Home > Writing Advice & Resources > How Visible is Your Website?

How Visible is Your Website?

Updated 2006
For a business website to grab the attention of prospective customers, the prospective customers have to see it. Simplistic as this sounds, it's a principle that some businesses overlook. They have a website built, but pay absolutely no attention to making that site visible to their target market. This article helps you to assess how visible your site is to potential customers, and explains a simple way to improve site visibility.

Background

People find websites in one of three ways:

• see the site address somewhere (on a business card, billboard, etc.) and type it into their browser
• find a link to the site on the web page they're currently using
• search for a particular key word or phrase, then see the site in a list of search results

Figures vary, but it's estimated that about 80% of all website visits begin with a search. In other words, 80% of website visits come from people who may not have knowm that a specific company existed, but who found it by running a search for that kind of product or service. This article deals specifically with the visibility of sites in searches.

Are You Up Against the Whole World?

If you want to rank well in searches, are you up against every other site on the web that features your product or service?

Yes—and no.

It all depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to rank in the top 10 for very general or very competitive search terms (accounting, software, etc.), then the whole world will be your competition. However, if your goal is to be visible to people in your geographical area, then it's much easier to become visible simply by having your web designer add location information at key points in your site.

What's location information? Quite simply, information about where your business is located physically. The benefit of adding location information is that it makes you more visible to people searching for businesses in your area.

For example, people in Edmonton who want a local accountant will often enter key phrases like "accounting Edmonton" or "accountant Alberta". They don't want an accountant from Miami or Montreal, so they search accordingly.

In the above example, Edmonton accounting firms whose websites stress their location will appear in the results list before Edmonton accounting firms that do not stress their location. In fact, Edmonton firms that do not mention their location may be ranked lower than accounting firms that are not located in Edmonton at all.

No matter what your product or service, having your web designer add your city, province/state, and country in crucial places on your website will go a long way toward helping local customers find you in searches. The beauty of this approach is that although adding location information makes it easier for local customers to find you, it doesn't lower your rankings in searches where the searcher does not include any location words.

And Now... The Test

How visible is your site to potential customers? It's easy to find out.

At the end of this article are links to four of the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, Altavista, and Overture. When you're done reading, go to any one of these sites. Then use the search box to enter key words or, more importantly, key phrases, that people might use to search for companies like yours. For example, if you sell snowboards, try words and phrases like "snowboard", "winter sport", "outdoor sport"—anything a prospective customer might use to search for your kinds of products.

For each search phrase, test both with and without location information. For example, search on "snowboard", "snowboard Edmonton", and "snowboard Alberta" (substituting your own city and province/state in the searches) and compare your places in the rankings.

If you repeat the above searches using several of the search engines listed, you'll have a pretty good idea of how visible your site really is to prospective customers.

You're Not Showing Up—Now What?

There can be many reasons that your site is not showing up in searches. If your site is looking seriously invisible, especially in local searches, you'll need to talk to an expert to find out what's wrong, and what kind of investment it will take to improve your visibility.

Since very good rankings are the cumulative result of many things done right, you can usually afford some level of improvement, no matter what your budget. Just tell your chosen expert how much money you want to spend, and ask for an idea of what can be done within that framework. If you want to concentrate on getting local business, a moderate one-time expenditure may be all you'll need to make the site much more visible to potential customers.

It can be daunting to find out that the $5,000 website you launched a year ago is all but invisible on the web, but if you don't know there's a problem, how can you fix it and start getting ROI on yur investment?

So check out your site and see where you stand. Here are links to four common search engines:

Google
Yahoo
Altavista
msn (the Microsoft Network)

Good luck!