Are you scoring with the search engines?

That's why every football ground is plastered with hoardings doing nothing more than posting web site addresses. But even if you advertise facing the TV cameras at Old Trafford it's not the whole answer. Research shows that most new visitors to sites come from the search engines. Figures vary as to the actual percentage but the lowest proportion that gets quoted is 47%. So it's vital that the search engines list your site in the top results of a key word

Marketing managers who think that spending money on a swanky new website will bring in lots of new business are forgetting one thing - people need to know your site exists. That's why every football ground is plastered with hoardings doing nothing more than posting web site addresses. But even if you advertise facing the TV cameras at Old Trafford it's not the whole answer. Research shows that most new visitors to sites come from the search engines. Figures vary as to the actual percentage but the lowest proportion that gets quoted is 47%. So it's vital that the search engines list your site in the top results of a key word

But how do you achieve a top ten success rate across the search engines?

Firstly setting the site up so that search engine 'spiders' like what they see and rate the site more highlythan sites that are not so well built. Spiders are the technical devices which search engines use to examine sites they know about Secondly registration and submission of the site to the major search engines on a very regular and repeated basis.

And thirdly by using techniques to multiply the links to your site that will also have a material effect on the way the search engines perceive it.

Search engines like sites that are well built and have regular updates. If you build your site and never touch it again for months on end, don't be surprised if it slips in the rankings or even disappears altogether.

It's important to keep up to speed with search engine policies too. Every so often, they change the rules and before you know it your site disappears because you were simply unaware of the changes.


Dave Picken is the Public Relations Director of the UK-based Durham Associates Group and former News Editor of Tyne-Tees Television