Now that your site is online, let your market know it’s there!
Search engines give internet users the ability to browse goods and services over a new geographical arena, encompassing all the providers of a service or product. Statistics show that most internet users will only pay attention to the first or second page of search engine listings.
Every month over 283 million people use search engines to find new sites. To attract web traffic to your web site, your site MUST be seen!
The starting point for referencing is indexation, which allows search engines to determine that your site exists; a bit like securing a listing in the Yellow Pages of your local phone directory. Although this is the most basic step in the referencing process, this task still requires an expert touch to ensure its effectiveness and should never be left up to an amateur.
More advanced levels of referencing require further steps that are both numerous and complex; comparable to the strategies a company might adopt in order to appear among the first few names in its category in the Yellow Pages.
Despite the most concerted efforts, no one can clearly state that their “mission is accomplished” when it comes to indexation:
- Indexation rules and strategies are constantly evolving: tricks used only a few years ago no longer apply and new techniques, which must be recognised and understood before being applied, are being developed all the time.
- The competition to be listed among the first places in search engines is fierce where new and often unexpected competitors are constantly popping up. In the “real” world, though your competitors may sell a different product than you, they may be targeting the same market. In the “virtual” world, competitors may have nothing in common with your products or your market but use the same keywords – hence the competition for positioning. And countless new competitors and Websites are being added on a daily basis.
- For one reason or another, markets tend to evolve in such a way that surfers decide to change the keywords used for their searches. One of the reasons for this is the competition for keywords. If, in the past, your customers could find your site using keywords such as “interior paint”, today, these keywords might not be enough and keywords such as “colour trends” must be used to search your company.
- Websites are not permanent fixtures: they may be modified or deleted. Consequently, sites that previously made mention of your company may no longer exist, and the valuable references they provided will have disappeared along with them.
Essentially, a synergy of methods and techniques will be deployed as required to address the challenge from all sides and ensure the success of the indexation process.
