Hi All:
Just wanted to give you a tip on checking where your site ranks on the search engines.
DO NOT trust the automated tools; they are not looking for your site, they are looking for your URL. These are NOT the same.
Your URL will be something like example.com
Your Site is Your Company Name
How can you have more than one URL pointing to your site? Well, let's take a look.
Have you listed your site with any other sites, such as Manta, Yelp, Digg, MerchantCircle? Guess what--these can put your company's name in the search engine rankings. For example, one of my sites is on Page 1 of Bing for one of my keywords, BUT not the URL. In fact, that site has *3* listings on the first page of Bing: MerchantCircle, Digg, and Orange County Business Listings. These all point to my web site. My site is on Page 1 of Google, with my prime site. My site is on Page 1 of Yahoo, with Orange County Business Listings.
So what do we learn from this?
1. Do a MANUAL search every day.
2. Do the search on Google, Bing, and Yahoo; the results are not identical.
3. Look for your company, not just your URL
Keep track of where you rank every day. Personally, I keep track of:
Keyword ranking and site for Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Alexa ranking and 5-day moving average
Google Backlinks
Yahoo backlinks
Pagerank
All this neatly fits into one spreadsheet page.
Remember the goal of SEO--get on Page 1 of Google, Bing, and Yahoo and INCREASE SALES! Don't focus on WHICH site is ranking for that keyword, just be glad it IS on Page 1!
I am interested in your responses.
John