Roy Hunter
July 16, 2009
http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/

I get a lot of inquiries about web page ranking in search engine results by a lot of my clients so I thought it would be helpful to write a quick article on the subject.

We have all heard the term, build it and they will come. That might work for McDonald’s, however, just having a web page on the internet these days simply is not enough to get the customers you need. If you are representing your business with a single web page that only contains a minimum of information, chances are pretty good it will not be seen in the organic search results of most search engines. Then you find yourself forced to rely on pay-per-click advertising if you want to have your site appear on the first page of relevant search results for the goods or services you provide -  and this can get expensive.

What most business owners think is a simple task of getting their business offerings seen, creating an effective web page that is a highly useful tool for marketing of goods and services is much more complex than it seems.

You have to market your marketing.

Not only do you need to market your business offerings, you also have to effectively market what you are using to market your business.

This is where so many business fall short of achieving an effective internet marketing strategy.

I ask my clients, “Why should consumers do business with you?” and they begin to tell me how good their customer service is, how unique their products are, about the quality of their work, how affordable it is to use their service, how good their food is…

Then I ask them “Why should someone look at your web page?” So they can see what we do. What are you doing to make them want to see what you do? That is usually where I am responded with silence and confusion.

What a lot of business owners do not understand is they are often not the only business offering the goods and services they provide. Search results often display 10 results per page for a search query. For example, if you are a Mexican restaurant in a very large metropolitan area such as Dallas Texas there may be 200 Mexican restaurants for local residents to choose from.

What are the first ten Mexican restaurants in the search results doing to be ranked in the top ten? How did they get there?

They are offering viewers a reason to look at their website, they are offering more than one web page as a point of entry to their website, and they are using search keywords other than “Mexican Restaurant Dallas” to do it.

There is one basic principle that needs to be kept in mind to understand why a web page is in the top 10 search results, POPULARITY. They are the websites that viewers like the best, go to the most often, and can get there the easiest.

Don’t think about marketing the business, market the website.

I don’t know how many times I have said this to a client and had them look at me like I was crazy. “We want the website to market the business!”

First things first. A website is not going to market your business if it can not be found and offers no reason for viewers to look at it. It will not be popular as a result, and it will not come up in the top 10 search results.

What will make viewers want to view your website? CONTENT, VARIETY, and INFORMATION!

If you can create content for your website, it is like waiving a magic wand over it and viewers will come.

This article is a little too short for me to go into a lot of different ways of creating content for various businesses. I am going to stick to the Mexican restaurant example and show a few ways content can be created that is specifically designed to boost the popularity of a website, which eventually will increase it’s placement in search results, so the real customers you are interested in finding – can find you.

Consider interests that are related to what you sell and produce content based on that interest. What is common to a Mexican restaurant? Mexico. If you are from Mexico create a page on your website about the area you are from, some local pictures, points of interest, things to do, great hotels in that area, how to travel there, the favorite local cuisine…

Do you have a recipe that you are willing to share with a viewer? Create a page specifically for that.

What you are doing is creating web page’s within your website that someone looking for information on traveling to Mexico, or a new Mexican dish to try at home will find. They may be located in Colorado and your business is in Texas, but you are creating popularity for your website through content, which will boost the search ranking of your website for the viewers in Dallas Texas.

Multiple Points of Entry

If you are focusing on a few search words for people to find you and drive them to a single web page page for your business, you are limiting who can find you, the search words used to find you, and how many people will find you.

If I enter the search term “Restaurant specials in Dallas” I expect to see in the search results the Dallas restaurants that are offering specials through their website. If I see a Mexican restaurant is offering a free margarita with every dinner and I like margaritas and Mexican food, I am going to look at that website.

Having a web page within your website that is devoted to your restaurant specials, you are creating a side door for viewers to find you based on different search terms and interest. They may not be specifically looking for a Mexican restaurant, they are more interested in specials being offered by restaurants, and because you have a page dedicated to specials, you just found a new customer.

What side doors can you offer your customers? What can you do to make your website popular?

Marketing a website is a complex task, it takes time, effort, and content. The results are not immediate. A local marketing consultant in your area can be a wealth of assistance in proper website development and show you the best ways to market your marketing website.

If you want to see a good example of a website optimized for multiple points of entry, look at our company website located HERE. As you browse through our links you will see that every page has the same header, footer, and link table. If you were not directed to our home page and you entered our site through any of our other link pages, you would think you had found our main page. We have 9 categories of marketing listed in our link table, every page has been optimized for each specific category. If a searcher is looking for internet marketing, the Internet marketing page is what will come up in their search results.

That is a lot of categories which includes a lot of keywords.  How many does your website have?

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