Hands up if you have a website and it’s not working for you.
Author: GuyMcLaren | Category: InternetIt is estimated that up to 70% of websites are invisible. What these websites have in common is that the search engines do not know that they exist. Google, Yahoo and MSN are the big 3 search engines but Google gets more traffic than Yahoo, MSN and all the other smaller search engines do together. 70% of search engine traffic is from Google.
So you spent money on a website and you have yet to see a return on your investment. Shall we start by checking if your site is invisible or just hidden. It’s really easy. Go to Google and type in site:yoursitename.co.za and see what results you get. If your site does not appear at all, it’s invisible. If it appears congratulations your site has been indexed.
Having an indexed site is great, It means you have less work to do than if your site is invisible but it may also not be that good. Next lets search for one of the brandnames on your website, like for instance “Rubicon Retirement home”. You will note that the number one position on Google is for a site called retirementstyle.co.za. They are not invisible or hidden because I can find this site using “Nelspruit Retirement Village”, “Mpumalangs retirement” and Nelspruit “Aftree oord.”
But I search for Laeveld Bou and I find a lot of sites that mention Laeveld Bou, notably the top one is lowveldnet.co.za. http://lowveldnet.co.za is a site where you can advertise your lowveld based business for free complete with backlinks to your own website. Just go to the site and select the add your listing free link. Laeveld bou’s own website is invisible. I did the first test as well.
I checked site:lambsonshire.co.za and found the website. I searched for Lambsons hire and found Lambsons at number one. I then searched for “tool hire” “plant hire” and “compactor hire” and they were not in the first ten pages for any of those terms. This site is not invisible but is hidden for one of their main search terms.
Not knowing much about the Lambsons Hire website I am guessing that they may get the odd search engine result for people who know the company name, but their competitors are cleaning up. Is this the case for your business?
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Tags: invisible websites, Search Engine Optimisation
October 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
First I would like to say that I like your blog and see that you have a lot of experience.
Then I would like to comment on this post? My first site has got many links from all the search engines, but my new site that I have had for about 3 weeks now only has one link and that is to my blog probably because of the SEO software I use.
What do you think?
Then there is something else I would like to ask you, why have you registered a .com site now? Is there some specific reason for this?
Thanks
Shaun
October 16th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Nice one, Trying to get me to link directly to my opposition. As to your wonderful endorsements, thank you.
You get links from search engines? Surely you mean you get traffic from them As I have no idea what SEO software you use and what backlinking you have tried, I cannot answer your question.
I figure from the site I had a look at you must be pretty knowledgeable to have written the ebook.
Why the .com site? Well the thing is I like being a .commer. It just sounds so much cooler.