You’ll also get better traffic (i.e. more targeted). What is this miracle of which I speak? It’s something so simple you might have to kick yourself for not thinking of it first (unless you did, in which case let me know and I’ll kick myself instead).

How to tell Google what to say about you

When your site appears in a search engine’s organic search results, the search engine displays your HTML title text as a clickable headline. This is followed by the text in your site’s meta description.

Try it now. Enter your own site into Google, Bing and Yahoo. You’ll see the text in your current title tag appear as the headline, and the text in the meta description appear underneath.

Now take an objective look at your listing in Google, Bing and Yahoo. Is the headline and description compelling? Is it likely get your target market excited about visiting your site?

Chances are, this text was put there by a web designer who had no clue about writing persuasive copy. It could probably do with a rewrite.

Have a think about what you want your search engine listing to say about your site. In particular, ask yourself what one benefit your target market is guaranteed to click on? Find that, and you’ve found your title text.

Do it right, and you could triple the visitors you get from search engines overnight. As a bonus, you’ll also get better visitors (i.e. people in your target market).

And what is it about Wikipedia that Google finds so fascinating? Between you and I, if Google doesn’t ask Wikipedia’s to marry it, people are going to start snickering behind its back. I’m surprised Britannica hasn’t walked out, and taken the kids with her.

Such is life when you’re the #1 search engine, and everybody wants a piece of you. Google tries oh-so-hard to stop those nasty SEO boys from pushing their way onto page one. And this obsession has resulted in an algorithm that renders it’s results next-to-useless.

No matter what you type in, you’re damn lucky if you find anything new in Google. I suppose that’s why those in know don’t actually use it any more. As in all things, the future of search is specialisation. And Google ain’t specialised.

A highly focussed search engine that returns sites in its particular category is one form of specialisation. For example, Blinkx is dedicated to video.

Another form of specialisation is in the way a search engine works. Google rewards sites that have existed for a long time, contains a lot of content, and that receive many inbound one-way links from other sites. That’s not the only way to run a search engine. If you want a search engine that delivers hot new content, you get better results from the search tool in Twitter.

Now Twitter isn’t a search engine, as you know. Yet its search tool returns the very latest posts that contain whatever keyword you enter. In that respect, it can serve as a search engine that doesn’t inject paid ads into its results.

Facebook can be used in much the same way, and returns even more specialised results (e.g. Facebook groups).

The big social media sites aren’t currently exploiting the potential of their search tools. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they did.