Is Your Web Site Hurting Your Business?

Summary

Everyone who is business with a web site wants a web site that can be found by potential customers or business partners. When I meet or talk with small business owners and they learn about my business, the following question usually comes up:

• “How can I get in the top search results on Google or Yahoo?”
• “Why aren’t my pages showing up in search results?”
• “Can you take a look at my site and tell me what you think?”

When I probe a little, the key issue is that they are concerned about being found by potential customers or business partners to grow their business. Sometimes the reason that people are not getting traffic to their site is because of their site. I’m not referring to visual esthetics. It could be technology used to implement different aspects of a site are and not taking advantage of keywords and page descriptions. I’m going to focus on keywords and page descriptions.

Keywords and Page Descriptions

If you have been around the web for any length of time, you probably heard the term “keywords”. In the context of web pages, “keywords” is a part of your web page code that your visitors don’t see but search engines use to help them categorize your site pages, along with the actual text content of a page. If this sounds foreign to you or you don’t know whether you have page keywords or description in your site, you can do the following see if your site is using keywords and a page description:

1. Go to your site home page.
2. View the source code of your home page. Most web browsers allow you to view the code used to generate the content of a page. Here are a few browsers and the menu command that shows the page code (I’m writing on an Apple laptop so I have to apologize to Internet Explorer users on Windows, I don’t know its menu command):

• Firefox: Go to the “View” menu and select “Page Source”
• Safari: Go to the “View” menu and select “View Source”
• Opera: Go to the “View” menu and select “Source”

What you are looking for near the top of the page is something that looks like:

• <meta name="keywords" content="" />

• <meta name="description" content="" />

If you don’t see this at the top of the page source code OR you see them and there is nothing between the quote marks after “content=”, your site is missing out on the free search engine marketing benefit of page “keywords” and a “description”. In essence, you are helping search engines help you when you have keywords and a page description in your page code.

Having keywords and a page description are the basics of search engine marketing. If you are not using them, you are missing out on a “free” way of marketing your site. For many people who have been around the web for a while, especially developers and marketers, creating keywords and descriptions that just comes naturally.

Creating keywords comes down to time-and-money. There are many marketing services and tools available to help you determine keywords for your product or service for a fee. If you don’t have the money to pay someone or for the service, you can develop an initial set of keywords to get you started. It’s better to have something than nothing. Consider your business, range of service (local, regional, national or international) and anything that makes your product or service unique that your target market may search for when creating your list.

For example, let’s say you have a local dry cleaning service that provides in home pick-up for Cary, North Carolina. Your keywords and page description could be:

“dry cleaning, dry cleaning service, dry cleaning pickup, home delivery, home pickup, pick up at home, quilts, comforters, silk, wool, linen, table clothes, formal, residential pickup, business pickup, business delivery, residential delivery, clothes spot removal, wine stain removal, cary north carolina, western raleigh, apex north carolina, morrisville north carolina, green dry cleaning, eco friendly,environmentally safe, environmentally friendly, hypoallergenic, clothes stain removal, same day service”

“ABC Dry Cleaning of Cary, North Carolina services the Cary and western Raleigh, North Carolina areas. We specialize in using environmentally safe products and processes in our dry cleaning service which makes them hypoallergenic. We provide in home, residential and business pick-up and delivery for anyone who lives within 10 miles of any of our locations.”

When thinking about your keywords, it’s important to think locally if you have a limited service range. If you are a dry cleaner in North Carolina, your are not really interested in people who live outside of your service area finding you in search result listing. But, if you have a product or service that you can provide outside of where you live, then want to broaden your scope and choose keywords that fit terms your target market will or may use in searches.

Here are a few stories of how important keywords, page descriptions and content are to your web site.

I have friend who is a real estate agent. She has a web site that is hosted by a content management service that services the real estate market. She asked me to take a look at her site to see what I could do to help drive traffic to it because she had it for a few years and was not getting any traffic. Fortunately, her content management service gives access to the page code so I developed a set of keywords for her site and page description. Afterwards, I submitted her domain to a few search engines for indexing. With the simple addition of keywords and a page description, her site traffic went from zero to over 400 visitors in a month. It’s not a lot by some standards but it started moving in the right direction. I’m not a search engine marketing guru or specialist but I did know about keywords and page descriptions. That was free traffic.

On another occasion, I worked with someone who had a one page site for his service. If was simple design but looked very nice. He was not getting any traffic and he wanted to know why. His site would show when searched for by his domain name.

Looking at his site, I discovered he had three strikes against, no keywords, no page description and no content in his page that search engines could use to help categorize his page. Most of his site used graphics with text in the graphics to communicate his business name and what he offered. At this point in time, search engines only index text.

We created keywords, a page description and submitted his site for indexing by search engines. I don’t know the results of our changes but I’m sure he is seeing more traffic simply because of the keywords and page description.

My last story is about a site I sponsor for a local business leads and networking group, the Cary Leads Group, of which I’m a member. As part of our meeting format, we ask newcomers and visitors to introduce themselves at the beginning of the meeting and to tell how they found us. We had a recent visitor who found us by searching the Internet for business leads groups in our area. The site had been online for only a couple of months but I followed the basic steps of creating keywords, page descriptions and submitting the site for indexing by search engines. The rest happened naturally.

If you don’t know whether you have keywords and page description, check today using the instructions provided above. If they are not there get started. Develop your keywords and page descriptions. Update your site pages and start benefiting from free search engine marketing. You next sell or contact could be a click away.