Another election is just around the corner. This is not a comment on any party or candidate but a brief explanation on how you and your business ranks on Google. Before you run screaming into the streets thinking Google has a whole new application running the voting system in the US, read on. Google ranks every site it indexes as to Google’s interpretation of its importance to the web from 0 to 10…10 being the highest.
While the current formula for determining Page Rank or PR is a closely held Google secret, the one factor the most influences your site’s Page Rank is the number of inbound links to your site. Google and for that matter all major search engines such as Bing and formerly Yahoo, collect and measure backlinks as a way of determining your site’s importance. These backlinks are votes. The more sites and pages on the internet that “vote” for your site, the more important your site is to the internet. Who has a 10 ranking? Well, there are only a few. Google of course has a 10. So does the US government (usa.gov) and Adobe reader download (adobe.com/reader) and of course Facebook. CNN (cnn.com) ranks a 10 and so does the National Portal of India (india.gov.in). Huge monolithic sites such as Amazon (amazon.com), New York Times (nytimes.com) and even Microsoft (microsoft.com) rank a 9 out of 10.
In the optical industry, Luxottica (luxottica.com) ranks a 6, Essilor (essilor.com) ranks a 6, Marchon (marchon.com) ranks a 5, Lenscrafters (lenscrafters.com) ranks a 5, Eyetique (eyetique.com) ranks a 4, Europtics (europtics.net) ranks a 3, Edward Beiner (edwardbeiner.com) ranks a 2, and so on. How do you build Page Rank? There is no one way, but the easiest answer is through backlinks. Every relevant post you make on Facebook or Twitter is another link back to your website. Every blog post with a backlink counts as well. If you are an ECP, have you checked whether or not any of your vendors have a “FIND A NEAREST DEALER” page? Is your practice on that page?
In addition to your blog, vendor pages, Facebook and Twitter, is your business listed in local pages? Are you on Yelp? Yahoo local? Google local? Foursquare? Citysearch? Merchant Circle? Online yellow pages? Linkedin? Angie’s List? Insider Pages? BBB? and so on and so on? If you want to be found online, you need to leave a lot of breadcrumbs to your site. A bit of work every month pays off more and more as we all turn more and more to the online world.
