Question about Google

[workerdude]

At my job, the boss has asked me how to get our website 'out there'. Our website has a site as usual with information about the company etc, and it also has a free-access database which I believe is located on another server. The task I have at hand is my boss wants to be able to go to Google and search for an item located in the database and have it at or near the top of the search results.

How is this possible?

 

[john238]

It takes a lot of time. It's not something that can be done over night. If you paid someone to do it then it would cost a good bit, we are talking about a good few thousand. There is only so much traffic on the web and so many websites trying to get it.

Competition is quite big, but is still getting bigger.

 

[ian]

providing good quality content in which people naturally link to your site is the best way of achieving that.

 

[OSEKmedia]

That is quite a tall order but it is possible with a lot of work.

 

[SyncInteractive]

Generally, you need search engine marketing help. SEM involves a number of activities:

1. optimizing your website keywords - in the meta tags and body copy. you should check keyword checker tools to see which keywords have good response rates. then setup your keywords in your meta tags and body copy.

2. start a link campaign - get as many incoming links as you can. post on forums like this one, and include your website URL in your post. (search engine spiders love forums). why didn't you do that here?! submit your site to industry-related directories. there are lots of paid directories depending on your particular industry.

3. get news coverage, with online articles pointing to your website.

4. start PPC (pay per click) ad campaigns - Google Adwords, Yahoo's Overture, Microsoft AdCenter, and Business.com are good ones to start with.

5. Monitor your traffic statistics and page rank. pay attention to to success of your keywords, and referring links.

6. Based on #5, optimize and refine steps 1-4

7. Repeat.

Or hire a SEM specialist. They're experts in these steps.

 

[Chrissy]

Yeah Google doesn't really use the keywords (although other search engines do), but the incoming links are important. Pay-per-clicks can get costly. Don't know about your company, but if it is a local service type thing, you should consider an ad in the local paper, or other local publishing.