Running a company website it easy, right? You simply write all about your business and products and watch the orders flood in, right? Unfortunately, the World Wide Web isn’t that easy. The chances of people in the equine community stumbling upon your site are slim and none at all. Unless of course, you’re appearing in the search engine results.
But what happens when your business website doesn’t appear on Google? How are your customers going to visit your site and buy from you? If your site doesn’t have an obvious Google presence, no matter how well designed it is, customers won’t find you.
Why is it Not on Google?
So where is your website? It’s definitely live, and when you visit it directly via the URL it’s there. What’s gone wrong? And more importantly, how quick and easy is it to fix? While it is possible to resurrect your site, it’s not often a problem that can be solved over night.
There are a whole host of reasons why your company website isn’t ranking, but here are the five main reasons:
1. No SEO
Websites don’t get to the first page of Google on their own. You have to tell the search engine what your website is about by implementing search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO involves selecting a number of ‘keywords’ to do with your website. These keywords are the terms Internet users may type into Google when they’re looking for your particular website.
You then have to make sure these words are featured on your website – in the copy, titles, and all the ‘meta-tags’ which are read by search engines. If you’ve not optimised your site in this way, it won’t appear on Google for the appropriate keyword terms.
2. Wrong Keywords
But what if you have SEOed your website, and it’s still not driving traffic in the way you want it to? Chances are you haven’t optimised your site for the right terms. Maybe they’re too competitive, or maybe they’re so niche, no-one is looking for them?
Choosing the right keywords is essential to getting your website to the top of Google. Think like your customer, and think about what they might need. Strike the perfect balance between broad and exact keyword terms, as well as short and long tail keywords. Mix up the terms you use to give you the best chance of ranking well.
3. Poor On-Site Copy
It’s not all about these keywords, though, Google has recently taken steps to reward websites that feature quality content. This means well written home pages, product descriptions, and blog posts. You need to make your website an information hive. Sure, selling your products and services is your ultimate goal. But it’s not the only way to drive traffic.
If you’re still not business blogging, now is the time to start. Upload a selection of well written posts that appeal to your audience. Discuss the latest news in your niche, thinks that matter to your industry, and technological advances.
4. Not Indexed
Done all these things, and your equine website still not appearing in Google? Chances are your website isn’t indexed. Will millions of sites on the Internet, you can’t rely on the search engines to crawl and index your site on its own.
To fix this quickly and easily, submit your websites .xml sitemap to Google, using Webmaster Tools. In ‘real’ terms, this means telling Google directly where to find your website. It tells the search engine how many pages you have, and helps it crawl your site right away. Once your site has been indexed, it will begin appearing in the results.
5. Google Penalties
Millions of websites, especially smaller ones, have recently found that their websites are missing from Google. If you’ve done all these things, and had been experiencing success with your website, you may be wondering why it’s just vanished.
Google recently released two algorithms, Penguin and Panda, that have been targeting web-spam and poor quality sites. If your website has been overly SEOed, filled with duplicate content, or had a number of poor quality links it may have been hit. Penguin and Panda recovery is something that will take time but is possible. The main advice is to diversify your keywords, don’t overly optimise your pages, and keep your content to a high quality.
There can be a whole host of reasons, or a combination of many, that affect your company websites rankings. As a marketing novice, it can be daunting to know where to begin. But once you manage to implement a sound strategy, your website will only grow.
For help and advice on optimising your website, contact birdandcoequine today. The company are experts in online marketing and graphic design in the equine industry.
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