Have you been seeing the funky commercials on TV where everyone's innocent comments bring a flurry of babbling on about subjects that have almost nothing in common? Well, that's a take off on "search engine results"--those places you are given when you type into Google or MSN or Yahoo to find out where you can get tickets to a concert or find a gift for the boss or your favorite music or running shoes or...ad infinitum.
The phone book has gone the way of the dinosaur. Trivia can settle a bet in an instant. The title of that movie you can never remember can be found. So much of our days are filled with having so much information at our fingertips (literally) that we can feel just as lost when the "internet is down" as we do when we lose our electricity or our water in our home.
Where does all this information come from? Better question yet, how does it get on my screen? Without going into the tech aspects of this event, let's try to better understand, if I search for "pet supplies", there is a list of websites that offer pet supplies. Why is it that PetCo.com is listed first and ABCPetSupplies.com is listed on the third page? You see, it takes a lot of factors for a company like PetCo to get that first page listing so that you find what you are looking for.
That coveted "first page" listing means revenue for the website owner, right? So how does it get there? Well, these are a few of many reasons:
It has the keyword phrase I typed ("pet supplies") on the web page that comes up in this search.
It has a lot of other sites that link back to them with that phrase in the link.
There are news stories or articles about "pet supplies" that reference this site.
The site has many pages of its own linking to this phrase and
the site has been around for a long time.
These practices take time and are always ongoing but they ultimately make the difference.
Okay, so you may ask, if I want to have my website in the first pages of the search engines but the site is brand new, how do I compete for that first page listing? A shortcut for immediate attention is paid ads.
Next time you make a search, look over to your right at the "sponsored" listings. These are ads that are paid listings. The main body of the page, on the left, is what is called "organic" listings. These have battled their way to the top using the factors described above. But the "sponsored" listings also have a hierarchy. With bidding for positions, you can "buy" this space with an ad. More about that another time.
Most people find that by searching for a very specific "keyword", such as "8' chain link choke chain", they will more quickly find what they are looking for than searching "pet supplies". The search engine can narrow your request right down to the brand name, if you ask.
In part two of the search engines explained, we will examine this narrowing of focus and how anyone can compete with the "big dogs" if they know a few easy tips.
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There is a small business in all of us, just waiting to be put online.
This week's featured website:
http://www.GeorgiaDawgHouse.com
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