SEO: From Crawling to Running a Successful Website

If you’ve been guilty of thinking you don’t need to invest time and money in search engine optimisation (SEO) as part of your online marketing activities, you should listen to what Google has to say. According to a new study entitled "Brand Value of Search", search marketing can help build up brand awareness and increase your brand value.

Search engines are not all powerful and don’t immediately access the entire website content or automatically send you to the top ranks. In most cases, search engines can only use content they are able to crawl. Unfortunately for web masters working with some forms of flash and other programming languages, it is not possible to crawl the web in its entirety.

As daunting as this may sound, you will have to put some work and time into the improvement of your off-site search engine optimisation efforts in order to tackle the issue. Unfortunately, you can’t just create and maintain a website and the rest solves itself. This is especially true for the fast moving consumer goods industry.

The best way for a search engine to detect a new website or new content is through links from existing, already ranked web pages. The higher the PageRank of the website, the better the results of your website. As a quick fix, some social media websites, like YouTube, Squidoo and del.icio.us, wield some powerful link juice and can give organic search engine rankings a boost. On a wider level, it’s useful to adopt a mindset that sees you spreading the word about your products and services online at least as much if not more so than through off line channels.

So what does this mean for you and your burgeoning search engine optimisation efforts?

Unless you invest time into promoting your website, and ultimately your brand name, you are unlikely to achieve the desired level of awareness amongst your customer base.

In other words, your brand awareness can decrease significantly if your competitors not only have a higher search engines rank but a wider overall online presence. Moreover, when your customers find your competitors first, they are more likely to buy their products. This is particularly true if your site doesn’t feature in the top ten returned results as very few potential purchases ever venture past page one.

How can you improve your off-site search engine optimisation?

Firstly, feed the web with a constant stream of information. You could start to write a company blog or produce video diaries. The blog can contain press releases, industry knowledge or any other information you’d like to share with your client base and desired clientele. The videos can be put on Youtube for further promotion. Make sure to include a link back to your web site to raise brand awareness.

Secondly, spread the word. Make sure that your customers receive your messages and updates. This can be done by bookmarking your blog entries on social bookmarking websites, like propeller.com or by including your blog address in a regular newsletter or mail drop.

And last, but not least, keep your content up-to-date. If you are up-to-date, your search engine optimisation will also be up-to-date.

Editor’s Note: Anja Feldmaier is SEO for Top Position. The online advertising consultancy provides Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click management. Email: Anja@topposition.co.uk or call: 0800 094 9001.