Hmmm, what’s another word for Google (Part 1)?

The World Wide Web has come a long way from those heady days of early adoption in the 1990s; even my grandfather, bless him, is busy beavering away booking flights, winning that garden fork he has always wanted off ebay, even forsaking his regular walk to the newsagents on a Saturday morning to buy that winning lottery ticket for the much simpler, safer and quicker online purchase (come on mate you can win!)

So what has made WWW such a revolution for the average Joe Bloggs on the street?

Well you could look at the cheapening and more penetrative ISP market where the fight for your custom is more intense than ever. Or you could look at the fantastically simple design of the Internet Browser – one address bar, one URL, one click and you are there; visiting any website from any weird and wonderful corner of the world - be it for online shopping, or just to catch up on the days news it has to be agreed that the WWW really has put information, any kind of information, at your fingertips.

There really is a million reasons why the Internet is the global phenomenon it is today, but in my opinion there is one driving force; Google.com

Google has become the no 1 word in Internet searches, nowadays it rolls off the tongue quicker than “Go and check the Yellow Pages” to the more lazy semantics of “Google it”. The power of the brand has become a verb in itself. There are of course, other search engines out there all trying to compete with the goliath of Google but none of them seemed to have hit the mass market - the grandad’s, the housewife’s, the office manager’s of this world all have one place of call for their search – Google.

So, I hear you ask, how do I make sure that I’m up there on Google??

The first thing to remember is that Google is not here as some charitable convenience, it is a business that spawns a million other piggy-back businesses. Ensuring your website comes somewhere near the top of the list takes time and effort; there are two types of “optimisation” that you or your company could consider; the first is relatively painless and any web agency worth its salt can identify and give you advice on how to improve how friendly your website is with the search engines. If this is done right then the first step on the ladder has been made and you will soon notice that you should appear on the listings. However, to get yourself up towards the top of the listings the second option involves a lot more work by specialists who, as one of my colleagues once put it, “play the game”; a lot of effort is made ensuring the correct keywords are used (trying to second guess what people will type to find your site); how these keywords are then implemented is all down to the “magic” of optimisation.

Ok, Ok, Ok I hear you say so lets get down to the cheap and easy method one of getting yourself on Google…well that comes in my next blog, so until next time…bye for now