Keeping on top of your web site can be as slippery as giving a baby a bath. The World Wide Web is always new, always slipping out of your grasp. Markets change. Technology evolves. Just when you think you have everything under control, new issues pop up.
Your search engine optimization (SEO) may be affected by two important facets: Yellowpages.com and the Norton Safe Search utility. Taking care of these requires just a small investment in your time or your web developer’s time.
It’s not just the phone book anymore
One of the great free resources for SEO is Yellowpages.com, which already lists your company information.
Generously, it also lists your web site address (URL)—but only if you’ve given it to them, and only for a year. Your web address must be re-submitted annually, and they won’t remind you. So if you want Yellowpages.com to link to your web site, you need to go there NOW and re-submit it.
Why should you care? Who uses the phone book now, anyway? People don’t go straight to the YellowPages site for information, do they?
That’s not the point. If someone is doing an Internet search for your organization, product or service, the Yellow Pages is one more place that your information will pop up and link back to your site. And it’s free!
Newest wrinkle in site safety
If you have installed the newest versions of the Norton AntiVirus utility, you will see that most companies that come up in a search have green check marks. Occasionally you’ll see a red X—don’t go to those sites, they are unsafe!
Quite a few sites have little gray question marks beside them, meaning they haven’t been tested by Norton. If your site turns up with this mark, you should be concerned. Most people won’t go to a site if it appears suspicious.
How do you make sure that Norton considers your web site site safe? If you have Norton installed on your computer, simply do a search for your company.
If your company comes up with a question mark, click on the mark and Norton will give instructions on how to submit your site. It seems that they take just a day or two to test it.
When we found out about this, we went through all our clients’ sites and submitted them.
If you don’t have Norton, you can still find out how your site is rated and submit it by going to http://safeweb.norton.com/help/site_owners.
So there you have it. Two ways to make sure the Web helps, not hinders, your search engine optimization.
The Internet is a slippery youngster. Take advantage of these tips to get the market exposure you deserve.
