A How-To Guide for Getting Your Online Content Found More Often

Do you want a fast and easy way to improve your search engine rankings so that your website and content marketing gets found more often?  Having fresh content that is rich with keywords and phrases is a must, but you also need to make sure that the search engines know about your site and make regular visits to see what’s new.

While we’re all familiar with search engines thanks to our friends at Google and Microsoft, people are generally less familiar with web directories.  Web directories are huge libraries of websites on the internet.  Unlike search engines that use “spiders” to automatically crawl through the different pages on a website and catalog the results, most directories are manually compiled by volunteer editors.  Search engines crawl through web directories so appearing in web directories will help your search engine performance.

While the reasons to be favoured by search engines and web directories are well documented, let’s quickly review why you want to let them know that you exist rather than waiting for them to happen upon you by chance:

• Improved search engine ranking – If the search engines don’t know about your site, you’re not going to rank in search results.  The search engine “spiders” will probably encounter your content sooner or later, but why wait?
• More inbound links – Registering your site with web directories means increasing the inbound links to your site, and that’s good for directing more traffic to your site but also for increasing the credibility of your pages.  Search engines keep a close eye on the web directories so showing up in the web directories will also help your search engine performance.  Also, web directories are searchable and some people use them to find companies that they’re looking for.
• Keywords and key phrase targeting – When you register with search engines and web directories you get to specify your keywords and phrases.  By selecting the keywords and phrases that are in your sweet spot and are consistent with your content marketing platform you’re going to show up in the searches that you want to show up in.

Here are the top search engines and web directories and a brief note on how to sign up:

1. Google – With 85% of the search engine market share, this is a must.  Go to www.google.com/submityourcontent and there are four options that you can choose from.  You’ll want to start by clicking on the ‘Website Owner’ tab and then the ‘Add your URL’ link but you should look at the other three options on the page.  You should also submit a sitemap so Google knows how to index your site – http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ is a great site that will build your sitemap.xml file, for free, that you can submit to Google.
2. Bing – While Yahoo has the second largest search engine market share, Bing provides the organic search results for Yahoo so by registering with Bing you’re also registering with Yahoo.  Go to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url, enter your URL and you’re on your way.  You can also submit your sitemap to Bing through their Webmaster Tools to make it easier for Bing to crawl your site.
3. DMOZ.org – This is the biggest directory on the web.  To submit your site, go to www.dmoz.org and drill down to your business category.  Drill down as deep as you can and when you’re in a deep as you can get click the ‘Suggest URL’ link near the top of the page.  Enter your URL, title and site description and you’re on your way.  Be careful in submitting: these entries are supposed to be objective and are reviewed before they are accepted so don’t use the site description part as a selling platform.  Simply state what your business does and include your keywords and phrases.

If you submit your site to Google, Bing and Yahoo you’ll have more than 96% of the search engine market covered, but if you want to go for the full 100% you should also register with Baidu, Ask, AOL, Excite and Lycos.  There are other directories that you can find through various search engines – see what other directories are available and appropriate for you particular business.

Conclusion

A strong content marketing platform is vital for many small businesses.  Creating fresh and engaging content that will resonate with your target audience is great, but you can boost its effectiveness by submitting your site to the major search engines and web directories.  By doing the minimum of submitting your website to two search engines and one directory you can significantly improve your online visibility and get more traffic to your marketing content.

Got something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.  Follow us on Twitter and ‘Like’ us on Facebook to join the conversation.

Other Blog Posts

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• Five Great Sources for Blogging Topics
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Steve Hartley, Managing Partner

Fering Communications Inc.

Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com

Five Great Sources for Blogging Topics

Coming up with interesting and relevant topics is one of the most challenging aspects about maintaining a blog.  If you don’t provide blog posts that resonate with your readers then they’ll stop reading and the number of engaged readers is one of the key metrics in measuring the effectiveness of your blog.

Here are some of the top places that we turn to for inspirations when setting out on a blog post: 

1. Real-Life Stories – Real-life stories are awesome because of their originality.  The tricky part to real-life stories is making them relevant.  Take for example our last blog post about the bird that hopped onto my hand in a client’s parking lot.  Yeah, it’s interesting but my readers don’t really care about just that.  I had to put a spin on it that made it relevant so I used it to put a human touch on me and my company.  What stories serve as a good basis for blog posts?  Anything you’d tell your spouse over dinner or a buddy over a beer.
2. Life Lessons – Life lessons that you learn from mistakes serve as great blog material because you can show your readership a sense of humility, modesty or vulnerability that they will respect.  To err is human and openly discussing your life lessons will add an element of honesty and trustworthiness to you and your company.  Also, as well as describing the mistake that you made you can also brag a little bit about how well you rose to the occasion, innovated to correct a mistake or went that extra mile to save the day.  Be careful about being too honest, though: you don’t want to give your readers the impression that you’re clumsy, incapable or incompetent.
3. Current Events – News headlines are a great source of blog inspiration but again only if you can make it relevant to your readership.  How many articles did you see this past summer about how we can learn something to do with our businesses from Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt or Ryan Lochte?  How many articles did you see about how we can apply strategies from Angry Birds to our everyday jobs?  Apparently everyone from instructional designers to environmentalists to enterprise software firms could all learn a thing or two from Angry Birds.
4. LinkedIn Groups – Two particular LinkedIn features are rich with ideas about things to blog about.  First, the “LinkedIn Today” section, which shows near the top of the page when you log in, lists top stories of interest.  Our favourite source, though, is LinkedIn’s Groups.  Join a handful of groups that are related to your business and keep an eye on what is being discussed and you’ll likely find a bountiful supply of blog topics.
5. Competitors Blogs – Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?  In a pinch, head over to your competitors blogs and see what they are blogging about.  A couple of things to keep in mind, though:  First, you should only use their topics as inspiration for your own, so don’t steal their content, that’s plagiarism and generally frowned upon.  Second, don’t go to this well too often.  If you do you risk them – and potentially some of your prospects or clients – finding out.  If you are going to do this, make it less obvious by looking at their archives and seeing what they’ve blogged about in the past, it might seem too coincidental if you use their current posts as inspiration.

Conclusion

A well-written blog can be the cornerstone for establishing an online presence that can help your business grow through showcasing your expertise, building credibility with prospects and keeping your clients up-to-date on your latest offerings.  However, keeping fresh and relevant content flowing can be tough.  There are many sources close at hand that we can draw inspiration from, including real-life stories, life lessons and current events to name but a few.  And, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that if you need help starting a new blog or continuing an existing one then we’d love to help.  Check out our website and visit our Contact Us page to find out how to get in touch and get started!

Other Blog Posts

If you liked this blog post, here are some other blog posts that you might also like:

• Six Great Ways to Dissolve Your Writer's Block
• Social Media and Content Marketing:  In-House or Outsource?
• The Importance of Tone in Business Writing

Steve Hartley, Managing Partner

Fering Communications Inc.

Website: www.feringcommunications.com

Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com