Hey, Google, look over here!
Posted on | December 16, 2008 | 1 Comment
so I’ve got the blog up and I have the analytics settled, but apparently no one has visited yet! This is where on-site SEO plays a big part in drawing visitors. I have to make the website as attractive to Google and Yahoo as possible so people can find me even when they type something obvious such as “vapor trail gallery.” I’m already writing pretty regularly, so for the most part, I just have to be patient. One of the most difficult things for web developers and marketers to understand is that successful SEO takes time. With the way that Google ranks sites, the best thing that you can do is to continue to add fresh content on a regular basis. On the plus side, though, SEO doesn’t instantaneously disappear once you have it, unless you do something to get yourself banned from the Google index (like stuffing keywords in your meta-data tags. that’s a big no-no)
Here I have to mention that the number one thing you must never ever ever do is hire a company that guarantees first page or #1 ranking on major search engines. This is a new field and there are a lot of snake oil salesmen with trunks and trunks of snake oil and you would not even believe some of the stories I have heard, deceptions of highest magnitude, money squandered and time lost. If you’re going to hire a company, do your homework. Look for tip sheets on their website, ask for references, make sure you are getting an account manager you can contact regularly, and hang up the phone the minute someone says the g-word.
Okay, now that I got that out of my system . . .
There are a few things you can do to help your cause. Installing robots.txt files and adding sitemaps helps. Actually going into Google Webmaster tools and submitting the sitemaps helps too, and they say they will let me know when Google crawls my site. Currently my site isn’t even indexed by Google (if you type in site: vaportrailgallery.com, Google says “who?”) but this can typically take at least 3-5 days, if not more. So that means that if you found my site today, you either found it through my two postings on facebook or because I just happened to tell you about my blog when you asked what I was up to last Sunday (Hi Mom).
Another great way to get an overview of your site’s current SEO status is the website grader, but you should be aware that this reviews some very basic SEO states, such as meta-data, keywords and the presence of a blog, which is a little old-school. The nice thing though is that it tells you when your page was last crawled by Google, which unfortunately for vaportrailgallery.com, this still hasn’t happened yet.
If you’re serious about your site or your company needs to get better rankings to survive and thrive on the internet, why don’t you ask your local (TRUSTED) SEO agency for a site audit? Most of us will be happy to take a look and let you know if there are some issues to fix, how much it will cost, and other helpful marketing advice. Be aware that just because someone is a web developer it doesn’t necessarily follow that they know SEO. Most designers, for instance, are primarily focused on innovations in design, which rarely crosses over into SEO. It is okay to shop around; we’ll be expecting that you’ll contact several vendors, as it is a competitive field.
But don’t forget what I said about the G-word. In fact, if you’re in charge of the website marketing for your company, make sure you are getting regularly updates on the SEO campaign progress, doing independant research, and asking your account manager or SEO consultant what they think or recommend every time you talk to them. If you have invested in internet marketing, you should be following up regularly on the results.
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