Just as water is vital for our bodies, so, too, is having sufficient Google Juice in your website. Without adequate quantities of this essential ingredient, your website will very likely get lost in the ever-shifting no-man’s-lands of the Internet. A decomposing relic.
We’re going to focus on Google, because approximately 70% of all Internet search and research is done using it nowadays. Apologies to Bing, Yahoo!, Dogpile, etc., but that’s that. To paraphrase the wise-but-sometimes upstart comic strip hero, Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes), when a noun becomes a verb, you know you’ve made it…big time. Thus is Google.
Google Juice is the value that Google assigns to each element in your website that helps position or list it on the various search engines. The more Google Juice your site contains, the higher Google (and probably the other sites) ranks it. Higher ranking usually means more hits. More hits generally garner more business. So the more drafts of Google Juice your site quaffs, the better its chances of organically landing on the first page whenever someone searches for your company name, products and/or services on the ubiquitous search engine. Google Juice is the elixir of Internet success. Would you believe there are businesses in Jacksonville that are paying tens of thousands of dollars each month to Google? Wouldn’t it be better for you to optimize your site for better search engine rankings—rather than paying Google? Better still … why not invest this critical task to an experienced firm that can assure your site is overflowing with the Juice du Google?
Our bodies are about 60 to 70 percent water. Without ingesting sufficient quantities of this essential, natural nutrient, we’d shrivel to dust. R.I.P. Dehydrated and dried up like the Egyptian mummies of old.
No SEO?
Our text-intensive world is inundated with acronyms. Since its inception in the U.S. military, the Internet, like its creator, has its own lexicon of these initial-based buzzwords. Some are more important to know and understand than others. One acronym no website can ignore is SEO = Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a reality and a process. It’s the art of bringing your website higher on the search engines, ideally without paying Google. Fact of the matter is:You must adhere to this search engine’s parameters when you implement SEO. After all, Google rules the World Wide Web; hence you must follow Google’s rules.
Danger, Will Robinson!
If you employ SEO techniques Google doesn’t approve of, it will simply delist your website entirely. Your site is G-O-N-E. Page Not Found. For real! My firm once worked with a national company that came to us after its site was delisted. It can happen to any business, entity, or individual. The lesson, then, is clear: When in doubt, or if you don’t have an IT staff that is SEO/Google Juice savvy, hire a professional to manage your website’s SEO properly. This isn’t a perfect world; that’s true for our real lives as well as the web’s virtual reality. So wouldn’t you know it, Google is constantly changing the way it ranks websites. (Pardon the pun, but you don’t want your website to be rank.) Nor is Google inclined to reveal what it is currently doing with its search results. And Google continues to widen its influence across cyberspace. So now, having your website linked via the other websites Google now owns has become increasingly important as well—YouTube, Google Places (maps), and Google + (Google’s answer to Facebook). To be sighted, ideally your primary website is linked through a multiplicity of sites. Next issue, we’ll roll up our pants and stomp on the grapes that will bring SEO to fruition on your site. We’ll discuss specific elements your website needs to maximize its SEO. And we’ll provide specific examples to help you determine if your own site is satiated with that oh-so essential Google Juice. That way, your website can obtain the high ranking that every entity seeks on Google. Having ample quantities will increase the “juiciness” of your website, so the search engines will drink it in.
Watch for Part II of this article in next issue of Entrepreneurs Anchor Magazine