Since search engines are the first stop for people on the
Internet looking for goods or services, the position your
website appears in search results is an important factor. If
your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the
consumer never finding you increase incrementally.
Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential
that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked
so hard to achieve.
This means you must come up with a strategy create a search
engine position report to monitor your search engines positions.
This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing
campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online
portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance
and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your
stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is
the way you must consider your search engines positions.
Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search
engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your
rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb.
What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward
climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine
position campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and
protecting stage.
In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term
fluctuations in your positions that you will see in your search
engine postion report. These are similar to the subtle rising
and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an
integral part of the whole process. It’s the long-term changes
that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.
Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is
imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may
change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes -
many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking -
your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can
get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you
must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly
basis.
Devise a search engine position report to chart to keep tabs on
your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to
watch “the market” closely.
Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings.
When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may
raise or lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of
different formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t
become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being
applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise
in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions
frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes
formulas and what effect it has on your positions.
You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you
must always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may
suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their
position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month,
expect position changes due to the continual changes that are
occurring in your competitor’s position, and be prepared to
adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased
rankings.
Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital
information about how to improve your website to increase your
position in search results.
Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines
are in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right
now, there are ten popular search engines that direct most of
Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that
these top ten may change from month to month.
This means that your must not only monitor your search engine
positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking
popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out
which search engines people use most frequently every month and
be sure to live in the present!
People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it
takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search
engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be
old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of
engines according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a
current list of website favorites.
Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your
positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly
fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a
number of different things. It all your search engine positions
have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders -
those sneaky programs that seek out your site and rank their
positions - have found some type of problem with your website.
If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider
may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions
disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is
down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from
a search engine index entirely.
Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and
suddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If that
search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino
effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search
engines.
Some search engines rely on the results from other search
engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are
and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest
problem here is that search engines will sometimes change
affiliations, and this can create a major shift in the geography
of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to display
only results gleaned from Google. So you must not only monitor
your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts
in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.
Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the
foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they
demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you
have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it
may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or
inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for
that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into
outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and
efficiently to regain lost ground.
Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs
you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment
as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same
way, track your positions using your search engine position
report from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions
on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards
by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term
marketing campaign.
