Orkneycommunities Manual | Website Promotion

Getting Your Site Found in Search Engines

We hope that this section of the site will help you to improve your site's ranking in search engine results, increase visitor traffic, and make it more user-friendly for your customers. It includes sections about

'Build it and they will come'

Many people imagine that if they build a website then customers will come to it immediately and no further promotion will be necessary. Sadly that's not the case. Creating a website is just the first step in the process, and it will require your constant input and promotion if it is to prove successful.

Optimising a website is often a process of tiny incremental improvements, many of which may seem insignificant but which together will help make your site more effective. One key principle you should bear in mind when optimising your site is that you should focus on what's best for your site visitors, and not on search engine 'tweaks'. Don't be distracted down a blind alley by concentrating on search engines. Focus instead on how your visitors use and navigate your site and how your information and media is best presented to them. Proper indexing and ranking of your site by search engines will then follow naturally.

Your site - one amongst many

The web is not like the Yellow Pages, where your business advertisement can have the same immediate prominence as your competitors. Search engine prominence is a more organic thing - think of the web as a forest of close-growing trees. Your site is a new tree seedling, small and insignificant below the dark canopy of taller trees (your competitors sites) that have been growing for years. Yours is hidden by these, and your customers can't see it. You have to make your 'seedling' site taller so that it stands out and is easier to see, and we hope that the tips here will help you with this process.