My Site Has Been Optimized - Why Can't Anyone Find it Online?

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My Site Has Been Optimized - Why Can't Anyone Find it Online

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Taking things a step further, someone (perhaps your web developer) along the way probably told you that you needed to get your site "optimized" in order for people to find it on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and other search engines. So, you dutifully paid the requisite money to optimize your site, expecting the visitors to come pouring in. They didn't. So now what?

First, stop the "bleeding". It makes no sense to spend good money after bad, so to speak. Before you spend any more money trying to "buy" traffic to your site, let's start with some free information so you get a better understanding of what needs to happen with your website... and just as importantly, why.

Know what it means to "optimize" your site. Optimizing your website means making it search engine "friendly". In other words, it means to prepare your website for search engines to explore it, take inventory of its content, prioritize it, and compare it to other websites in your industry for various keyword selections. Search engines do not look solely at keywords pasted into your website's pages. They take into consideration the quality of the text, number of times certain keywords are used within the text, position of the text, appearance of the text, how labels are used on images, page names of the individual web pages, links that are contained within the pages, and much more.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making changes to the many criteria that search engines consider in order to conform to what search engines find important. The goal is to enhance the website's chances of being "smiled upon" by Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.

But wait. There's more!

Notice that everything to this point has been "preparatory" for the search engines to like what they see. Put another way, getting the search engines to see your site isn't the issue. You can submit your site to the search engines without optimizing it, and the search engines will see your site... and ignore it. Optimizing the site is the process of making the site worthy of being considered for good placement, but it does not mean that the site will get placed favorably. There are other, additional considerations that go into achieving a good search engine position.

To achieve favorable placement on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), your site usually will need to be actively promoted (marketed) in some way. Search Engine Marketing, also called SEM, is the process of actively "pushing" your website out to the public with the target audience being search engines rather than just people.

Why hasn't your web developer told you about Search Engine Marketing? Here are a few likely reasons:

Most website developers and website designers (there is a difference) are aware of SEO and/or SEM, but do not practice optimization and marketing. Knowing about the topic does not necessarily mean that they know how to practice it. Generally, website designers and developers have a "conversational understanding" of the concepts but lack proficiency and experience with search engine matters. It's not what they're trained to do.

Some website designers don't know enough about the topic to be up-to-date on the differences between SEO and SEM. Years ago the term "SEO" encompassed functions of making a site search engine friendly as well as promoting it. If your web person refers to optimization topics and marketing topics under the same term, "SEO", it is a warning sign that they may not be competent or qualified in the SEO/SEM fields.

Some web developers have exposure to specific parts of marketing strategies (blogging, for example), and they may feel justified in placing basic keywords on a site with the intent of "selling" you their blogging efforts afterwards. Once the site is built, they claim it has been optimized and then attempt to achieve good search engine position based solely on their own efforts to "blog your way to the top." (It doesn't work that way.)

There are numerous other reasons why traditional web design companies, freelancers, and amateurs may not share the whole story with you about SEO and SEM.

Sometimes they just don't know what they don't know.

In worst cases, they don't want to scare you from buying a site by revealing other expenses that are required for your success... so they "nickel and dime" you with follow-up expenses after getting your money from the initial sale of the site. In other words, after you pay for the site, you learn that you have to pay to host it. Once you're hosting it, you learn that you need it optimized. Once it's optimized, you find out about marketing. Unscrupulous vultures that engage in such practices are playing with your money, and there's no end in sight. Their thought process seems to be "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush." It's much more respectable (and ethical) to put all the cards on the table up front so you, the business owner, can make informed decisions and plan accordingly.

Here are the basics on what you need to know about SEO and SEM:

SEO is typically performed once on the site, and then periodically adjusted to account for changes in your market, industry, strategic goals, etc. Unless a major paradigm shift occurs that affects your business model, market, industry, website content, or search engine "best practices" guidelines, you do not need to make major adjustments to the SEO on your site.

SEM is an ongoing process that is divided into two main categories: organic and subscribed.

Organic marketing involves (among other things) article publication, press releases, blogging, social media posting, professional online networking, and link building (via appropriate sources). Note that multiple methods are used for a successful organic marketing campaign. The nature of organic marketing success is "cumulative effort yields long term results".

Avoid anyone who claims that they'll help you get found through only one or two methods. Avoid anyone who has a specific "recipe" of cookie-cutter activity that they say they will do for you on an ongoing basis (for example, 1 article, 2 blog posts, and 5 posts on FaceBook). To be effective, your SEM efforts need to be reviewed and adjusted from one month to the next based on data. If you get stronger results in one area over another, adjustments should be made to keep your efforts balanced.

Subscribed marketing involves such methods as pay-per-click (PPC), Pay-per-impression, pay-for-position, directory subscription services, and so forth. Depending on the competitiveness of the industry you're in, the keyword choices selected, the quality of the SEO job that was performed, the strategies used to manage the campaign, and other factors, subscribed marketing can become pricey. The nature of subscribed marketing is "short-term effort yields instant but short-lived results."

There are pluses and minuses to each type of marketing.

Organic marketing has the drawback of taking longer (sometimes weeks or months) to attain results, but once your site achieves a favorable ranking and gets established with a solid presence, you can cut back on your marketing budget (or expand it in other areas using those funds) without immediately losing visibility. A solid presence is measured by various means, including traffic to your site, indexes such as Google PageRank, etc.

Subscribed marketing (Google AdWords, for example) has the advantage of being almost instantaneous and can be controllable by a number of criteria including time of day, radius from a Zip Code, etc. In the case of AdWords, Google assigns a "quality score" to your site which factors into determining the cost per click (CPC) for a given keyword. Generally, the better optimized your site is and the more relevant your content, the higher your quality score and the lower your cost-per-click. The disadvantages of most subscribed marketing is twofold: it can get expensive, and if you cut your budget you disappear altogether.

One common thread weaves throughout both types of SEM, as you may surmise. The costs, effectiveness, and time to achieve results for your SEM efforts (organic or subscribed) are directly impacted by the quality of your website's SEO. Optimization is very different than marketing, but the two are directly related.

SEO without SEM is like producing a TV commercial without ever broadcasting it. It takes time and money to prepare the site to be found, but if you never market it, the odds of anyone ever seeing it are slim.

SEM without SEO is like hiring a sky writer to advertise your business online by drawing your keywords in the clouds. No one will likely see the skywriting, and after a very short time any evidence of your marketing efforts has vanished.

To be effective, you must first optimize then market the site. The good news: it can be done very reasonably with lasting effects if done properly. As with any type of marketing or advertising, results are budget dependent but in many cases can be done quarterly if monthly is too expensive.

In closing, a few cautions in addition to those previously mentioned above:

Beware of anyone claiming to be an SEO expert who uses only the keywords you provide them. It's normal to be asked what keywords you want to be found by, but the final keyword selections should be validated and adjusted for both demand and budget based on data, not intuition.

If your web designer claims to know how to optimize or market your site, ask them to provide real-time examples of current clients that have achieved top placement and solid Google PageRank. There should be little hesitation in being able to produce such examples. If they give you excuses like, "My clients value their privacy" or other such hogwash, walk away. SEM clients are PAYING for publicity... there's no reason that they would not want to be shown in good placement on the search engines.

If you have paid someone to market your site, they should have data to support their efforts. They should be able to provide reports, explanations, and trend results. SEM campaigns (done properly) are MANAGED, not just left to chance. If you ask how your site's placement is being measured, monitored, and managed but get dumb looks and a shrug in response, move on. Don't throw good money after bad.

Beware of providers who resort to excuses and blame pointing. If your site isn't getting results, it's typical for inexperienced or incompetent providers to deflect blame. I've heard such nonsense as "It depends on which browser people are using". No, really... It doesn't. Each search engine service has it's own algorithm and weighted criteria, but the browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, etc.) doesn't appreciably impact SEO effectiveness or marketing results.

Beware of inexperienced SEM providers who tell you that articles, blogs, and social media efforts are directed at getting more people to click on your link to increase the traffic to your site. Yes, you may get some clicks through those efforts, but as a rule, articles, blogs, and link-building efforts are targeted at getting search engines (not people) to follow the links, creating quality back links from relevant, high Google PageRank sources.

Do your homework and find someone you trust, then follow their guidance. More specifically, don't find someone who tells you what you want to hear, and then try to trust them once they're taking your money. You may not like what you hear from the person you trust, but getting the inconvenient truth is better than getting duped by someone who is only after your money.

You will occasionally find website development companies or web designers who actually do have a sound knowledge base and experience with SEO/SEM. There is a lot more to your website than meets the eye, so finding a competent web provider that has solid references and can "do it all" makes for a much more efficient project.

To be effective both short-term and long-term, your search engine strategymust be (not "should be") tailored to your particular market, goals, locality, industry, etc. It needs to be based on data, not guesswork. It will likely involve some variable combination of organic and subscribed marketing which shifts and evolves over time. It is budget driven, and can be adapted to your specific requirements rather than being a fixed price "package". For long term success, organic marketing that yields a good position is more credible than subscribed advertising since anyone can buy an ad, but organic placement results from merit and relevance.

Now that you know more about what it takes to get your website found, you are in a better position to make informed business decisions related to your online presence. If you do not already have a website, be sure to ask any prospective website provider if they are familiar with how text, links, CSS, image mapping, tables, Flash, JavaScript, and other key components of web design impact your website's ability to be optimized. Ask them to explain it to you. If they can't explain it, or if they say that none of it matters, find someone else. At the end of the day, it's your success we're talking about, here.

Tom Elliott is the author of Website 411: Business Survival in an Internet Economy ( available athttp://www.website411book.com ) and an international Internet consultant. He has developed Website Search Engine Optimization and Marketing courses to train Web professionals, and provides business consulting services to companies and organizations for success on the Internet.

For articles, books, and seminars essential to building your knowledge of online business and your business's future success, please visit the Website 411 book site andhttp://www.webdrafter.com for more information on Websites, search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM), and ecommerce.

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