Web Site Visibility: An Overview

This page is a very brief introduction to the consulting services we provide for those who want to improve the visibility of an e-business web site.

Visibility of a site - the ease with which potential customers can find it amongst the myriad competitors - is a crucial factor in making a success of a business website. The goal is rarely to obtain the highest possible number of visitors but instead, and importantly, obtaining the highest possible number of wanted visitors, directed to the most appropriate pages on the site. There are so many misconceptions about what makes a successful site and so many slippery merchants of dubious probity that we argued long and hard about whether to address this issue at all.

We finally concluded that it would be a mistake not to spell out our views, so you will find them on the pages within this section. If it dispels a few misunderstandings then it will have been worthwhile. We are still shaking our heads in disbelief after speaking to one of our (now) customers who told us they had spent tens of thousands of pounds on promoting their home page! If you don't know why that's such a stupid thing to do, then you should read on ...

How can you tell if we know what we are talking about? The proof of the pudding comes when you try it. As a starter, you might care to take a look at the links suggested on the search engine ranking and optimisation page, which at the time of writing showed our training offerings ranking in top place worldwide on various search engines. There's more to be seen in the traffic report for Somewherenear, which despite no advertising, commercial spend or otherwise and utterly devoid of pornography, nude celebrities or illegal shared music files - being written as hobby and demonstration site - now delivers 400,000 page views per month and regularly outranks very deep-pocketed competitors on almost every measure of visbility.

The details provided here and on subsequent pages come with the following health warnings:

• Effective webvisibility strategies depend on intimate knowledge of an individual business (unique objectives, distinguishing features, etc.) and of the web’s sociological and technical constraints.
• Effective strategies are labour-intensive — there is no efficient method of acquiring or deploying this knowledge which short-circuits the need for human understanding.
• Cheap shrink-wrapped solutions are just so much snake oil; artifically intelligent software, automated search engine submissions and computer-generated consultants’ reports are all as useful and affordable as a second-hand lunch.

The following pages outline some of the major problems and issues. This section is a work-in-progress, so some of the pages are placeholders to be completed as we are able to release the time to do so.

1. Internet strategy and business objectives
2. Site objectives — reconciling business objectives with technical efficiency
3. Search engine submission and registration
4. Search engine optimization, placing and ranking
5. Entries and their placement in online/web directories
6. Web based publicity campaigns
7. Content syndication
8. Using online communities
9. Creating online communities
10. Cross-linking campaigns
11. Offline web site promotion
12. Site useability
13. Sales efficiency