Friday, September 14, 2012

Five Step Process to Get your Website Found Post-Panda & Penguin


Being found online in search engines is critical in today’s competitive business environment. The Internet has changed the way we look and consider our options. Consider that an overwhelming 97% of people begin their online search for a product or service. Any business that is not optimized for search almost has zero chance for getting found. Yet, an astounding 85% of business websites today are not optimized for search.

Here at the Bay Area’s Top Web Rank, search engine optimization is our primary business. We take a holistic approach to achieving excellent search result and we are constantly evolving.
In February 2011, a project known as “Panda” was launched at Google.  In April, an algorithm update named “Penguin” was launched. Penguin targeted sites that were hosting or receiving less than quality links to their sites.  Panda, on the other hand, focuses on ensuring fresh, relevant content on a website. If a website creates, publishes, or has relevant content, the website will remain unaffected or is affected favorably by Panda.

Our search marketing firm understands the importance of these two updates. Hence, we have developed a Five Step process to optimize our client’s site for search.

1)      Keywords – we choose the right keywords for you. What are keywords? Search engines such as Google or Bing use keywords when including your website in their search results. Keywords can make or break your search engine ranking. However, it is very important to strike a balance between adding the right amount of keywords and overusing keywords. Overusing keywords can cause your site to be banned. As part of our analysis that we provide for you, we search your competitor’s URLs and see what keywords the search engines are ranking for them. We also work to optimize each page. Using the same string of keywords on all of your pages can also hamper your search optimization campaign.

2)     Page Stickiness – Site stickiness refers to how well a site is holding a visitor’s attention. It is viewed as the total amount of time users spend on the site or total page views. Research shows that the length of time a visitor stays on your website has a direct correlation on your search engine rankings. Hence, website development is an important part of your business’ search optimization search. At our internet marketing search firm, we take special attention to helping your visitors stay engaged. Hence, we offer online videos, podcast, blogs, etc to keep your visitors ‘stick’ around.

3)      Building Trust – One of the questions that Google asked in their algorithm program is “Do you trust this site?” It is important for visitors to be able to trust your site. Building trust means having a site that is not full of pop-ups, broken links, bad content, outdated information, etc.  Since we take a holistic approach to your site, we pay attention to bad pages. We understand that bad pages can ultimately drag your site down.

4)      User Generated Content – this refers to material on websites that is produced by the users of the website. These could be customer testimonials, product or service reviews and discussion boards. This could also include social sharings from sites such as Twitter or Facebook. This is important because the more engaged your audience is, the more they are showing support or interest in your business to their friends and family. Showing Google that they are engaged helps your page rank. We promote your customer testimonial or review in social media including YouTube, Pinterest, Yelp. Our Internet Search Firm helps you stand out from the crowd.

5)      Brand Building – customers experience your brand in numerous ways, we help you present your brand online. We help define your brand, explain to your customers how you operate and how you are different from your competitors. Our online brand strategy includes a well-designed site. We help you with your social media engagement so people link to you and talk about your brand in a favorable way. We help you increase trust.

Part of our brand building strategy includes backlinks, social media and quality content.

In conclusion, getting to the top of the search result is the best way, and sometimes the only way, to get your website noticed. If your service is good, converting an enquiry into a sale is the easy part.