How to Gain Top Search Engine Positioning on Google, Yahoo or MSN

Be Different

Some people may be surprised to learn that you can’t succeed looking like the big names.

From a marketing and customer perspective, the products and marketing communications delivered by big companies are a very different animal from those offered by medium and smaller companies. Large companies have their names and products visible continually in the market and for this reason they are able to leverage this visibility in a way that allows them to present their websites ads and marketing messages in a way that would never work for a smaller company.

This recognition allows the large company to draw traffic to its website often based largely on the number of existing customers it already has and the recognition of its name when seen in the result of a search inquiry. The traffic this builds for their website is recorded by the search engines and because the their ranking formula puts a high emphasis on how often users actually click on a domain, it causes their software to push the large company’s website toward the top of any search result.

Having this built-in traffic boost allows their marketers to bend and often break some SEO rules that you can’t. This allows them to often craft very tight and graphically appealing designs for their site and other web communications. You can see the result of this by going to sites like Apple.com, Toyota.com and HP.com, to name just a few. But this approach to website design and communication cannot work for companies that lack name recognition and the resulting click-factor.

The message in all this is simple: don’t design your pages or craft your web messages to look like those of the big names in your industry. It will not deliver the same results for you as it does for them, you need to be different.

Although the smaller company may offer a higher quality product and a buying experience tailored exactly to the buyer, being smaller means you have less visibility in the market, less recognition even when your message is seen, and being an unknown, you have little or no credibility with prospects. Because of this, your overall traffic and click-through rates will never be as high as the big names. You can, however, overcome this if you remember how customers and search engines will see and react to your website and messages.

How can you be different and still deliver effective marketing information? Here is one of the most important things you can do to help yourself.

When a prospect sees your site in a search result or a search ad they’ll be more likely to click if they see something that can help them, not just sell them. This can include helpful information about the product, its use, related products, and anything that delivers added value for the prospect. It’s important to note here that carrying this kind of information also improves your relevancy with the search engine ranking software and this will push your page up the list of search results.

Creating pages that work this way is a departure from classic marketing communications, and there is some artful thinking needed to craft pages that are not only helpful to prospects, but also search engine friendly. There are many examples of this on the web and we can point you to some best practices in a future article. But in the interim you can look at examples in almost any industry by doing some searching yourself. As you look you’ll want to be sure to identify why a company’s page has appeared high in a search result. You’ll find that these pages almost always fall into two groups: 1. They are a large company benefiting from a well recognized name and high traffic, or 2. they are providing good clear product information accompanied by value-added material.

More to Come

We'll be adding more tips here for you drawn from the many questions we receive. Coming up will be tips covering:

- The importance of Relevance in determining where you come up on a search engine.

- Why adding material for user value will boost your web site ranking.