Marketing On the Web - How Web Sites & Search Engines Work

Search Engine Spiders scan websites for text and pictures Web sites consist of words, pictures, navigation - all which convey your company’s services and identity.

Search engines, like Google, go through websites and take in information about them – they send out bots (robots), also called spiders, that read the text and information on your web pages and save it and use it to help people find what they want on the Internet. They also use your navigation and links on your site to find other pages and they crawl through them.

There is also "hidden" information in the page construction that spiders use to index your site. For example, the page title that appears on the top bar of the browser, and metatags that may be embedded in the web page that list keywords and a description of the page content. Pictures on a web page can have "alt" tags - these descriptions of a picture are used by screen readers to help sight-impaired people interpret a web site. All of these contribute to your web site's search engine profile.

Here’s what happens when a person goes to a search engine to find something. This is Google.

The person enters something they are looking for – we call this a search term, or keywords. For example, if I need someone to come out and pump my septic tank, I might search for “pump septic tank strasburg, colorado.”

When they click the Search button, two things come up:

Sponsored Links – Pay Per Click Ads
Organic Listings – The pages that those spider bots have gone out and indexed – this is free advertising, and what you want to see.

NOTICE THAT even with a search as specific as “pump septic tank strasburg, colorado” about 1,160 different pages on web sites were found. Google ranks all of these pages by RELEVANCE.

High Plains Sanitation comes up on the first page of the search – without paying for an ad. Why does Google find High Plains Sanitation more relevant than the majority of the other sites?

Google compares the search term that a person types in with the web sites that it has indexed. You can see the terms on the High Plains Sanitation Services web site that match the search term show up in bold text. They aren’t in the same order as the key words, but all the key words are present on the page.

Here are some additional example Google searches.

Sample Google Searches

So what does all of this mean? It means that in addition to having a web site, you have to plan strategies to make that web site appear in search engines. And Google is the most widely used search engine on the Internet.

Here's some typical content that is keyword rich - be sure to use it EFFECTIVELY in your web pages!

Areas you serve
Services you provide
Years in business
Hours
Certifications
Helpful information
Testimonials
Specials / coupons
How to contact you

Wishing you successful marketing on the web,

Terrye Hoffman

Prairie Skies Technical Services, LLC

E-mail: terrye@pstechservices.com