Now you have a website...

Website Confusion ...how do you beat the competition?

Who are your competition? If you don't know then you need to find out. We can still pick up the yellow pages to find out who our competitors are but when we are looking for our online competition (it's sounds obvious because it is) we search the internet. So we let's say we sell Bikes. We go to our search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and enter in the word "bikes" in the search bar. It's a good idea to enter in our locality, "galway" for example.

Take a good look at the results.

Now go through every link on the first page. Watch the paid advertisements. They are normally down one side of the page, at the bottom and at the very top. They usually stand out from the other links on the page by having darker colour background and will sometimes say "advertisement" underneath.

Strangely, and perhaps beside the point, is the fact that web users commonly avoid paid advertising and click the other listings instead. So mainly take note of the organic links that come up as these represent the competition who are working the hardest to achieve a strong online presence.

It's worth it to click on each link.

Check out how long the site has been around. See if you can tell when the last time they updated their site was. Find out their location. It goes without saying (that's why I'm saying it) that the aim at this point is to find out as much as possible about our competitors, although the overall aim remains to come up on the first page of a search engine when specific key words are entered in.

Make sure your site is optimized (in other words make sure your business is optimized).

Optimized means working hard for you, getting you leads, sales and returns.

Site optimization is a broad field. Either pay someone to do the job or learn how to do it yourself, remember by neglecting to do it means you are not allowing returns on your website investment.

Here is stuff you should make sure to do

Generate Metadata (keywords and descriptions)
Validate your site with Google and other search engines
Feed from your site
Submit your site to directories
Make site map (update it whenever you add new links)
Submit your site map each time you update it
Update site regularly with fresh original material
Make the material useful to encourage back links
Network with people online

Some of the above only need to be done occasionally and a couple can be automated. Once your site is set up correctly the only three you will have to do regularly are "Update site" "Make the material useful" "Network with people on and offline, online, spread the word."

Updating site regularly

I don't mean updating the content that is already there. I mean adding fresh new content.

Start with what you know

The idea of writing new content for your website might seem entirely daunting, especially when you think about the job you had of getting it all "done" in the first place. Thank your lucky stars if you have a CMS (Content Management System) because that means you can add a new short article every few days easily. Then every time a user goes to your website there will be something new.

Start writing about the subject you know best, hopefully your business will be at the top of the list.

So back to Bikes.

If anybody knows about bikes, well it's you. Of course that's if your business is bikes. So you write an article on 'cycling in all weather', then you write one on 'staying safe while cycling', and then the next week you write another one on 'changing a puncture'. You will never run out of material. Trust me on that.

If you need photos

I would recommend either buying a good camera and learning a little photography or paying someone to take good photos and upload bunches at a time to use when write new stuff. Check out stock photo sites like iStock-Photo for professional images at low cost.

Tips on writing:

Write a few short articles on a day when you have more time. Save them for publishing at a later date. Jot some stuff down when you have time to kill. Collect material from old books or manuals. Always be on the look out for new stuff. The more great stuff you have on your site then yours is the one that will come up whenever anyone types in ANYTHING to do with bikes into the search engine.

After a few weeks start checking search engines to see how you are coming up. If you work hard you should start seeing your site on the first page before long. A lot depends on your competition though so keep a watchful eye.

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Good Post
written by Echo , August 21, 2009

Great things to know. It must be of great help for new search engine optimization professionals as well as an intermediate SEM SEO person. This is a must read post.

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written by Ruth Ruane , August 21, 2009

Thanks very much for your comment. I really wrote it for the beginner. I think that there is so much jargon for the lay person to understand they must not know where to start. SEO and SEM is always changing, we never stop learning.

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