Net Results
Helping your business succeed online.
Published by nrichmedia (www.nrichmedia.com)
Printable
PDF Version
Volume 1, Issue 1 – Spring, 2005
In This Issue
Welcome
Welcome to the inaugural edition of ‘Net Results.’ Feel
free to break out the champagne. It might help to make the experience
a bit more enjoyable.
So, what’s the purpose of this newsletter? Why did you sign up
for it? Good question.
The idea is to cover topics relevant to anyone who is thinking about
starting a web site or trying to improve upon the results of an existing
web site – whether that be improving the design or getting more
hits in search engines. In other words: how to get your web site to
attract clients, impress them, and get them to take action.
The Web is an ever-changing environment, much like the world we live
in, so what is relevant today may not be relevant a year from now (a
little disclaimer for those who hold on to these newsletters and five
years down the road blame me for giving them outdated information ;))
It’s my goal to enlighten a wide range of Internet users on a
myriad of subjects about the Internet, email, design, marketing, and,
occasionally, touch on some other issues I deem worthwhile. Maybe you’ll
even get a bit of a chuckle, as it’s my intention to keep the
tone of this newsletter light.
Send me your FAQs
If there’s something you’d like to ask as far as how to
go about creating or improving your web presence, feel free to send
me an email (). It’s quite likely a question that someone else has been wondering
about and chances are you won’t be the only one who finds the
answer useful.
So, I’ll gladly post FAQs, with a reasonable facsimile of an
answer. Or, it might even inspire me to write a featured article on
the topic. Don’t worry; I won’t use your name, so nobody
will know if it was you who asked, “Does my monitor need to be
turned on for me to see my web site?”
Featured Article: Why Doesn’t My Site
Show Up on Google?
This is a common question I get asked from people who’ve had
a web site for any length of time. As an example, someone -- let’s
call him George -- has a site on which he’s selling his Okanagan-grown
Fuji apple trees (my favourite). George can’t understand why,
when he does a Google search for the word “trees,” his site
is not showing up in the results.
Getting good results on Google (or any other search engine for that
matter) is generally considered showing up in the top 20 (or, maybe
30) listed sites, i.e., in the first two (or three) pages of results
(unless you’ve sneakily changed the default setting from 10 results
per page). It’s these first two or three pages that get most of
the clicks from people doing a search. Most people don’t bother
looking past this point if they haven’t found what they’re
looking for.
1. Be Realistic
The problem is that there are literally millions and millions of web
sites out there. And many more web pages. (To be clear: a web site is
composed of one, or usually several, web pages.) So, every time someone
does a search for a word or phrase in Google, your site is competing
with many millions of other pages. I just did a search for the word
“trees” and Google is telling me there are close to 36 million
results found. George would have better luck buying a 6-49 ticket than
having his site come up amidst that sort of competition!
Now, if we narrow down our search to the phrase “apple trees”
we’ve cut the number of results to around 8.5 million. Still very
high, but we’ve cut out 75% of the competition. Going to “Fuji
apple trees” brings the results down significantly, to 130,000.
We’ve now cut out an additional 98.5% of the competition. Finally,
narrowing the search down to “Okanagan Fuji apple trees”
diminishes the number of results to 332 – another 99.7% of the
competition out of the way. In fact, by making our search specific like
this, as opposed to the original “trees,” we’ve eliminated
99.999% of the competition!
So, you’re asking, what’s the point of this exercise, other
than to prove that your degree in Math has the occasional use? The point
is that your web site doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in
Tahiti of being ranked highly by search engines when using a very general
term, especially if it’s a single-word term. Just like if you
were to try to find next-door-neighbour Fred’s auto repair shop’s
web site, you wouldn’t search the word “car” and expect
to find his site. You would probably use 3 or 4 specific words, possibly
including the geographic location of Fred’s shop, and hope to
see his site pop up then.
So, what is reasonable for George and his homegrown Fuji apple trees?
Well, if his site is well constructed, he can reasonably expect to have
good results for specific search phrases, such as “home-grown
Fuji apple trees” or “organic Okanagan apple trees.”
2. Include Relevant Copy on Your Page
Now, I’m not going to go into all of the details of what I mean
by a well constructed site, but one of the most important things is
that the copy (i.e., the text on the web page) actually includes the
words that you want to be found for. How else are the search engines
supposed to know what your page is really about? You’d be surprised
how often I’ve heard people complain about getting poor search
results for a web page of theirs that doesn’t even mention the
word(s) they want it to be found under.
3. Get Linked Up
Another key factor is to have relevant links to the page. Essentially,
this is like a popularity contest where Google wants to see how many
of the cool kids have your phone number in their little black books.
The more links you can get to your site the better, but it’s really
the number of relevant (there’s that word again) ones that matter
the most. Having a link from your Aunt Jane’s personal web site
to yours won’t really do you much (if any) good (although it doesn’t
usually hurt). But, for our friend George, he’d be much better
off having links from web sites about apple sauce or apple cider producers,
other fruit tree growers, gardening shops, etc. They bear far more weight
than good old Aunt Jane, well meaning as she may be.
How do you get these links? Ask the site owner or Webmaster. Often
they’ll want a return link to their site, which you can decide
if you want to do or not. Also, you can probably find at least a few
directories or associations you may belong to, which will gladly list
you at no charge. It just takes a bit of searching. Keep in mind it’s
the quality, rather than the quantity of these links that matter most.
Finally, remember that most search engines take a while to index new
or updated web sites. It might be a few weeks or even a few months until
you see the “fruits of your labour.”
To summarize, keep these three points in mind:
- Have realistic expectations. Your odds of being found in a search
engine for a specific phrase are much better than a very general term.
- Include text in your page that talks about the term(s) you want
the page ranked for.
- Get good quality links to your site.
These three things, and a bit of patience, should get you far better
results and save you a lot of frustration!
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
Web Site Design and Promotion
Are you looking for a professionally designed web site that attracts
clients?
Is your existing web site not giving you the results you’re wanting?
nrichmedia has partnered up with Marketing Coach and Consultant, Juliet
Austin, to provide you with complete web design, development, copywriting,
and promotion packages. See www.nrichmedia.com/results.htm
to find out how we can help your business or non-profit organization
to succeed on the web.
About nrichmedia
nrichmedia creates innovative and unique web sites and other multimedia
for ethical and socially responsible businesses and organizations.
We also offer green web hosting, web site maintenance, CD-ROM production,
and more.
nrichmedia was founded by Nathaniel Richman in 2000. Nathaniel graduated
from the Vancouver Film School with a Certificate of Recommendation
in Multimedia Studies in 1997 and has been working in the web design
and new media industry ever since. He previously received a Bachelor
of Mathematics degree (Honours Actuarial Science) from the University
of Waterloo and worked in the pension consulting field.
Nathaniel works with several other designers and programmers, according
to the needs of the project, to provide the client with the most professionally
designed web site or presentation possible.
"Nathaniel has been our website consultant
at the Brokers Association for several years and he's wonderful to
work with. He responds to my requests for changes to our site quickly
and efficiently. He's also very talented and creative. He always
has excellent suggestions for me when I'm not sure how a new web
page should look or operate. Nathaniel's services are simply excellent
and I have highly recommended him to many of my associates to create
new websites for them or to improve upon their existing ones."
- Greg Mansfield, Continuing Education
Coordinator, Insurance Brokers Association of B.C. (www.ibabc.org)
To learn more about nrichmedia’s services, view
our online portfolio, and read glowing
testimonials from many satisfied clients, please visit www.nrichmedia.com.
Charitable Causes
At nrichmedia, we donate 5% of proceeds on all projects of $500 and
above to charitable organizations. We are pleased to have supported
and continue to support several worthy causes. To see a list of the
organizations we support, please visit www.nrichmedia.com/causes.htm.
The Not-to-be Missed Link: TerraPass
I don’t pass on links to other sites lightly, so it’s got
to be something that I think is really worthwhile. I figured if this
one is good enough for David Suzuki, it’s good enough for me!
I read about TerraPass in the Globe and Mail recently and thought I’d
share it with those of you who haven’t heard of it. The idea is
to neutralize the effects of driving your car. By purchasing a one-year
pass, the company promises to eliminate the equivalent amount of carbon
dioxide that your car would produce. A very interesting and commendable
idea!
For more information, see www.terrapass.com.
Pass it on and Enjoy
Please feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you feel may
find it useful.
Want more valuable information like this to help your socially responsible
business become an online success and get the results you've been looking
for? Subscribe to Net Results, our FREE
quarterly newsletter by filling in the form at the top left of this
page.
Printable
PDF Version
 nrichmedia
is located in Courtenay (in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island),
British Columbia, Canada, and thinks and works globally! Thanks
to the Internet, we're able to create web sites and other multimedia
for clients all over the world. You can contact us by
or by telephone, at 250.871.7424.
|
