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"Your Internet Information Source... Technical Made Practical" |
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• Why Search Engines are Key to Traffic & Success Get the most visitors for the least dollars • The Science of Search Engines The Technical Aspects... |
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Why Search Engines are Key to Your Website Traffic & Success The most visitors for the least $
Search engine promotion is probably one of the most well known and used
ways of being able to "target" your market. Most people start here when
they begin promoting a website, and they know that a search engine can
bring in as much as 80% of their websites traffic. The best thing about
search engine placement is that it is a very cost-effective and productive
way to advertise their website. In discussing search engine placement, we deal with two entities; search engines sites and directories. The search engine is the interface that users utilize to locate the desired website, while a directory is where the information is collected and stored. It is interesting to know that some directories can be the source of data for several search engines. For example; ODP or Open Directory Project, is one data source for All the Web, AltaVista, Deja, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Northern Light, and Yahoo. So then, directories play an important role in search engine strategy. Another consideration is the method of submission. There are two general methods of submission: 1) Paid Submission, and 2) Unpaid Submission. With paid submission, I would pay Alta Vista say $200 to list AdventDigital.net in their search engine, and they would list it there within about 30 days. With unpaid submission, I could submit the AdventDigital.net site and pertinent information monthly, and Alta Vista may or may not include this website in their search engine. You may ask; "Why would they list you without paying?" Because, if a search engine only listed paid websites, their data would seem very incomplete to users, and soon users would choose to use another search engine. So most of my customers elect to go the unpaid route first. I usually can achieve listings in 60-80% of the search engines, over time, using this method.
Search engine placement in itself is a
time-consuming job. It takes hours of submitting, tracking, analyzing and
modifying to be able to achieve your goal of the top dozen listings.
In a future newsletter, I'll share with you in detail a dozen ingredients
that you should do, along with Search Engine Work, to make your
website a success. Fear not, most of these dozen ideas are free to
implement. Here are a few points now:
Business cards, show web address
On your letterhead
Door hangers - students distribute
All faxes should display your website
On your business brochure, sell your website on every
panel
Your newspaper ads, show web address
Your coupons, show web address
Mention your website in your radio ads
Have an online contest, with email registration
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The Science of Search Engines The Technical Aspects....
The starting point with search engine placement work is the creation of META tags. Meta tags are areas of text that are hidden from the viewer of a webpage but accessible to browsers and robots. They are located in the <head> section of the html code of your website, and should be on every page of your site. Robots use meta tags to find out more about a web page, hence they can affect the search ranking. Poorly designed (or non-existent) Meta Tags can have a detrimental effect on the search ranking of a web page. The Meta Tags of most interest for search ranking are the meta tag description and meta tag keywords. The very least your Meta Tags should contain is; Title, Description, and Keywords. The Title is usually permitted to be 60 characters in length, stating your organization name, and a short, precise sentence telling what you do. The Title may also contain data pertaining to that specific webpage within your total website. The Description is the same, but more detailed and can contain 150 characters, including spaces. Finally, the Keywords are 12 to 15 words that are most likely to be used by people searching for your website. If you are a local or regional business, your city and state should be part of your keywords list. Often business owners place their first and last name as keywords as well. When creating these Meta Tags, care and skill are needed to create the most effective wording possible. Using the proper phrases and keywords can either generate traffic or keep it away. The best place to start is to look at the Meta Tags for a couple of your competitors. I look these up, and store them in a log file, and compare them to what you have told me about your business. Once the Meta Tags are created and placed on every one of your web pages, they are published to your website. Next, I begin the work of submitting your website to the major search engines and directories. Each of these has a different form to fill out, but the content is basically the same. They each want to know your web address, the type of organization you are, whether you market goods or services, what category or classification does your website belong in, and finally, they too want your META tag data entered into their database. So I merely use cut-and-paste to fill in all of this data, then I submit it. I do all of these steps, for each search engine and directory, every month. If you submit too often, the group may ban you from their listings. Ask me how I know this. Also, I have hired another person in a northern state, to repeat the same steps, so we actually get a submission, from 2 sources, to all engines and directories, twice each month. If a certain search engine does not list your website after about six months, you may consider paying the $200 fee (these fees vary) to get a listing established with them. If you do, you can still be thankful that you have been listed in many of the search engines and directories without the specific fees being paid. I am often asked what we charge at Advent Digital for these services. Currently our fees are $150 for a six month package. This package includes Meta Tag creation (one time), and hand submitting to the top dozen search engines and directories, twice monthly, for the duration of the six months. All of this may sound tedious to you, but I have found that you will be well rewarded with good listings in most of the search engines, over time. And this usually translates into an ever-increasing traffic flow to your website.
Thank You, Greg Schipper
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