Watching Your Search Engine Positions is Essential

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the place your website appears in search results is an crucial factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the likelihood of the consumer never finding you augment incrementally. Once you achieve a top search engine position, it is vital that you make sure you keep the top ranking you have worked so hard to accomplish.

This means you must come up with a tactic to supervise your search engine rankings. This tactic is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be governed by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must think about your search engines standings.

Be aware that at first, after you have started your search engine campaign and done all the right things to boost your positions, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this occurs, your search engine ranking campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be troubnled about the short-term fluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an essential part of the whole process. It's the long-term changes that you must lookout for and prepare to act on right away.

Studying the long-term trends of search engines positions is significant. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be lethal to your ranking - your position may fall to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to supervise your standings on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep watch on your quality ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch "the market" closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to figure website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may lift or bring down your ranking. Some search engines use a number of varying formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn't become worn-out or dated. Depending on which formula is being used, your search engine place may suddenly fall or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor's place may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their place may plummet, pushing your place higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are happening in your competitor's position, and be equipped to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you significant information about how to increase your website to improve your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are in order for your monitoring efforts to be worthwhile. Right now, there are ten popular search engines that guide most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only watch over your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most regularly every month and be sure to live in the present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it takes constant vigilance to follow their changing moods. The search engines they loved when you first began your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must modify your list of search engines according to the desires of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a current list of website favorites.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden plummet of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of varying things.

If all your search engine positions have fallen, it may reveal that search engine spiders - those crafty programs that seek out your site and rank it - have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently altered the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from a search engine index completely. Or a search engine may radically change its formula, and suddenly all of your websites come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing your position to fall in all search engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest challenge here is that search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can lead to a large shift in the geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to show only results gleaned from Google. So you must not only supervise your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.

Lastly, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have taken a dive, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost around.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. It costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your standings from an objective perspective, and watch over your positions on a normal basis. make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited,an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas ) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst.  You can contact Bob via e-mail at  seo711@gmail.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at:  http://www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com/special.htm