So the big question we’re being asked around here lately is: “Why am I not showing up on Google?” or the variant: “Why is my site on the 23rd page of Google?”.  If you’re not showing up on Goggle at all, try this; In the search box type:  site:http://www.yoursitename.com . Does your site show up?  If it does, then move on to the next paragraph, if not, I have waited for up to two weeks before a site I built was indexed. Although search engines will naturally find your site and index it, your webmaster should also submit the site to the popular search engines asap to kindly ask the friendly search bots to drop by to visit.  If the site has only been in existence for less than a couple of weeks, try again later and move on to the next paragraph.  If you’re still reading, your site may be hidden from search engines, so talk to your webmaster to change this setting.  Lastly,  you may have been removed by Google due to an offense.  If this is the case, you should have received instructions to correct this and apply for reconsideration.

First of all, we’re not a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company (it is a hobby of mine and we do the best we can with all of our sites), but what we do can and will help with your Google ranking. Google is now real time, and gives preference to websites that change a lot, add a lot of content, have relevant link backs, as well as a bunch of other stuff that fits into their ever changing mathematical algorithm that decides who shows up first with certain keywords. “Keywords? What?” OK Let’s start with the basics:

Keywords are the words that you enter into the search box of your favourite search engine to find what you’re looking for.  They are also listed within your site so those searched keywords match up with the relevance of your site.  When new clients come to us seeking higher ranking with their existing site, we mainly check two things: 1. The type of site (static, or the preferred blog site like WordPress) 2. The current keywords. We’re noticing many sites are lacking useful keywords or have poor or misspelled keywords (may not be a bad thing to misspell if it’s a popular misspelling) so let’s see what you have on your site now:

1. 1. Go to your favourite web browser and enter your url into the address box.
2. 2. When your page is loaded, click View, Page Source (crtl+U) in Firefox, or View, Source in Internet Explorer.
3. 3. Observe the gobbledy gook (the source code that makes up the page).

Somewhere in the top part of that gobbledy gook (if you’ve hit the </head> tag, you’ve gone too far) should be a meta tag that looks like this: <meta name=”keywords” content=” Selection of keywords separated by commas” /> Is it there?  If it isn’t, well, pass me the grease rag, now there’s your problem; or at least part of it.  You can ask your web programmer to add some keywords for you if you have an HTML site, or if you’re using a WordPress site, you can add an SEO plugin that will allow you to add specific keywords to each or all of your pages.

Google doesn’t use meta keywords; keyword rich content, description tags, alt tags, url’s, and title tags are key. There is some confusion as to whether Yahoo and Bing use meta tags. Since the search algorithms are closely guarded secrets, we can only use our best intuition with the information we have. For the time it takes to make a meta tag, I include them anyway.

Aside from good site structure, W3C compliance, and links, Keywords are an important part of being found on the internet. Keyword research is part of what a social media marketer does to increase the usefulness of the keywords you use and ultimately rank your pages higher in search engine organic results (the results that aren’t paid for). We call it keyword optimization, and it does make a difference to how relevant your content is in a search.

Another big deal for ranking is the type of website you have.  But alas, that’s for the next post.