How People Can Find Your Site

Let’s look at how your site or blog can be found through search engines and what you can do to improve your changes of being found. After all, your goal is to be found, right?

Look at Competitor’s Web Pages

What are people using for keywords to find your competitors? If your keywords bring up other search results than your blog or site, then what are they doing that you aren’t?

You can learn a lot from studying your competitors, what they are doing, and what they are doing right. Some search engines make it even easier for you. Search for your product line or subject and when you see a description that matches your interests, click on “Find Similar Pages”. Also check the links offered below for the most attract attention to themselves.

You can also use tools like Search Engine World’s Keyword Validator to find how their page measures up to yours.

By studying what your competitors are doing, you can improve your own blog’s keywords frequency and density to help search engines put you in the same search results as your competitors. The more you learn about what they are doing, the better your chances of doing it one step even better, helping you rise up naturally through the search engine page ranks, putting your blog in the front of the pack.

Categorize Your Website

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Altavista offer long lists of potential sites when searched. Others categorize their listings like a directory, similar to a yellow pages directory. These include DMOZ Open Directory and All The Web. You can search their site and get specific results, but the better technique is to “drill down” through their categories, getting more and more specific as you move down through the lists.

Directories like DMOZ can be very helpful in determining what category your blog belongs. Browse through their categories that apply to your site and check your competition. Are they dealing with the topics you are? Is their focus narrower or broader than yours? This may or may not be the appropriate category for your site.

To help people find you, it helps to be in the category they are searching. Think about it. Where would you find your topic if you were looking in a library or bookstore?

Keep a running list of the words and phrases you see repeated over and over again. Consider how they apply to you. We’ll discuss how to maximize your coverage in a moment, so keep collecting this information as you gather it and begin the process of understanding how people will search for you.