Why is my content being ignored by search engines? I am sure this a question any small business owner or event promoter has thought at one time or another. Is hiring a search engine optimization firm the answer to getting your business on page 1 of Google….Yes, but who can afford that when you don’t have a budget for marketing. Technology is a wonderful tool for the economically challenged to promote a message or view point. But, to be effective, one must understand the structure of technology in order to achieve the best outcomes.
I will be sharing information on how search engines work in order to assist you in developing more effective marketing strategies. This particular article may help explain why search engines may be ignoring your content. However, the series will focus on solutions by providing information on what you should consider when picking out a domain name, blogging platforms, increasing your search rankings, managing your social media, marketing strategies, analytics, and more.
Leaving Web Links in Multiple Places in Hopes of Increasing Readership
Have you ever seen this on twitter or Facebook, Check Me Out at www.example.com or Read How to Have a Better Life at www.example.com? Most people don’t click on these links because they resemble the nasty spam that will hijack your account. Often times, your targeted network tends to travel in the same circles.
When people see these types of post on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, this technique may backfire especially if you have not established yourself as a trustworthy brand. If you have an established reputation, this same technique can be the fastest way to provide information to your networks quickly. Be careful with this one, it is a double-edged sword. Best strategy, leave an excerpt of your post and a read more link back to your website for the full article. This technique provides enough wording for search engines to categorize your content without dismissing you as spam.
How Do I Avoid Be Labeled as Spam by Search Engines
When Google bots and other search engines crawl the web, their robots are program to ignore content resembling computer generated spam. Blogging is one of the best techniques to introduce yourself to new readers and/or potentially consumers. However, many users of blogging platforms do not understand how robots extract information from their sites. Even though the blog displays a beautiful polished post when you hit publish, Google and other web crawlers only read the information you typed inside the box.
If you switch post views to HTML view, this is the code that google and other search engines extract when crawling your site for new data. By leaving certain elements out of your posts, you are missing opportunities to prove yourself as a trustworthy source. Inside each post area, a byline (By John Doe) with a link attaching your name to a biographical page should be included. This is very important for someone without an established web presence. Additionally, if someone subscribes or import the rss feed from your blog into another platform, the author information will not be included if it’s not contained inside the post or programmed in the rss feed. This means you are missing another opportunity to display your authorship and further establish your reputation along with the great content you wrote.
Maximizing Social Media
Google bots and search engine crawlers are extremely sophisticated. If you are a blogger or small business owner, you need consistency in branding across your social media platforms in order to gain the most leverage from their ranking power. This consistency will help search engines cross reference and analyze your posts on various social media platforms to determine whether you are a real person or a spam account.
However, this may create the necessity to establish or separate your web persona social media accounts from your personal social networks. Understanding social media is a complex topic by itself, so be sure to research which option is best for you. Last, I suggest utilizing a social media manager such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. Either of these two free options will help you reduce the time spent updating various platforms in addition to maintaining consistency across all platforms. Here is a great article to start with called “Nine Rules that Will Revolutionize Your Use of Social Media”.
