Websites and Search Engines: What's The Deal?

Our first post of 2007 is going to concentrate on dispelling a certain myth that seems to crop up time and time again amongst people wanting new websites...the relationship between a new website, and the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOLSearch etc).

THE 1ST RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

Let's back peddle a bit first for some background information on how search engines work. We'll only cover this briefly here - it's well worthy of an entire post of it's own sometime.

A search engine is basically a massive database of web pages and other documents available online. It finds these pages by using small automated programs called "robots" or "spiders". We'll use the latter. These spiders constantly crawl through the web (hence their name) following links from one web page to another, and report all the information they find back to the search engine. An algorithm with hundreds of influencing factors then decides what subject the web page is, how important the web page is within it's own website and it's industry etc, and cross-references this with all of the text content on the webpage.

Once this has happened, the web page is now indexed by the search engine, meaning that it is POSSIBLE for someone to come across it in a search, but is only likely to if they type in your company name. Once indexed, this becomes a continuous process, with the spider re-visiting your website to get new information and new content (if any) once in a while. How often depends on how important it feels your site is.

So, given the above process takes time, the first thing you should learn is that YOUR WEBSITE WILL NOT APPEAR IN THE SEARCH RESULTS THE SECOND AFTER IT HAS BEEN LAUNCHED. The most we've known it to take (with Google anyway) is 6 weeks, if you have a website designed and built by Tippabush it takes on average about 2 weeks to get indexed. This is because we always put a screenshot, description and link of each finished project on the portfolio page of our website - and because our own website is considered fairly important, the spider visits us quite often.

THE 2ND RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

"So how do I get my website up or near the top of the search results?" I hear you cry. The answer is simple, the work involved is not - as well as having a website built, you need to have a service applied to it called... SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (or SEO for short).

The good news is... Tippabush can offer you this service. It can be carried out on existing websites as well as new ones (we offer a 10% discount on the overall price if a new website order is complemented with an SEO order). Contact Us Now!

The bad news is... There is a lot of time-consuming work involved, especially with our fully comprehensive service. Whilst time costs as with all business, you'll be pleased to know that with every SEO quote, Tippabush provide a 3-page document explaining EXACTLY what we do for your money - which it must be said, many other "SEO firms" do not.

The next post on this blog will address WHY you need SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION applying to your website, but if you can't wait to find out more, head over to our website and read the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION FIRMS UK page to learn more.

Alternatively, you can Contact Us Now and we can send you a FREE SEO LEAFLET.

THE 3RD RULE IS: HAVING A WEBSITE DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TURN UP AT OR NEAR THE TOP OF GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS FOR WHATEVER KEYWORDS YOU TYPE IN (or any other search engine for that matter).

Ok, we're sure you're getting the picture now...