Spotlight on Websites
The Google Bots Are Coming
Do you have a website? When did you set it up? Did you set it up for desktop and mobile, or was that even an option?
When people are looking for businesses like yours, they type or speak a few words into their Google Search Page. The responses they get depend on what Google has discovered with the bots they have constantly crawling websites. This crawling results in what Google calls indexing. When Google indexes your site, it identifies the keywords which will call up your site in a search.
The Google bots are nothing new. They've been crawling your site since the beginning. What is changing is where they will crawl. Since the beginning of Google the bots have crawled your site in its desktop format, even though several years ago, the number of mobile phone searches began to outpace searches on desktop. Soon the bots will abandon crawling desktops formats in favor of mobile formats. That's what's new.
So, are you mobile ready? Many of our clients are real estate pros and their website is actually a page on their company's website. I can assure you the digital pros working for the big brokerage houses have been ready for this change for years. But if you have your own website (proprietary or template) you may be in trouble.
Time for a Check-up?
If all this sounds like digital goobledygook, you are not alone. Almost everyone has heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but few people understand what it actually is, what it does and why they should care. However, if you have a business with a website you should be very interested in it.
Basically, there are things search engines like and things they don't like. The more your website has the things they like and stays away from things they don't like, the better your search ranking will be. For now, the bots will default to the mobile format and if you don't have one, they'll move on to your old desktop format, but will things stay that way. Here's one of the truths of SEO, nothing ever stays the same. How long will Google keep crawling desktop formats? Only they know.
Search engines hold all the cards. They've developed algorithms to decide where your site will be in searches and those algorithms are a closely held secret. Some digital marketing companies have entire staffs devoted to figuring out those algorithms and some things are pretty widely held knowledge, but others are deep dark secrets and when anyone get close to figuring it out, the algorithms change.
If the search engine disapproves of your site, then you disappear to page 20 and there is nothing you can do about it. You may not even know it if you're not watching your rankings. If you figure out that something has happened, the search engine company doesn't even have to respond to your questions about what to do to fix it. You have to figure that out, too.
Checking your mobile-readiness is just one of the SEO things we can do for you here at Spot On Images. We can also help you with your keywords, get you on the Google map and a variety of other search engine related tasks. Let us know if we can help.