Does Your Website Need Search Engine Placement?

Written by Dave Davies


Introduction For many,repparttar value of their websites can be measured in visitors, for others it isrepparttar 127984 amount of revenue thatrepparttar 127985 site generates. Regardless of how you measurerepparttar 127986 success of your website, you are going to have to bring visitors to it that are looking forrepparttar 127987 information, content and/or products that you are providing. So how do you do this?

For many businessesrepparttar 127988 yellow pages is a first choice for promotions and marketing. A standard yellow page ad runs for about $1,200+/year for a smaller ad and serves only a local market. You further have to considerrepparttar 127989 cost of ad development, which can often run intorepparttar 127990 thousands of dollars as well.

While this may be an essential form of advertising for many businesses which serve only local areas, it is certainly notrepparttar 127991 only one.

Onrepparttar 127992 Internet there are many forms of advertising that have and are being used to bring traffic to websites. From banner ads and sp@m email to PPC and natural search engines there are countless methods for promoting your website online. So how do you choose which marketing tactic to utilize?

One thing to consider is that over 80% of all Internet traffic comes from search engines with Google currently responsible forrepparttar 127993 vast majority of that. With such an overwhelming amount of traffic coming from a single identifiable source it makes sense to put a lot of weight on what traffic from this source can mean for your website, and for your business.

In this article we will explorerepparttar 127994 difference between sites that should consider search engine placement as a viable choice in their marketing strategy, and those that would benefit little from top placements. As well we will look at ways to insure that you are maximizingrepparttar 127995 effect and potential return on investment of your search engine placement campaign should you choose to go that route.

Who Should Consider Search Engine Placement An ethical search engine placement firm will tell a client honestly if search engine optimization will benefit their website. Of course, not every company is ethical and further, how do you know until you have undergone search engine optimization, whether it will benefit your website? By this point you have paidrepparttar 127996 firm and they have done their job whether it helped you or not.

There are a few things you should consider before you apply search engine placement tactics to your website, or consider hiring a search engine placement firm. I include “apply search engine placement tactics to your website” as, even though it may be “free” to do it yourself you can detract fromrepparttar 127997 overall visual appeal of your site if not done correctly, and also it is a very time consuming process to both learn and perform.

Questions You Should Ask Yourself: What do I stand to gain from higher search engine traffic? As search engine optimization has a built in cost of either time and resources should you choose to do it yourself, or throughrepparttar 127998 direct cost of money should you hire a search engine placement firm, you have to insure that what you hope to accomplish will be at least equal to and preferably greater thanrepparttar 127999 cost of time and money it will take to do successfully. For more information on this you will want to readrepparttar 128000 section below “So You’re Going To Market Your Website On The Search Engines … Now What?” for tips on establishing whether there is truly enough traffic to be had to make your efforts worth it.

Can I compete? The short answer to this question is generally always “yes” however there are many factors to consider. While any site, with enough work, can rank well you do have to consider whetherrepparttar 128001 effort will be worth it. For example, if you own a small computer store in Michigan that repairs computers and troubleshoots software issues, it is theoretically possible for you to rank your website well forrepparttar 128002 term “Microsoft Windows”. To do so would require an ENORMOUS amount of both time and money. And so you have to consider, is it really worth investing years of time and money into this one ranking? The answer is “probably not” but that doesn’t mean that search engine placement would not be beneficial for you, just that those keywords are not worth targeting. There are suggestions for choosingrepparttar 128003 right keywords below.

Do I make money from my website traffic? This question isn’trepparttar 128004 end-all-be-all however it’s certainly relevant if you’re considering hiring a search engine placement firm to optimize your site. If you plan on “going it alone” you may want to put inrepparttar 128005 effort for no money in return simply forrepparttar 128006 “fun” of it, however if you’re planning on spending your hard earned money on a search engine placement firm you have to make sure that it is in your economic best interest to do so. This may be from either direct product/services sales or fromrepparttar 128007 sale of advertising on your site.

If, after answering these questions to yourself you have determined that search engine placement is indeed a good choice for your marketing strategy you will now haverepparttar 128008 task of determining exactly what tactics will producerepparttar 128009 greatest Return On Investment for your efforts.

So You’re Going To Market Your Website On The Search Engines … Now What? Now that you have determined that search engine placement is indeed an avenue of marketing that can produce beneficial results for your site and for your business, you have to decide on a “plan of attack”. Many SEO firms will “help” you determine keywords to target, and some will even build links for you from “valuable” sites. In many case they may be entirely truthful but how do you know?

Meta Tags- What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them?

Written by Richard Zwicky


Meta Tags - What Are They & Which Search Engines Use Them? By: Richard Zwicky

Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines. The reason is very few engines clearly lay out what they do and do not look at, and how much emphasis they put on any one factor. So, we’ll start withrepparttar easy part

Meta Tags are lines of HTML code embedded into web pages that are used by search engines to store information about your site. These "tags" contain keywords, descriptions, copyright information, site titles and more. They are amongrepparttar 127983 numerous things thatrepparttar 127984 search engines look for, when trying to evaluate a web site.

Meta Tags are not "required" when you're creating web pages. Unfortunately, many web site operators who don’t use them are left wondering whyrepparttar 127985 saying "If I build it they will come" didn’t apply to their site.

There’s also a few naysayers inrepparttar 127986 search engine optimization industry who claim that Meta Tags are useless. You can believe them if you like, but you would be wise not to. While not technically "required", Meta Tags are essential.

If you simply create a web site and registerrepparttar 127987 URL withrepparttar 127988 search engines, their spiders will visit your site, and attempt to index it. Each search engine operates slightly differently, and each one weighs different elements of a web site according to their own proprietary algorithms. For example, Altavista places an emphasis onrepparttar 127989 description tag and Inktomi states on their web site that;

Inktomi "(...) indexes bothrepparttar 127990 full text ofrepparttar 127991 Web page you submit as well asrepparttar 127992 meta-tags withinrepparttar 127993 site's HTML." Other search engines like Exactseek are true meta tag search engines which clearly state their policy:

"Your site will not be added if it does not have Title and Meta Description tags." They also userepparttar 127994 keywords tag.

Of course, not all search engines work this way. Some place their emphasis on content. The search engines have over 100 individual factors they look at when reviewing a web site. Some of these factors deal with page structure. They check to see that allrepparttar 127995 't's are crossed, andrepparttar 127996 'i's dotted. They note sites that have omitted basic steps, like missing tags.

One reason so many engines de-emphasizedrepparttar 127997 meta-keyword tag had to do with spam. There was a time when 'search engine promotion specialists' would cram keywords tags full of irrelevant information. The web site would be selling garbage cans, butrepparttar 127998 keywords tags were chock full of irrelevant terms like "mp3" or "Britney Spears". They figured that if enough people visited their site, some would buy.

So today, to avoid and penalize this kind of abuse, some search engines don’t specifically userepparttar 127999 keywords tag as part ofrepparttar 128000 scoring of a site, but they monitorrepparttar 128001 keywords to ensure they matchrepparttar 128002 content inrepparttar 128003 site. The reasoning being that, ifrepparttar 128004 tags are irrelevant, they must have an alternate purpose. Is it a spam site? When keywords tags are completely irrelevant torepparttar 128005 content, some search engines, that don’t specifically use keywords tags, will penalize that web site.

Even for those engines that have downplayedrepparttar 128006 value of Meta Tags, there are situations where Meta Tags gain considerably in importance, e.g. sites with rich graphics, but poor textual content. Unfortunately, a picture is worth 1000 words to you and me, but zero to a search engine. If a site has poor textual content,repparttar 128007 engines will be more dependent than ever onrepparttar 128008 Meta Tags to properly categorize it.

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