SEARCH ENGINE SUCCESS
Every entrepreneur wants lots and lots of traffic, as this is your potential customers. The first place most e-businesses go is to a search engine or two. From the statistics collected, anywhere from 20% to 80% of visitors to your website got there from a search engine. However, most web surfers never go beyond the top 30 results they find. So wouldn't it be very important to be near the top of the list?
Top positions are not easily obtained, unless you know the "right" techniques, and especially while this advertising is still free. Search engines are already finding ways to charge for high rankings and bold listings. Again, it's time to hurry without delay.
In order to be found, you MUST submit your site to the search engines. They do index sites and pages that haven't been submitted, but you can't leave this to chance. It may take a year or more for them to find you. It still can take from 2 to 6 weeks, AFTER you submit, for your listing to appear.
The mathematical formulas that the search engines use are constantly changing, so you need to check on your listing and maintain it, if you want to generate lots of traffic.
DIRECTORIES
A directory is just like the Yellow Pages. Some person creates and maintains the compilation of web sites, rather than a robot. Editors review submitted sites, and then place them in the proper section.
Yahoo is the best known directory, with major and sub-topics. Other directories are:
Open Directory Project - They use many volunteer editors, so have lots of input. AOL Search, Direct Hit, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, and many others use their input. (www.dmoz.org)
• Ask Jeeves - You can ask questions in plain English and receive links to sites that are relevant to your question, (www.askjeeves.com)
LookSmart - This has been compared to Yahoo and inputs to MSN, Excite, Alta Vista, CNN.com, Netscape Netcenter and others, (www.looksmart.com)
META SEARCH ENGINES
These are programs that gather search results from multiple search engines simultaneously. They rank a web site based on the combined ranking in all the included search engines. So if you want a top spot, you'll need to ensure that you are well ranked in all the search engines used by the META search engine.
- MetaCrawler - Simultaneously searches Google, AskJeeves, Inktomi, About, Overture,
FindWhat and others, (www.metacrawler.com)
- Dogpile - This is the most commonly used META search engine. It searches 3 databases
at a time, (www.dogpile.com)
You don't have to submit your site to META search engines, because they are already searching other major search engines. Top spots in the major search engines, ensures you a top spot in their results.
SPECIALTY SEARCH ENGINE/DIRECTORIES
These offer alternative to the major search engines. They are devoted to a particular subject or niche.
Legal Aid www.findlaw.com
For Women www.wwwomen.com
Sports www.sportsearch.com
Business www.b2bexcite.com
Music www.ubl.com
MORE IS NOT BETTER
There are so many search engines, don't try to submit to too many. Focus on the top eight, and optimize your position.
Yahoo! www.yahoo.com
Google www.google.com
Alta Vista www.altavista.com
AIITheWeb www.alltheweb.com
Excite www.excite.com
HotBot www.hotbot.com
Northern Light www.northemlight.com
SEARCH DIRECTORIES
When you submit to LookSmart, your web site will be listed in all these search engines.
LookSmart www.looksmart.com
MSN www.msn.com
Excite www.excite.com
AltaVista www.altavista.com
About www.about.com
CNN www.cnn.com
When you submit to Inktomi, your web site will be listed in all these and more engines.
Inktomi www.inktomi.com
HotBot www.hotbot.com
MSN www.msn.com
Overture www.overture.com
Goo www.goo.ne.jp
LookSmart www.looksmart.com
Focus on the first three search engines, they are the high traffic engines.
Open Directory www.dmoz.com
AOL www.aol.com
Lycos www.lycos.com
HotBot www.hotbot.com
Google www.google.com
Submitting your website to the top eight search engines, as well as to the directories is a good idea. You must give each search engine just what they want for a top ranking. They may share the same databases, but they may still use different mathematical formulas to rank the sites. Optimize your web site for each of the top eight.
RANKING WEB SITES
Since each site uses different formulas to arrive at their results, what might put you near the top on some, may rank you very low on another. However, these are the main factors that the search engines consider.
LINK POPULARITY
Lycos, Excite and AltaVista and the "web pages search portion" of Yahoo all use a ranking system that measures and ranks the number of links that are directed towards a particular web site. In other words, link popularity as well as the quality of links are a heavy factor.Therefore, the more high traffic links you have pointing to your site, the more traffic your site will generate. Your site will be perceived as being popular, and will be ranked higher.
YOUR DOMAIN NAME
Having keywords in your domain name, allows search engines to find you fast. They love URL's with keywords. This is a key factor, now that domain names can be registered with up to 67 characters, it's easy to get a better ranking with key words in your domain name. You may not know that search engines prefer URL's with hyphens, but visitors prefer them without. So register both.
KEYWORDS AND KEY PHRASES
These are so important. If you choose words that are too general or too highly competitive (like business, internet, software), your target market will never find your web site. It is your keywords that the search engines look for. The look at the keywords in your Title Tags, Meta Tags, and the body of your text when they rank your web site. They will also use your keywords to categorize your web site. Choose keywords that your target market is also using.
URL IDEAS
Brainstorm. That means writing down every idea you can come up with, no matter how silly it might sound at first. Working with others allows one of you to add to some idea, and come up with a brilliant idea. Ask family, friends and associates what words they would use to search for your products.
Be specific as well as general. For instance, if you were selling golden retriever puppies, you would use the following keywords: dogs, dog, puppy, puppies, golden retriever, goldens, golden retriever puppies, pets, etc.
How many times have you seen misspelled words? Many people misspell some words, so include them also. It would bring traffic to you that your competitors might miss. Use as many variations of your keywords as you can think of. Include both the long and short form of the words also. Ex: pup, pups, puppies. Search engines are case sensitive, so you would use Pup as well as pup.
Include your company name, but don't use trademark names other than your own. If you use trademark names, it could ban you from the internet, as well as bring on a potential lawsuit.
Check out what keywords other competitors are using in their web sites, titles and META tags. Check out their strategies by clicking on "View" in your browser when visiting their web site, and choose "Source." Sometimes, the same sites and pages keep popping up when you search
particular keywords. Use their keyword ideas to further expand your own and improve your own website. Their web sites may be using very complex tactics to hide their Source Codes from competitors, and some have even put up "dummy" Source Codes to distract you. So when you find a web site that is consistently a top ranking, but the source code seems a little off, and different from others, this is probably why.
WORD TRACKER
WordTracker is a free service that track related keywords. It collects the search results from 24 major search engines and compiles them into a database that continually is updated. It is organized into useful reports based on the keyword searches that you do. Simply type in your keyword and it returns a list of related keywords or phrases. It will probably have some you haven't thought of.
It tells you how many times that word or phrase was searched in the last 24 hours. It also estimates how much traffic your site could expect to get in 24 hours, if you were ranked in a top position in the search engines under that keyword.
It allows you to accurately rank your keywords in the order of their importance, instead of guessing. It even tells you which misspelled words are drawing traffic. It has also been designed to tell you how many web sites are competing under a keyword in a particular search engine.
Suppose you found that from your keyword, there are 234,500 other sites competing under that same keyword. It might be difficult to get a top ranking with that many competrtors.However, from WordTracker, you might get a related phrase and use another popular term that has only 45 sites. This would be a much better keyword for you to use to optimize your ranking. Words not used by your competitors have a much better chance of directing traffic to you.
It is free, if you limit yourself to AltaVista. However, the paid version charges by day or by week, with monthly and yearly subscriptions available. This is the best way to find those overlooked keywords and misspellings your competitor hasn't yet noticed. You may not need it more than a week.
Check it out: http://www.wordtracker.com/
- Keyword Density - This means how many times your keyword "dog" appears
throughout your website as compared to all of the other words. Are you "wordy" with
everything else and not mention your keyword very many times? Don't just keep saying
your keyword, either. That's called "keyword stuffing."
- META tags - META tags are messages that are coded into the HTML of your web page, but
never displayed on the web browsers or seen by visitors. Only the search engines can
see them. META tags tell any spider that visits, how to catalog your website based on
your preferred description and the choice of keywords. Some search engines put a
lot of weight on META tags, so this is a good opportunity to use your carefully chosen
keywords. Be sure to use words that are not unrelated, and don't use it too many times.
- Title tags - This is MOST important when it comes to securing a top spot in the
search engines. Title tags display the title of your web site in the top of your visitor's
browsers. Place your web site title within the <TITLEx/ TITLE> tags of your source code.
If you use ineffective titles such as my home page or nowzooS, you are not utilizing a very
important technique.Your title has to have some meaning. If a visitor bookmarks your web
site, he will want to know later on, after he has forgotten it, what it actually is, or you'll
never see them again. Use a keyword in your descriptive title. Search engines love them.
When manually submitting your web site to the directories, and you have multiple categories that apply to your site, choose those categories alphabetically. Many directories' search results are sorted alphabetically.
SUBMITTING TO SEARCH ENGINES
So what are your options for getting your site submitted to all of these different search engines? You have several different options. Some are worthwhile, some are not.
- Use a free submission service. - They promise you many submissions for free. But it
isn't a good deal. You never get anything of value for free. You can't get a top
ranking position free. Remember, I said that there are different criteria for each search
engine. If you submit the exact same info to each one, if won't be of any value at all.
- Use a low-cost automated submission service. - This is as good as the free one.
Automated means submitting the exact same info to many more search engines, without
being optimized for their individual requirements. You'd never get in the top io this way.
Do it yourself. - Do it yourself by manually submitting your web site information to each individual search engine. This way, you ensure you have met the specific requirements for each of them individually. This is very time consuming and labor intensive, because you have to research and meet each individual requirement. There also are no professionals you can ask to verify that you are using the most up to date techniques, as most search engines change their formulas almost on a daily basis.
Use a professional search engine consultant. They don't come cheap, but are very worth it. They will educate you and work with you to maximize your exposure in each search engine. They are up to date on all the latest tricks and will share them with you. The charge is usually from $60o to $900. They evaluate your web site, help you design keywords and content, give tips and pointers and maximize every single field in the search engine submission forms. They provide a written report 90 days later to you, so you know where your sites are ranked. Usually the traffic generated by a top position will more than pay for the cost of the professional consultant.
Some web-development companies will offer to submit your web site as a bonus for hiring them. It's about the same as using the free submitting service. They are not professional search engine consultants. They design web sites, not market them. There's a big difference. It's almost impossible to go back and change your listing once you've been accepted by a search engine, so DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. Using software to submit. This is about the same as the free and low cost submission services. Your site is never optimized, and you never secure ttie top ranking you need.
HELPING YOU MONITOR YOUR RANKING ON SEARCH ENGINES
Some will take weeks to include you in their database, others take only a day or two. If you had to spend your time looking at each one to find yourself, you're taking away from time that can be doing something more important.
There is software, like Web Position Gold that has a built in scheduler that turns itself on and automatically monitors your position. It generates reports that show you where your web site ranks in each search engine, under keywords, specific phrases and corrects problems. It even monitors where your competitors are ranked in relation to you.
If you offer more than one product or service on your web site, each "page" should get well ranked under the appropriate keywords so that you are getting maximum exposure in the search engines. Develop an individual page for each product under it's own set of keywords. This gives you a better chance of top positions.
EXAMPLE
Give You have 6 products you are marketing and want to be in the io top search engines; you are using 15 keywords and phrases.
That means 6 products x 15 keywords x 10 search engines = 900 positions
You DON'T want to have to monitor these every day or week. Use WebPosition Gold. It automatically does this for you. You would have no idea that one of your web pages has been gradually slipping down the ranks, but with this software, you can correct it. Remember, web surfers generally do not look beyond the top 30 sites.
PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINES
These are much like auctions-they allow you to bid for top-ranking positions under keywords of your choices. You pay whatever you bid for each visitor who searches under your keyword and clicks onto your website. Prices range from a penny to many dollars per click.
You only pay for advertising that works-only when someone clicks on your web site. pay-Per-Click Search engines list your site within hours or days at the most. You only need to outbid other sites in order to get the #1 ranking position. The trick though, is choosing your maximum bids based on the monetary value of one visitor to your web site. If you bid more than a visitor is actually worth to your site, you lose money on your advertising.
You want to know who your customers are and what keywords they're using, as you don't want to waste money on unqualified traffic. The best way to learn is by speaking with them directly. Get on the phone, do a survey, offer free gift for feedback. The more you know about the people who buy from you, the easier it will be to target new customers.
Your net profits will drop a bit when you pay for advertising, but your total sales will go up if you purchase targeted traffic.
Don't submit a web site to the search engines until it is thoroughly tested and set up properly to their requirements. It's very hard to try and edit it after it has been indexed.
Don't type in all upper case letters (it's considered SHOUTING)
Avoid using frames, JavaScript, and other non-text HTML tags for menu bars, etc. If the search engine can't access or interpret your information, it doesn't do you any good.Yes there are sites which use frames (they split up your page into sections or "frames" separately without affecting the others.)
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