You Submit to 200+ Search Engines? Go on, name them!

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How often do you see entries in the search engine results pages (SERPS) from companies who, for a princely sum, will submit your website to over 200 search engines. Yes, that’s very nice but what are these 200+ search engines and are they really important.

The majority of people you speak with will name up to three search engines; Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Some of us who’ve been kicking around this space for a little longer will remember the likes of HotBot, Excite, Netscape and Alta Vista.

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What these other companies fail to mention is that getting your website indexed is only the first step, the smallest step, in getting your web pages to display in the SERPS. What these companies are failing to mention is that, if your site is properly structured and includes the necessary links and pages, the search engine crawlers will visit your site and index it themselves, usually within the 48 hours promised by these “submission companies”.

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So SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is easy right? You’ve read the book but you still don’t know which way to turn or how to get started. Looks like the book hasn’t quite lived up to its own hype.

It’s fairly easy to explain SEO. It’s another matter altogether implementing a good, effective strategy. If you’re investing in SEO then you’re in for the long haul. There is no magic out there that can guarantee to get you to the top of the search results pages despite the claims made by many SEO companies

Retrieve, Sort, Show

The three main steps involved in being “discovered” by qualified traffic (i.e. real people searching for the products and services you provide) require the search engines to:

1. Retrieve information from your website, about what you do and what you offer

2. They sort the information, index the data ready to provide links to relative searches within its engine

3. They show links to your website when the search query is relative to the content within your site

So, if you spent this years marketing budget getting your website indexed on a plethora of search engines that nobody has heard of, let alone uses, then you’re all set to not realise your dreams.

If you want to do SEO properly, you need to invest the time reviewing a keyword strategy. Take a look at the competition and the keywords they’re targeting. Use your analytics software to discover the keywords people are using to find your site. Create landing pages geared around long-tail search queries. Optimise the content on your existing site.

Your site needs to have a proper structure. The code “behind the scenes” needs to follow a format that helps guide the search engines towards the most important content and keywords. While search engines are well travelled, it’s in your interests to guide them through your site to make sure that the content that is indexed is going to be relative to the searches performed by your potential customers.

It’s a minefield out there. It’s easy to be taken in by the scammers. At Mancala we encourage long term relationships with our customers. Some of our best customers started by “trying the waters” with us – they invested only a small amount of money in marketing and when they saw the results for themselves, the confidence in the relationship grew.

We like to show you all of the options available to your business and there are plenty of options to choose from. What you need to understand is what each option is, how effective it’s likely to be and how each option suits your budget. By sitting down to discuss your plans and objectives we’re able to help you develop a strategy that suits your business and growth. None of the options we discuss are set in stone and we’re able to adjust the work we’re doing to react to the various situations that are often thrown at us.

Keep control, be wary of those companies promising results that they can’t deliver. Dip your toe in the water to start with if you’re not convinced. A long journey begins with a few steps.