I think every time we meet with clients they ask three basic questions.

1. Where is my website placed in search engines?
2. Why can’t people find my business website?
3. Why don’t I receive leads from my website?

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We review our own placement in comparison to other like businesses in our industry, but our local placement hasn’t changed for a few years. Quite a few website design and search engine marketing businesses are located in North Dakota and if you do a search for the term “website design Fargo” you can get a better idea of where Suite 171 is indexed in search engines.

In general, we are geo locating our Google search and looking for results based off of searching a specific keyword and including a city, state, or general location. I would say seven out of ten internet searches will contain a specific location. In my professional opinion most people will search for a product or service locally, but some users may not geo locate a search term.

What is really remarkable when we search for just the term “website design” with no location, there are over 225 million listings. So, where we place worldwide? It’s interesting to see different results in specific search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google, or MAC vs. PC, laptop and various desktop computers.

This is one example.

Google, Internet Explorer 8, Results 1 - 10 of about 225,000,000 for website design

Suite171.com is listed or indexed in Google on page three out of 225 million other indexed websites for the keywords “website design”. It looks like the search engine placement changes every third day but still remains between pages two or three.

Three steps to measure where your business is indexed in search engines.

1. Select a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing

2. Enter a two or three word term, keyword, or phrase you would expect visitors to search for. Meaning: how people would find you. Use something other than your business name because people will not always know who you are. In most cases they are looking for a product or service.

3. Add your city or state to the search term, keyword, or phrase. Also, try not to Geo locate your search.

You should evaluate the results. If you are on page one you are doing exceptional, but if you are unable to find your website you will need to update your website. Most people or businesses are concerned about where they are placed and see value in people contacting them to buy services or products through their website. On the other hand, some businesses haven’t realized they should be receiving sales leads.