How the Internet Works for New Website Owners
Internet Primer for beginning Webmasters
Your website is up. Now what?
Let’s use this website as an example as I explain how the Internet works and how users find you.
My website Name: Honest Internet Money
My website URL: http://www.honestinternetmoney.com/
When this site was first created, no one knew about it but me. It existed on the Internet, but it was a stand-alone island because there were no links to it. The only way anyone could find it was to type in my URL, http://www.honestinternetmoney.com/, in the address bar of their browser.
Search Engines
You want your website to be listed in the major search engines because that is the way most people will look for you. The major search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Google has the major market share, probably fielding between 50 and 60 percent of all online searches, followed by Yahoo, then MSN, and finally Ask. Google is by far the most important search engine to any webmaster right now. About 80% of my website visitors come from Google - that’s a lot. For that reason, my advice will normally be geared toward what works best with Google.
In the old days, you would have gone and submitted your site to the search engines. These days you want the search engines to find your site themselves. The engines, especially Google, will consider a site they found through a link more important than a site they got through submission. Also, if you submit your site, but have no links in at all and no traffic, Google will probably assume your site is of no importance and send you no visitors.
How the Search Engines work
Spiders and keywords
The Search engines send out spiders (computer scripts that collect data on web pages) to read your webpage. The information the spider gathers is put in an index, which can be thought of as a giant book, with information on every webpage the spiders have found. When a searcher types something into a search engine, the engine uses an algorithm to return what it thinks are the most relevant results for that search. Each search engine uses a different algorithm. In the old days, the algorithms relied heavily on the title of the page and things like keyword density. So, simplistically, if someone searched for Hawaii, the page that was titled Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii and had Hawaii repeated the most times in the body of the page would be returned as number one in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Search Engines Rely on Links to tell them what websites are about
These days, on-page factors like keyword density (how often a certain word or phrase is repeated in relation to other text on a page) do play a part in how relevant a search engine thinks your page is for a particular search term, but off-page factors that the webmaster can’t control as easily play a bigger part. Google’s algorithm is based heavily on links. If you have lots of links to your site that say it is about Hawaii Day Trips, then Google is very likely to think it is about Hawaii Day Trips. If you have links to your site from sites that Google trusts that say it is about Hawaii Day Trips, then Google is likely to rank your site highly for that search term.
Search Engines are starting to use traffic patterns to discern good sites from junk sites
Increasingly, Google is relying on users to tell it what your site is about and how useful your site is. If a user searches for Hawaii Clothing on the Google search engine and clicks on a link to your site, but then hits the back button and is back searching for the same keyword phrase again within 15 seconds, well Google can see that as a vote that your page is not relevant for that keyword phrase. Google also has a toolbar installed on millions of people’s computers (I use it), and it can watch how long users spend on your site. If they generally spend a long time on your site and click on a lot of links, Google may think your site is worthwhile and increase its ranking in the SERPs for all keywords it is relevant for.
If you just want a billboard
If all you want is an online billboard that you can put on your business cards or in your advertisements so people can find all the relevant information they would ever want about your business, then don’t worry too much about it. Put it up but make sure you get a link or two in, to establish yourself in the search engines for your company name. If you have a Hawaii site, drop me a line at lisa@hawaii-lisa.com and I’ll probably put up a link to it on my site.
If you want more than a billboard
If you want to establish an online presence that allows people to find you for not only your company name, but also related search terms (like if your company is John’s Scuba Diving in Kona, you would want to be found for the term “kona scuba diving”) then you have some work to do. I suggest you read my free ebook How to get Potential Buyers to your Travel Website.
You also will eventually want to consider getting your own domain. Starting out with a free website is fine and is a fantastic way to get your feet wet and learn about websites, but there are inherent dangers that aren’t worth it over the long term. What if the company that provides your site goes out of business? What if they just stop updating and you can’t make use of the latest technologies? Also, free hosts limit what kind of tools you can use on your website in terms of scripts and seo and functionality. So, learn about getting your website online, and then as soon as you can, get your own domain. You can put a link from your blogger or free site to your new site and already have your first link in!
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