Automotive Service Management Newsletter
Vol 3, No 4, September 2009Improving Search Engine Ranking and Enhancing Website Advertising
In my years of working with companies to improve their search engine rankings, the first challenge is to design the website to be search engine friendly. What I mean is a website that is designed to be easily indexed by the search engine robots to pull the type of information you want used to make sure people easily find your website for products and/or services. For those of you who are using any type of formal advertising like Google Ad-Words, this can help the success of your advertising campaign because having a high ranking mixed with the advertising adds credibility to the strength of your company as an automotive products and service source.
I know many of you do not design your own webpages but use an outside source. So the purpose of this article is to also give you the knowledge necessary to know how to work with your webmaster more effectively to improve your search engine rankings.
First, let's look at the way your webpage content needs to be organized. All websites need this information at the beginning of the webpage, comments are in ( ):
<html> (IDs this as a webpage)
<head> (defines the elements of the webpage and how it is presented in the web browser, this is hidden from the website visitor but used by search engines )
<title>My Auto Company Name - Webpage Description</title> (Name of the Webpage also shown in the top of the web browser, you want to make it as descriptive as possible for the search engines to index.)
The next elements are very important to search engines:
<meta name="keywords" content="discount auto products, diesel service, auto service, auto equipment and accessories "> (use this section to display all the types of keywords that can help folks searching the web to find your website, separate each keyword or keyword phrase with a comma, best if kept under about 64 words)
<meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="We specialize in auto service and maintenance as well as auto accessories"> (use this to describe your business, services and products offered, usually best if kept under 20 words)
<meta NAME="Expires" CONTENT="never"> (tells search engine robots how long the page will be displayed, can use a date to show when it expires)
<meta NAME="Distribution" CONTENT="global"> (tells the search engine that this is general information for everyone)
<meta NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="Automotive Industry "> (use the name of your company as author)
<meta NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL"> (tells the robots to search the whole website)
</head> (closes the header)
<body> (starts the webpage that visitors will see)
Many webmasters may tell you that the Meta Tags aren't needed as many search engines have lowered their relevancy but they are still helpful and are critical to webpage design.
In the content of each webpage you need to use the keywords in sentences and links to other pages in the website. However, don't overuse the keywords or hide them in hidden content. The search engines will penalize you in the rankings or shut your webpage out altogether.
A great tool to generate keywords is on Google - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . It will help you in two different ways. First you can put in several keywords, and then it will generate more keywords examples for you to choose. Again, make sure the keywords are relevant to your webpage content so you don't get penalized plus you will only need about 6-10 choice keywords or keyword phases per webpage. The other great thing about this tool is that it will analyze your webpage letting you know the best keywords to use based on its content.
The last element for those of you who are choosing a domain name is to create a name that reflects what you offer. For instance, sanleonautomotivesalesandservice.com, tampafloridaautosales.com, etc, are a few examples. Search engines use the website address in their ranking programs like a keyword phrase.
Finally, patience is next. It takes many months, sometimes over a year for your webpages to improve their rankings. However, adding new content regularly also helps establish your website as a source of key information for the automotive industry as well as continue to drive up your website rankings.
© Copyright, 2009, J. Daniel Emmanuel, AutomotiveServiceManagement.com
Our team of experienced Automotive Service Management Professionals are located in different parts of the United States to assist you on any issue that you are facing in your service department. We service dealership and independent service departments.
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