Q: As an online start up, how can I compete for popular search terms?
Sep 28 2011
Answered by: Clifford McDowell Ask a question
Making your company visible on search engines can be hard at the start – and it’s not going to happen overnight. Getting good search engine rankings takes time and requires a fair bit of work, but it really does pay off.
Rankings are mainly decided by your website’s content. When Google or other engines visit your site, they will search through your content to determine what your keywords are; that information is then stored so that when someone searches for those keywords, they know your site is relevant. However if you are aiming for keywords that thousands of other companies want, then your site will probably get lost in the melee. Some companies spend thousands on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts to get them to the top of search engine rankings.
I’d strongly recommend that start ups choose less popular keywords. This strategy can help your business in two ways – not only will you get higher positions on the search engines, but you are more likely to attract visitors specifically interested in the service you provide. For example, if you run a PR agency in Birmingham, the keyword ‘PR’ on its own would be extremely oversubscribed. However, ‘PR Birmingham’ will be less competitive – and anyone searching for the phrase will in all likelihood be interested in your company and click through to your site.
You can use tools like Google Adwords to look through different keyword options and see how often people are searching for various phrases. When choosing your keywords, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and think carefully about what they will search for. Then integrate those keywords into your site content – only choose a handful and drop them in naturally. Try to use keywords in your page headers and titles and if you sell online, you can use keywords as the titles of your shop categories. This will help to greatly improve your SEO.
Don’t forget, Google usually takes between four to six weeks to visit a new site and index the content – but you also can submit your site to engines to let them know you’re ready for them to visit. Finally, regularly adding new content to your site, like blogs and Twitter feeds, encourages the engines to drop by more often, boosting your rankings.
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