Websites.ca Marketing & Design Blog

If you rank #1 on Google for the keywords in your industry, you will probably profit. The reason is that so many people now look for small business products and services on the web nowadays. If you’re a plumber in the Greater Toronto Area – and you’re on page #1 for ‘plumber gta’ – you’re probably going to get a lot of calls.

But how does one get to page #1? Can you buy your way to the top? The answer is yes and no.

The NO Answer
On Google, there are 2 sides of any search result page. There is the left side and the right side. The RIGHT side contains links that are ADVERTISEMENTS. And the LEFT side contains the “natural search results”. The natural search results get sorted by a complicated and secret formula that Google uses. But there are some details that are not secret on how to use the formula to your advantage.

It is important to note that way more people click on the left side than the right side.

The YES Answer
You can purchase paid links that will show up on the right-hand-side on the Google search results page – or on other websites in Google’s advertising network. But it certainly doesn’t beat showing up in the natural search results.

So How Do You Do It?
The answer is to get people to link to your website. This does NOT mean putting a link on your website and pointing it to another website. This means getting someone else – that has control over another website – to put a link on their website pointing to your website. And their website should contain “similar” content to your website’s content.

Paid Links
You may see offers about getting high up on Google. These people use large lists of links and websites that they control to get you the links you need. This is a practice that is not allow by Google and you will be shut down eventually. In the short-term you may see results, but eventually, Google finds out. Check out why this experienced person says don’t waste your time buying links.

Inlinks are probably the most important thing to consider when trying to improve your placement on the search engines like Google. Each inlink basically counts as a vote toward your site. So the more inlinks you have the better. This is roughly how it works. But first of all, you may be asking, what is an inlink anyways??

An inlink is a link to YOUR website. It is NOT a link that is on your website going to someone else’s website. It is only a link from someone else’s website, going to your website.

A link is basically just something you can click on (usually they are blue words, underlined). Like, this is a link going to Google. And the words that are in the link, that is the words that you can click on are important – the more descriptive, the more keywords that it has – the better. Relevancy is important between the 2 pages being linked. You used to be able to just pay someone to put a bunch of links on a page all pointing to your website. Well Google doesn’t allow this anymore. They now track the “relevancy” between the pages (that is, if the subject matter is similar). Also, the number of relevant inlinks to the page that links to yours is important. So say is page A is linking to you – and A has 2 inlinks. Compare that to B, which has 50 relevant inlinks. If A links to you, well that is OK. But is B links to you, that is really good, because they have a lot of votes/inlinks – so when they vote for you, that means something.

The websites with the top inlinks are getting all the traffic – and probably generating a lot of leads and a lot of revenue.

Getting inlinks is really easy. You can simply ask your suppliers or customers to add a link on their website to your website. But there are other techniques too. One technique is called forums. What you do is start by doing a search for what you want to showup for. For example, if you want to showup on Google for ‘plumbers kelowna’ then start by doing that search. Now go through the list of results. If you come to a website that is a Forum (a place where lots of people exchange information) then become a member and take part in the conversation. Answer peoples’ questions and make comments. For each of your posts, simple put a little footer message under your comment/question:

Best,
John Smith
http://www.johnsmithplumbing.ca/

See how easy that is? For each post, you’ll get a nice, very relevant inlink. Very powerful stuff!

Want to see your current inlinks? Simple, just head over to the Yahoo Site Explorer and enter your website address at the top. Then click the ‘Inlinks’ button.

We also track the number of inlinks to your website in a graph – this way you can see your progress on getting more inlinks. This can be accessed by clicking the ‘Stats’ button when logged into your website.

Post a comment here if you have questions or head over to our new forum to discuss in more detail! Our new forum is at: http://forum.websites.ca/

More and more people are now looking for products and services on Google.  In fact, many predict that YellowPages will be toast in four years.  The battle between YellowPages and Google is heating up and Google is now starting to come out as the winner.  It is really important for small businesses to know this.

There are lots of important things you can do to capture more traffic from Google searches.  We’ve given lots of <a href="http://websitesca.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/tips-for-search-engines/"Tips for Search Engines in the past, but in this article we’re going to talk about Google Local.

What is Google Local?

Google Local is basically maps.google.com.  When you go to maps.google.com you’ll see a map of the world and a search box.  So you can search for things like "plumber winnipeg".  Next, when you click Search, you’ll see a map of Winnipeg with lots of pins showing you plumbers in Winnipeg so you can find one by proximity.  Also, sometimes a little thumbnail of a map will show up on the regular Google search when visitors query something with a geographic keyword – like a city name.

A lot of small businesses get new clients via maps.google.com.  The important thing to note is that you can get on maps.google.com and it doesn’t cost you a thing!

Getting on Google Local

To get listed on Google Local, simply go to http://www.google.com/local/add and follow the steps to sign-up.  It is really worth it!

If you want to show-up higher in the list on Google you need to do 2 things:

1. Make sure that your keywords are written in the text of your website.  Repeat them a little by writing naturally, but not too much.  This step is very easy to do using our Mnet editing system and should only take you a few minutes.
2. You need to get INLINKS (links going to YOUR website from OTHER WEBSITES).

The more in-links you get, the better your ranking on Google with respect to certain relevant keywords.  Each link counts as a VOTE towards your site.  So getting more inlinks is a really good idea.  In fact, the ranking of the website that links to yours, also matters.  If a high ranking website (with respect to certain keywords) is linking to you – that counts as a bigger vote towards your site.  So you can see the recursive nature of the whole thing.

You can go one step further, you can even see the number of inlinks that your competitor’s website is getting.  Simply go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and enter in your competitors website in the ‘Explore URL’ box at the top.  You’ll then see a list come up below and you should see an ‘Inlinks’ button with the number of inlinks printed on it.  Enter your website and compare the ‘Inlinks’ figure.  Now you know what you’re up against (roughly).

A good technique for getting inlinks is forum posting.  Go out on the Internet and find a website that is a forum or a news site (aka blog) where they are discussing issues related to your industry.  Join the community and take part in the discussion threads.  Answer peoples’ questions and make insightful comments. For each of your posts, simply put a link to your website in the footer (like a signature).  Over time this will have a massive impact on your search engine rank – this is because the information is very relevant – Google likes it when a site linking to another site has relevant information.

We get a lot of questions about the search engines.  People want to know how they get to the top.  This article will describe a few tips to help your website move closer to the top of the list.

The important thing to remember is that the goal of the search engines is to connect the people who are looking for information with the people to are producing the information.  If you produce valuable, relevant information to the Internet community, you will get more traffic.  That is the general idea.  There are a few specific things you can do also.

Keywords

The first step is the easiest.  You want to make sure that your website contains all the keywords and buzzwords for your industry.  So simply get on your website and write those words somewhere on your site (preferably on your home page).  With Mnet, this is really easy because you simply login to your site, then click the Edit button and start typing.  

You should not do things like list a bunch of words that are all very similar: "widget, widgets, widgeting."  Google does not like this sort of thing.  Just write normally, simply and clearly.  Write for your target audience.

Generate In-links

This step requires more work.  In-links are the links that are on other websites, and when they are clicked, they go to YOUR website (they point "in", hence "in-link").  The place to start with in-links is to contact your customers, suppliers or any organizations that you belong to – then ask them to put a link to your website on their website.

A really great technique that can be repeated as much as you want is forum posting.  Go out on the Internet and find a website that is a forum or a news site (aka blog) where they are discussing issues related to your industry.  Join the community and take part in the discussion threads.  Answer peoples’ questions and make insightful comments.

For each of your posts, simply put a link to your website in the footer (like a signature).  Over time this will have a massive impact on your search engine rank – this is because the information is very relevant – Google likes it when a site linking to another site has relevant information.

Remember that Google wants to connect the people who have the information with the people who are looking for it – so if you’re an information producer and you point at the source of your information, you will find great success on the search engines.