Search engine Visibility can be referred to as a search engine optimisation (SEO) tool that is based on the internet. It is a tool that allows the owners of websites to optimise their sites. Search Engine Visibility provides the owners of the websites with deep insights on how to improve their websites and the presentation of the content it showcases, with regard to both external and internal aspects.
The primary objective behind the usage of search engine visibility is to is to improve the ranking of the website on unpaid or organic search results. Organic search result rankings are those which do not have to make usage of advertisement avenues to make their website visible to the users, but the website makes its place to the top of the search results owing to its content and the relevance of said content to the search that is being made.
This is considered as a credit and an achievement and such websites are preferred over those who make use of advertisements to promote themselves, as users usually do not trust or click on advertisement websites.
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Understanding Search Engine Optimization
It is important, before proceeding any further, to form an understanding of the concept of search engine optimisation as it is closely tied with the concept of the Search Engine Visibility. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is more commonly referred to, is the process of improving the external and internal aspects of a website with a view to improve the organic visibility of the website for different search engines.
SEO involves the edit of a website’s HTML code and the content that is hosted in that website with a view to increase its relevance, presence and popularity on the web. It might be said that Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the way in which people or general users can access a particular website. It might also be said that SEO is the end result of a good and sound usage of the Search Engine Visibility Tool and the facilities it provides.
How Search Engine Visibility Works?
Search engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo make use of copyrighted and proprietary algorithms that rank websites in the search results provided by them. These algorithms look at the different elements on a webpage before enabling the bots to seed them or add them to their database. This also measures how popular the content of the website is and how relevant the content is to particular searches that are being made on the search engine.
Search engine algorithms take a strict approach to balanced content on websites. The absence of certain attributes that they look for and the over-prevalence of other ones may result in an adverse impact on search engine rankings for the website that is plagued by this. This is where Search Engine Visibility comes in.
It provides the owners of the website with insights with regard to which elements of the website are important for improvement of search engine optimisation and subsequent improvement in search result rankings. This enables the owners of the websites to position their website better than those of their competitors by making the content more relevant and the attributes that define search engine visibility success more balanced.
It must be noted that search engine visibility does not guarantee that the website’s search engine listings will improve or that it will rank higher in searches pertaining to the content it showcases. It also cannot provide the website owners with any timeline showcasing when all their hard work and efforts will bear them the fruits expected by them. That being said, search engines are known to reward websites for being well composed, optimised for featuring content that is unique or meaningful or both. Many websites have found success by using this knowledge to their advantage.
Website owners can use search engine visibility and the embedded checklist feature that it provides for identification of opportunities for optimisation of the websites to particular search engines. Optimisation of a website often sees drastic improvements in rankings in search results. The checklist provides for the publishing of relevant content as well for the balance in the different attributes of a website. All this enables the owners or admins to position their website better than their competition.
Once all the mistakes are corrected, the search engine visibility tool allows the website owners to submit their websites, correct the submission issues faced by them – if any and keep track of the number of pages that are indexed by the various search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
It would be worthwhile to note in this context, that the usage of search engine visibility tools does not guarantee that the visibility or the rankings of your website will improve and that you will get handsome returns for all the hard work that you have put in. Rather than that, it is merely an exercise in ensuring that your website meets the standards set by the various search engines and their algorithms. The final decision off ranking rests with the different search engines.
Taking Advantage of Keywords in Search Engine Visibility
It is now common knowledge that search engines use keywords when they index webpages and websites using their algorithms. Thus, keywords can make or break the search engine ranking of a website. A website that has good content, good user experience interface and maintains a good balance of attributes which are relevant for search engine optimisation may still fail to achieve its goal due to the absence of relevant keywords that the search engine is looking for in the content that is hosted by the website.
On the other hand, a more unoptimized website may rank higher due to good and generous usage of relevant keywords. The word “generous” is important here and takes the meaning of “just the right amount” in this context since the over usage of keywords is considered spamming and will result in the website in being ranked or listed lower, thus defeating the purpose overall.
The identification of keywords is another important phase in the search engine optimisation websites and in using search engine visibility tools to achieve them.
The selection of keywords that are relevant to the content, are relatively well known among common users or, at the very least, among the targeted audience that the website seeks to cater too – as is the case in many professional websites such as certified public accountants, lawyers, doctors, etc. – depending on how likely the users are to use those websites in their search queries. It is an important exercise to identify the correct keywords with care as the usage of wrong keywords will result in your website becoming invisible to your targeted audience unless a very specific search is made – the event of which happening is very unlikely.
It is important that each of the webpages of a website have the keywords relevant to the content that is on it. The keywords may include phrases which are prevalent throughout the content of the page, the title tag, attributes and as well as in the title tag and the link text.
If the content that is hosted on the page contains words and phrases that have common occurrence, then it is important to remember to rearrange the tags to keep them unique. It is neither advisable nor a wise policy to use the same string of keywords on all the pages of a website as that is exactly the kind of thing that hampers the search engine optimisation of a site and lessens the probability of higher ranking being achieved.
In order to help the website owners to optimise their sites with the usage of keywords, the search engine visibility tool comes with a keyword ranking report which can be used to check where a particular website ranks with respect o particular keyword searchers. This shows the owners the ranking information for saved keywords on the home page of the website and for the keywords that are used elsewhere on the site as well.
Changing the Domain Name in Search Engine Visibility
The domain name may also be a hindrance when it comes to achieving higher rankings on search engines. Websites which do not have domain names that are particularly geared to the audience it serves or the content it is providing on its pages.
Search Engine Visibility provides some relief to the website owners in this regard by allowing them to change their domain name. However, there is a catch in that the domain name can be changed only once per Search Engine Visibility Account. It must be noted in this regard that changing the URL of a website deletes all the data that was there for the old site which includes but is not exclusive to keywords, tags, crawl rules and customisation of sitemaps.
In order to change the domain name of a website on the Search Engine Visibility tool, the website owner must log in to his or her Search Engine Visibility account and click on settings and then on the Change URL option. He or she should now click on the Modify URL option and then enter the new URL for the Search Engine Visibility Account and finally click on OK.
Working with Sitemaps
In plain and simple terms a website map, or as it is more commonly known – sitemap, denotes a model of the content that the website has and is designed in order to enable users as well as search engines to navigate the website efficiently.
A sitemap is usually a list of pages that is arranged hierarchically, often organised according to topics or according to the structure of the organisation it belongs to – as is the case in many websites designed only to provide information about the organisation rather than to transact business.
A sitemap also houses documents in XML format which provide search engine crawler bots with instructions. A sitemap can also provide the user with highly valuable metadata – such as the last time the page was updated, the frequency of page changes, importance of URLs, etc.
In order to achieve the optimisation of their respective websites, the Search Engine Visibility tool allows for the submission of the sitemap anytime the website owner makes changes or modifications to the website. It must be noted that changes to the site can include any or all of the following:
- Adding New Content
- Removing Old Content
- Adding New Pages
- Removing Existing Pages
- Editing the URLs of Pages
- Adding new URLs
- Removing old or redundant URLs
The Search Engine Visibility tool advises the owners of the websites to submit their sitemaps once every twenty-four hours, but ideally the submission should be made as an when any of the above aspects are changed, no matter how small the change may be.
Reality Check
Many people are of the opinion or have an idea that the Search Engine Visibility Tool optimises their websites for them. This is not true at all and the only people who are responsible for optimising the websites to meet the standards and requirements of the different search engines are the owners of the websites themselves.
The Search Engine Visibility Tool serves as a guide in this regard and nothing more or nothing less. The role of the Search Engine Visibility Tool is limited to providing deep insights to enable the owners or even the administrators of a website with ideas on how to better optimise their websites with regard to the search engine requirements.
Once it is activated, the Search Engine Visibility tool crawls the website in a manner that is very similar to a search engine and analyses the content that is on the website. Once the analysis is completed, the tool displays to the owner or the administrator the different issues that the website might have with different search engines, offering suggestions on how to fix the same.
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