Web Promotion and SEO

[Note: I'm now writing about search engine optimisation on a new blog Free DIY SEO. The emphasis is on SEO advice for individuals and small businesses.]

The internet has grown massively over the last few years and now 63% of the UK population use the internet and 52% of homes have internet access. [[ref->http://www.internetworldstats.com/eu/uk.htm]]

If you’re not using the internet to promote yourself as a magician, you are missing out on a huge market.

There are many ways of getting your name out onto the web using online business directories like [Yell.com->http://www.yell.com] and [ThompsonLocal->http://www.thomweb.co.uk/], and specialist websites such as [corporatemagicians.com->http://www.corporatemagicians.com/] and [findmagician.co.uk->http://www.findmagician.co.uk/], but the best way is by having your own website.

Advantages to Maintaining a Website

There are many advantages to having your own website:

  • Easy to update - If you have the ability to design a website or you know someone who can, changes can be made instantly and be instantly available.
  • Anyone can access it - Anyone on the internet (obviously) but also anyone geographically, businesses or private individuals, any age group, etc.
  • Can be low cost - If you can do some or all of the design work yourself. Domain names (the name of your site) can cost less than £5 a year and hosting can be £30 a year or free. The whole site can be free if you’re willing to make some compromises.
  • Can do it from home - You can usually manage your site from any computer.
  • Can be much more interesting than printed materials - You can add interactivity, quizzes, video, sound, forms, etc.

However, the main advantage is that you benefit from search engine traffic - people searching for a magician or entertainer in search engines like Google, MSN Search and Yahoo Search, and then clicking on your site when it comes up in the results.

Search engines are websites that help you find other websites. 81% of internet users use search engines to find things on the internet, [[ref->http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2162741]] with [Google->http://www.google.com] the most popular search engine used by 46% of people, followed by [Yahoo->http://www.yahoo.com/] 23%, and [MSN->http://search.msn.com/] 11%. [[ref->http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451]]

How Search Engines Work

Search engines continuously crawl the internet following the links between websites. For each site they visit, they store the most important words and phrases used on the site. These important and prominent words and phrases are called ‘Keywords’.

When someone types something into a search engine (a ’search term’), the search engine matches it to the keywords it has stored for all the sites it has crawled and displays those sites that match.

But the internet is massive and there can be billions of results returned for a search term - try a search for the word ‘internet’. So, search engines rank the results in order of importance with the most important appearing on the first page.

To really benefit from search engine traffic your site needs on the first page of results, or even better number 1, because few people look at page 2.

Exactly how Search Engines rank web pages is kept highly secret and constantly changes but there are techniques you can use to help your site rank higher in the search engines. This is called [Search Engine Optimisation->seo] (SEO).

[Find out more about SEO.->seo]