two things involve:
Paid Listings in Search Engines

If you wish to have a guaranteed position within the search engines, we offer various services to help you achieve just that. If you wish to learn more, please call our administration department on 0870 741 5296 for more information.



Using the Google search engine as an example (the majority of other search engines follows the same layout), the section highlighted in green above displays the sponsored listings (these act as website adverts that appear depending on the keywords you type in). The section highlighted in blue displays websites associated with adwords (these display the top websites that have paid to have their website appear depending on the keywords entered). Finally, the section highlighted in red displays the natural search results depending on what keywords you enter (all websites appear within this section after an undetermined amount of time anyway).


Map Listings

Many search engines offer specific listings that help to locate your business premesis (including directions to and from the location). This is definitely beneficial if your customers are searching for businesses or products within your area. You can usually sign up for map listings free of charge by signing up to search engines, but can obtain professional business listings on other websites that usually come at an advertising cost.



Using Google Maps as an example above, note the venues/businesses that appear on the list on the left (note the keywords in bold) and their location point on the map to the right. These can sometimes be shown at the top of the natural search engines.


Advertising

Make your website address known! Do whatever it takes to promote your website address. You can do this outside the internet ie paper advertisements, leaflets, word of mouth, noticeboard adverts, etc. You can also do this using the internet itself by advertising your website within other sites ie online advertising directories, blog sites, forums, etc. If you are uncertain where to find such things, feel free to browse Google.


At the end of the day, getting your website a high listing will take a lot of time and effort. Assuring you follow the above points thoroughly, there is no reason why obtaining natural listings wont be successful for you.

Upon assessing the above points, please feel free to get in touch either via email (support@freestart.com), place a support ticket by clicking here or call our support line on 0844 774 2974 and a member of our support team will resubmit your website to a large number of search engines* to update the search engine records (including all the major ones such as Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Bing).

*Please note that we only submit your website upon your request and completion of initial website updates after receiving content via post or email. Constant submissions can prove problematic for search engines to pick up your website - it is only recommended to have your website re-submitted when you have modified or added a great deal of information to your website at any one time. Search engines will automatically list your website after an undefined time period. We cannot guarantee the position of your website within search engines or the time period in which it will appear, even after re/submitting.