I was shocked when I went into my website’s history last week and counted 240 articles I’ve written for the Gardner News. I never thought about the quantity of articles, just that it’s fun picking something from the prior week and writing. All have the common subject of technology and most have some fun anecdotes.
Sunday night’s ritual includes sending the article to my website for Tuesday afternoon publication. I’ve created a repository within my website for people who want to skim old articles which doubles as my personal cloud backup. While I’m logged into the site I frequently check my stats.
Last week I noticed a funny trend; the second most searched term which brought people to LocalComputerWiz.com is “counterfeit money.” Why would a search engine bring counterfeiter to a computer website? It all boils down to one article I write on October 29 last year.
In the article I discuss the technology behind the new hundred dollar bill and discussed how difficult it might be to make counterfeit copies. Turns out, “counterfeiting” is a highly searched word and I have a very high search engine rank. A combination of high rank and a popular term makes that one article the most read on my site.
Getting a high search engine rank wasn’t an accident. I’ve been designing sites for years and have always pushed to make sure Google and Bing, the major players, like my site. Showing up on the first page for a specific search term is necessary for capturing website traffic.
Ranking high for a specific term requires work and constant website honing to make sure it meets current search engine criteria. I was flabbergasted when I saw “counterfeiting” as a key search word because that’s not the site’s main topic. This anomaly did provide an interesting subject for this week’s article.
Content is the key to any good website’s rank. Search engines look at the site and page title as well as the metadata, but the key to a good site is relevant content. In my case, the bulk of the content is computer repair, virus removal, and my stores’ locations.
Weekly articles published on my site sends a message to search engines that I have new content. In addition to weekly modifications, I also request regular scans of my site. Part of my Sunday night ritual has been to include links within my site to the newest articles so search engines can find it easily.
Outside of relevant data, it’s a good idea to edit the meta tags within the site’s code. In my case I list the towns I do most of my business, key terms for my business, and my personal contact info. Other meta tags include information specific to Google and Bing. Basically, I setup a simple site map specific to each search engine and use each search engine’s analytics to assist me.
Unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do to jumpstart when a search engine will find our site. Major search engines have a page which establishes the initialization process; but the fine print usually states they’ll get to it when they get to it. Nothing’s guaranteed.
High ranking pages didn’t get that way because webmasters are lazy. Building a good site requires tons of hard work. High ranking websites don’t have to be pretty, they just have to convey the message you’re trying to communicate. I probably should have included the phrases “computer repair” and “virus removal” countless times this week to increase traffic to my site.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can text him directly at (978) 413-2840 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)