Small Business Resource Center Blog: Truth About Page One Results

Every small business owner wants page one results in the search engines. Beware who you trust selling maps to this pot of gold. Search engine optimization and page one results can be costly, and some consultants will take your money even when it's impossible. Here's another recent scenario from my email inbox with a lesson for small business owners.

After the launch of a vacation rental site and blog earlier this week, a new prospect in the same business with a villa to rent inquired about having me create a custom website. The main concern was making search engine page one results with a brand new site. Page one in search engines doesn't happen overnight, so here is an excerpt from my emailed reply.

Your main concern, or expectation for page one results, cannot be promised based on just the website design. Here is an explanation:

There are designers who will take your money promising page one search results. Most are either liars or very expensive. Some are both. A search in Google for "Orlando vacation rental" returns 22 million results, so with 10 per page, there are 2.2 million pages in Google with that search phrase. Add "villas" to the end and it's still 2 million pages of competition that you need to defeat in the battle of results. Perhaps, and just maybe, it can be done for yours. The investment is significant, so I urge caution dealing with any designer who makes a promise of page one, especially if they guarantee immediate results.

How sites are indexed by the search engines depends on confidential search algorithms that are tweaked and changed often. Algorithm changes can always be used to explain why efforts failed getting your website to page one. The lie ends when they explain why you are not entitled to a refund because the effort was made yet results were out of their control. I can cite clients who came to me after spending $1000's for promises without being told how it would be done, and then they were left without recourse when seo and page one efforts failed.

Top results in any of the 3 major search engines are given to sites that are 1) online longer, 2) trusted sites, 3) authority sites, 4) larger sites, and 5) sites that add fresh content often. Anyone willing to take your money for a page one guarantee needs to explain how they will meet those 5 requirements. The age of your site cannot be accelerated, so immediate results are impossible because the first requirement of being "online longer" simply takes time.

Consider expectations when launching your first website. My designs are optimized for visitors and search engines, yet I never promise results beyond a favorable design. Too many other factors including items 1-5 above will affect how well and how soon your new website shines.

Page one in Google, Yahoo, and MSN can be done. It takes time and depends on more than the code in your new small business website. I have 100 screen shots of my site performance as evidence with Google page one for very generic phrases. You may want to download my series of free pdf reports for search engine optimization here to learn about the value of adding fresh content often to your small business website.

Finally, study the 5 points in the list above and consider how you will continue to promote your website after it's online. Page one results are not dependent on just the code. If that's your goal, be prepared to invest time and effort with do-it-yourself website promotion.