Hi JeffPanos,
Searching for "waukesha storage" on Google, your page comes up as the
last result out of three. Searching for 'self storage facilities
Waukesha Wisconsin' does not even return your site. It seems that you
are suffering from bad search engine placement.
Google is a search engine that uses PageRank technology (
://www.google.ca/technology/index.html ), which indexes pages and
returns results based on how many other pages link to it. As an
example, if thousands of pages on the Web link to page X, page X is
likely to get a high search engine ranking. If only two pages on the
Web link to page X, PageRank realizes that Page X is not very useful
and not very popular. Thus, it has a low search engine ranking.
A logical way to increase your link exposure is to setup link
exchanges with other websites similar to yours. This may include
competitors websites. Your competitor's website would link to you, and
you would link to your competitor. This relationship is mutually
beneficial and would give your clients more choices.
PromotionWorld has a good tutorial on setting up link exchanges with
related websites: http://www.promotionworld.com/tutorial/400.html
Do know that there are many companies that say they can "boost your
search engine ranking" or "list on 1000 search engines". You should be
weary of these offers as they may not actually help you as much as
they claim. Google has cautionary information for webmasters about
this topic:
://www.google.com/intl/sw/webmasters/seo.html
Also know that joining mass link exchange databases are not helpful to
your ranking. Google "Facts and Fiction" page (
://www.google.com/intl/sw/webmasters/facts.html ) says that large
linking programs do not help your page ranking. Therefore, limit link
exchanges to those that are truly meaningful for visitors that may
visit your site.
You can also list your website with business directories. This is
another good way to increase your link exposure and to draw visitors.
A large list can be found here:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Resources/Directories/
As an example, the first site on that page, Business.com (
http://www.business.com/ ), is a large, searchable directory of
businesses for clients. Listing there costs $99 annually and will help
increase your website's online presence.
Other than these two things, there is not much more you can do to
increase your link exposure. Google purposely conceals its search and
ranking algorithms to prevent webmasters from abusing their system and
artificially inflating rankings. According to their page with
information for webmasters (
://www.google.com/intl/sw/webmasters/4.html ), PageRank is the
only technology that they disclose to the public. According to that
page, results are ranked based on more than 100 factors - only one of
which (PageRank) has been disclosed. Therefore, only through
legitimately increasing your link exposure through useful links can
you be certain that your ranking will increase somewhat.
Note that you can check your current link exposure through Google's
link: tool. It is explained here:
://www.google.com/intl/sw/help/features.html#link
Hope this helps, and good luck with your website!
Additional links
Google has information for web masters like yourself about page
ranking:
://www.google.com/intl/sw/webmasters/4.html
Search strategy
link popularity
website promotion |
Clarification of Answer by
supermacman-ga
on
09 Dec 2002 13:21 PST
About searching for "waukesha storage" -
You have to actually type the double quotes - so you would type the
following in the Google Search box:
"waukesha storage"
See what I mean here:
://www.google.ca/search?q=%22waukesha+storage%22&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&meta=
Only by searching for the explicit name of your company, "waukesha
storage", did Google return your result. Using this information, I
drew the conclusion that your site was not listed high on the Results
page because your PageRank was low.
As well, the META tags that you have on your page only help to a
certain degree. As in my answer, I mentioned how Google uses PageRank
technology to determine the relative popularity and usefulness of
internet sites. PageRank is determined by the number of good sites
linking to your page, and has little to do with META tags.
According to Search Engine Watch's META tag page (
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html ), the META keyword
tag is not that important and generally ignored by search engines. The
page also describes how the content of the page is more important than
the text in the META tag, so you may want to consider focusing more on
the body of your website.
Finally, I observe that you have sixteen (16) keywords in your META
tags. As stated in a forum topic on WebMaster World (
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum8/307.htm ), having too many
keywords dilutes the value of each of them. As an example, if you used
only two keywords, 'waukesha' and 'storage', search engines may infer
that your site specifically deals with storage in Waukesha. In
contrast, your current META tag includes less-related keywords such as
'climate control' and 'wisconsin'. Perhaps a person searching for
'climate control systems in Wisconsin' would return your result. The
ultimate consequence of having too many keywords is that the search
engines do not know what your site is actually about. Thus, it
degrades value of your site.
Nevertheless, you should not focus too much on META keywords because
according to Search Engine Watch, most search engines do not use them.
As I stated in my answer, I believe that the best way for you to
improve your PageRank is to have legitimate, useful link exchanges.
Hope this clarifies things!
Search strategy
meta tags
meta tags keywords
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