With more and more Indian businesses going online, it's important for business owners to understand how to make their websites actually bring more customers in the door. Most, of course, have no clue about the importance of making it to the search engines’ list.
Many set up websites imagining that is all that is required for the leads to start flowing in. Quite obviously, when that doesn’t happen, many of them wonder what the fuss was all about since they don’t seem to be getting many visitors.
Savvy marketers know that any business that routinely makes it to the first page of search listings on Google, Bing or Yahoo is bound to corner the lion’s share of the attention.
Most of the people who carry out an online search don’t go beyond Page 1 of the search results.
As a result, websites listed on the first page of Google results get more than 90 percent of the traffic for that search term! It is not surprising, therefore, that a whole industry has sprung up around helping business websites rank higher on search engines.
Editor’s note: Not interested in handling SEO yourself? Let the GoDaddy experts guide you through it
How to get on search engines’ list
With the majority of businesses and consumers searching the internet for everything from new shoes to trade partners, your business must have a website to get noticed. But how to make sure your website shows up on to the revered Page 1 of search listings? Follow these steps.
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Learn your current website ranking.
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Check the loading speed of your website.
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Use SEO and SEM to improve your position.
To get your website noticed by search engines, and therefore by potential customers and business partners, you must follow a well-defined sequence of steps.
Anyone can get their website on search engines’ list
Photo: rawpixel on Unsplash
Most business owners, especially the more hands-on kind, can learn to improve their website’s search ranking themselves. Those who don’t have the time or interest in doing it themselves can hire a professional to do this work for them.
1. Learn your current website ranking
To move your website ranking up in search listings, you first need to know where it stands at present. You can make use of special tools to do that. For example, you can determine your site’s keyword rank on SERPs.com (the service has a free 30-day trial).
This tool will let you know how your website ranks when a search is carried out by inputting a specific keyword and your site URL. The results page will come up with your site’s ranking in the various search engines.
It will also let you identify the first page of your site that shows up in searches, which might not be your home page. In the case of a paid search using Google Ads, you can get the figure for average monthly searches and the average cost-per-click as well.
2. Check the loading speed of your website
The load speed of a website is an important factor in where that site appears on the search engines’ list. A slow speed makes it very difficult for a site to obtain a high position in any online searches. This severely diminishes the chances of your business obtaining enough traffic to increase sales.
A slow site speed will damage your prospects of attracting business, as most people will wait only a few seconds before clicking away.
You can easily check out the speed of your websites with tools like
If your website speed turns out to be slow, you need to sort that out fast to get the traffic flowing.
3. Use SEO and SEM to improve your position
Understanding the difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is critical in getting the best results on the major search engines.
Photo: rawpixel on Unsplash
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO improves the intrinsic nature of a website so it shows up higher in search engines naturally. Unless you hire someone to do this for you, this method is free.
You can do this by carrying out certain improvements to your website. These include things like:
- Tweaking its HTML code.
- Adding carefully chosen keywords to the content and meta tags.
- Adding a blog that addresses topics prospective customers are looking for.
All of this makes your site more attractive — both to potential clients and to search engines.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
SEM, on the other hand, is a proactive attempt to advertise one’s website directly to potential customers. The three major ways of carrying out search engine marketing are:
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads
These digital ads allow you to pay your way to a high position in online searches. The PPC method of online advertising enables you to not just set the budget you desire, but also choose the precise target audience. You also have the ability to turn off the ad campaign at will.
With PPC, you pay only when a prospect visits your website, which provides excellent value for your money.
A small business could easily run a cracker of a PPC campaign for a modest fee per month. Of course, there are businesses that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on PPC.
Social media marketing (SMM)
As the term suggests, social media marketing is all about using popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and so on to create a buzz about your product or service and thereby drive people to your website. You can do this by creating interesting posts, actively engaging with the others and by promoting and advertising your brand (with links to your website).
Targeted advertising
This is a way of drawing likely customers to your website by placing your ad in web pages that are related to your product or service. Typically these ads are in the shape of a banner or a pop-up.
Services such as Outbrain and Taboola can place your ads on high-traffic web pages for a fee. Appropriate ad placements can be found on the basis of content, keywords or category.
Get your website on search engines’ list
The importance of internet marketing is now well understood by an increasing number of Indian businesses. More and more see the need to get on search engines’ list in order to bring in more business leads.
It makes good sense to use SEO and SEM as complementary arms of your search engine strategy.
Understanding the search ranking process enables business owners to take the necessary measures to improve their search rankings. By bringing more people to their websites, even the smallest businesses can improve the bottom line.
