How Search Engines Work  

Many clients ask me why they do not exist on the search engines, and if they do, they are no where near the top rankings of Google, Yahoo, MSN and the many other search engines. If you are on page 103, you will not likely get much web site traffic from the search engines.  

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found. 

The thing is... providing your potential clients, and the search engine spiders with good, solid content specific to what your business is all about, any web site can appear among the top ranked companies, especially if you are a local company and can use local terms like "Portland" or "Oregon."   There is no magic to the world of search engines when it comes to web site design; just good solid understanding of what your potential clients and the search engine spiders expect.

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An example:

I searched Google for "mediation" and got 20,300,000 results.  (Mediate.com was second, by the way) 

I refined my search to "mediation in Oregon" and 1,040,000 results were returned.  (Mediate.com right at the top again)

I further refined to "workplace mediation in Oregon" and was given 21,700 results.

One more refinement... "workplace mediation in Portland Oregon" narrowed the results to 12,000.  

I know that sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.   Many of these results are secondary pages of indexed home pages.  (If your website has 6 pages, it could be six of these results)

 

Click here to read all about them.