Posts Tagged ‘Google’

I had the pepper steak combo (with eggroll and wonton soup) at my local Chinese restaurant a few days ago. After lunch, my fortune was “Slow but steady wins the race.” I smiled when I read that because I’d just been thinking about the many “get rich quick” methods of internet marketing that are being promoted today. Do a search on Google for “SEO” and you’ll find some of them. They may promise to “guarantee” top listings on Google or Yahoo, or suggest they have a special relationship with the search engines that can rocket your website to that coveted number one position.

Just as in the “offline” world, there’s no shortcut to long-term success, and search engine optimization isn’t any different. There’s no easy way to trick Google and Yahoo into listing your site higher. Take it from the folks at Google themselves. So how do you get your website noticed by prospective customers?

The one thing all search engines seem to love is fresh, quality content. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what your website’s visitors are looking for. They want to see that your business or organization is alive and well, and they want to know enough about you to make a decision whether to buy from you, or join your cause, or take a job at your company.

So here are four basic tips on how to improve your online presence, and in turn improve your rankings in the search engines:

• When writing content for your business or organization website, tell the whole story. Don’t skimp on the details. Tell your visitors what you would want to know about your company if you knew nothing about it. Give them the information to make a decision right then.
• Keep the website updated. Think about the many websites we visit in a week that haven’t been updated in months or even years. How confident are you about the current status of that company? They might be doing so well that they’re too busy to update their website, but aren’t we more likely to assume they’ve gone out of business?
• Consider starting a blog. Search engines love blogs because there are usually many legitimate links coming in and out of the website, as you link to other interesting content and the media and other websites link to your compelling content.
• Use social media and networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to connect with potential visitors to your site. The more you get the web address out there, the more likely people with find you and pay your site a visit.

There have always been temporary ways to game a system, including search engine rankings. Usually those loopholes are closed fairly quickly, as Google and Yahoo change their methods to keep their rankings accurate. The methods I describe above, however, while they won’t bring overnight success, will in the long run build viewership to your website and improve your appearance in the search engines.

Slow but steady wins the race. Don’t take shortcuts, invest the time and money needed to create a great online presence, and the rest will follow.

There’s another killer on the loose. Who’s the target this time? Sharepoint again? If the bullet misses the target, though, will open source CMS platforms get caught in the crossfire?

Since 2005, the following products have been described as a “Sharepoint killer:” Oracle Workspaces 10g, Groove (even after being obtained by Microsoft – apparently it was supposed to be an inside job), Alfresco, CPS Project, O3Spaces, Lotus Quickr, Google Apps Team Edition (just 19 days ago) and, today, Google Sites. Google Enterprise product management director Matthew Glotzbach fingered Google Sites as a “Sharepoint killer” today when it launched, according to Michael Arrington on TechCrunch.

I played with Google Sites for awhile this morning. It’s not bad at all, though a bit buggy, as Dennis Howlett describes on ZDNet today. It looks like a slightly more sophisticated Google Page Creator. It doesn’t suck, but as a killer, it’s a little light on the firepower. Let’s say it looks like Sharepoint can walk down dark alleys without any concern about an ambush. But does Google Sites have enough functionality to affect the market for open source CMS platforms?

CMS software alternatives come in three general flavors: traditional proprietary solutions (Microsoft Sharepoint and others), open source solutions (Joomla!, Drupal, Plone, etc.) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions (Google Sites, wetpaint, Ning and yesterday’s newcomer BricaBox, among many others). Businesses looking to create or improve their online presence don’t know or care about these distinctions. They want at least a simple website, maybe add some cool bells and whistles like they’ve seen on bigger sites – and they don’t want to pay a lot of money for it.

Is something like Google Sites or BricaBox the answer for those users? Maybe. If the business isn’t looking to spend much money on the site and they don’t have the time to learn how to set up a hosted CMS site themselves, I’d even say probably. But many businesses will need a greater ability to customize and add features than Google Sites will be able to provide in the near future, and it’s in that market that the open source CMS solutions, and the designers and developers who provide support for them, will continue to have the greatest potential.

If they were really looking to be a Sharepoint killer today, I’d say Google Sites came equipped for a gunfight with a jackknife. Not much of a killer – yet. If it continues to improve, Google Sites may eventually become a challenger to more complete CMS solutions, even Sharepoint. But for today: put down the knife, Google, and get back to work.