Own the Top Results of Online Searches

The internet has quickly become the first and sometimes only stop in gathering data for both consumers and business buyers. Therefore, owning and controlling your company's online presence should be a key priority as you want top search engine links such as Google and Yahoo to lead buyers to accurate, up-to-date, relevant and favorable content. The way to move blogs, negative opinion forums, old or irrelevant content, unfavorable press and other links farther down the search engine stack is to populate the first page with content that you create and manage. To do this, you have to create content that is specific and consistent and then index, tag and cross-link to that content so that you control what the online world sees and learns about you.

Several manageable factors can positively impact your website's search engine optimization (SEO), keeping your sales, marketing and brand image front and center.

KNOW YOUR KEY AUDIENCE AND POTENTIAL VISITORS

It is difficult to know exactly what your potential visitors are looking for on search engines, but they should be easily able to get to you with certain key terms. Developing and maintaining tight control of terms and language will help visitors find you. Develop a 2- to 3-word tagline that summarizes your business without using industry jargon or vague catch phrases. In addition, build web pages that address your potential visitors' needs as well as your solutions (again, avoiding industry jargon when appropriate). To strike this intricate balance, the marketing copy that your team puts together must serve two purposes: to be readable / memorable for your audience, and to target the keywords that best represent your site to search engine robots.

MANAGE YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION

Each link to your website stands as a "vote" for your web pages to rank higher in search engine results. The goal is to have as many cross-links as possible within content that you create and control. Make sure your press releases or media placements contain proper links to your homepage and important secondary pages, and work to place links in online news articles featuring your company. Make sure the online version of any press mentions, interviews or thought leadership pieces contains links to your company's website. It is just as important that your team works to obtain links from and to your other online assets, such as business partners, suppliers, clients, the media and affiliated organizations. These links will increase controlled content and subsequently push other less relevant content down the search engine ladder.

ENSURE THAT YOUR WEBSITE IS PROPERLY DESIGNED AND CODED

You certainly want your website to remain professional and cutting edge to attract and retain as many visitors as possible. In doing so, your marketing and IT teams need to work in tandem to ensure that the website maintains top search engine standings while moving forward with any re-designs or updates. For example, websites must always invite Google's robots to crawl your site and hit every page. If the website uses FLASH files for imagery and animation, teams must set up separate HTML pages so that search engines may read the embedded text. And if your sites navigation runs strictly on FLASH, your teams need to work in line with the most currently updated SEO information from Adobe, Javascript, CSS, Google, Yahoo, etc. to add and place text tags correctly.

HOST YOUR WEBSITE ON A RELIABLE SERVER

While it should go without saying that a reliable server is key to your website running properly, it is also important to understand that this server plays a major role for your SEO. First, your website should reside on an IP address that is not shared with any other website, internally or externally. As well, if/when you target visitors from a specific country, use a country-specific domain name, such as .co.uk, and making sure to match the registration information to that country and to set proper redirects.

Ultimately, search engine optimization efforts should be an ongoing effort rather than one isolated project. Make sure your website is at the top spot in the main search engine lists, and work to fill as many of the next top 10 spots as possible. Most importantly, when your company's website reaches the top, make sure it stays there by maintaining your online reputation and by frequently reviewing continued SEO updates from Google, Yahoo, Adobe and others.

Because cross-linking with your partners helps you own the first page, General Atlantic is doing its part this year by providing you and all of our portfolio companies with a new additional "Company Page" containing content and links to boost your ratings. If you would like supplementary professional assistance with search engine optimization, excellent services are offered by our portfolio companies Webloyalty, Network Solutions and AKQA.

For any additional information about this or other SEO best practices resources, please contact the General Atlantic team.