Figure 6-1: A Google search for site: social-media-design.com.
Researching Your SEO Keywords
After all this suspense you’re doubtless ready to dive in to your keywords with reckless, overjoyed abandon. It is actually one of the smartest things you’ll ever do for your entire online strategy. It’s the geeky glue that holds it all together. Let’s begin!
Understanding indexing
Indexing is just a scary word for how Google and Bing are keeping track of your site. To evaluate your site, their search engines “crawl” your site periodically, take snapshots of your site, and index them. It’s interesting to see what’s in there and what isn’t. If you’re a design addict like me, pay close attention to these results, if only to see how you are being represented to the world via search engine results. You may be surprised.
Your main concern should be to find out what entries Google and Bing are storing in connection with your site. When you know what sites show up, you can take action to eliminate sites you don’t like and to promote the sites that work for you.
How can you see what Google or Bing lists about your site? Just follow these steps:
1. Go to Google.com
or Bing.com
.
2. In the search textbox, enter the term site: and then the exact URL of the site you want to evaluate.
If your site is myfreakingawesomesite.com, then your search should be for: site:myfreakingawesomesite.com. Figures 6-1 and 6-2 show what a search for site:social-media-design.com looks like.
Figure 6-2: A ...
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