Search Engine Positioning SecretsWritten by Case Stevens
High search engine positioning brings traffic. That's good web site promotion! But high positioning needs careful planning prior to submission of a website to an engine. Read this before making a registration to any engine. Do website submission afterwards.Define a niche first Ask yourself: who are my visitors, what do they read, where are they, what do they do? Try to understand your typical customer. Specify your niche as much as possible. Place yourself in a visitor's position. Find out what they are looking for. Make a Keyword List When you're done, find words or phrases that they will probably use to find what they want. These are keywords. Try to find phrases rather than single words. "Beginners Web Design" is more specific than "Design". When we refer to keywords, we (also) mean phrases. Make a list of them. Come up with at least 10 or 20. Type keywords in searchbox of your favorite engine and enter. View every source code of top sites you find. Add keywords that aren't on your list. Come up with some others. Expand Keyword List Go to http://www.wordweb.co.uk. Download WordWeb, a little Thesaurus/Dictionary. Type keywords and add synonyms. Visit http://jimtools.com/keywords/ Enter keywords to generate others. Other places to look for keywords: http://www.wordtracker.com/ http://www.mall-net.com/se_report/ http://www.the1000.com/ OK, list must contain over a hundred phrases by now. Select Keywords Now, go to http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml. Type generic keywords (design instead of web design; design will show all possible combinations). That results in numbers followed by keywords (representing number of requests for that word in a month). Save results in a spreadsheet and sort them. This way you will build an important source of information you can use when developing websites. (I use Excel, but any spreadsheet will do. Make 2 columns, 1 for generic keyword and 1 for results; sort them and make subtotals per keyword so you can find them again at sorted subtotal level.) Now select keywords that have a count between 100 and 800. (GoTo represents about 3% of all traffic, so you may expect 30 times that number for all engines.) Lower counts aren't interesting, higher counts mean way too much competition.
| | Understanding Search EnginesWritten by Carl Hruza
Marketing products and/or services on Internet seems to be direction taken by many of todays businesses. However, are we really prepared for what Internet has to offer? and are we equiped with tools and knowledge to exploit web and make our web based businesses successful? In most cases answer is NO. Why? - some simple statistics offer answer: 1) - only 16% of all web pages submitted for registration to Internet search engine are actually registered or 'indexed' 2) - 95% of business web sites that are indexed by search engines are listed outside of top two pages of searches returned against keywords that describe products or services offered by particular business. What does all this mean? Simple. Your site is invisible to potential customers searching for your products and you may as well not be there! Without visibility through leading search engines you must turn to other forms of marketing your presence. These are often expensive and very unpredictable. So what options do you have? The most sensible is to employ a specialsit organization to improve your search engine listing or position. This can be expensive depending on competition for your particular 'keywords', but in most cases a radical improvement in search positions can be attained. Follows is a brief summary of what search engines are and how they work. This is an essential starting point for anyone serious about Internet trading or 'E-Commerce' Search Engines And How They Work.What is a 'search engine'? It is a software utility or program that is used to find information on Internet, related to a specific subject that is being sought by user. How do I use it? You log on to a particular search engine web site, such as Alta-Vista or Excite, where you are presented with an 'input' box, allowing text relating to subject for which you are searching to be entered. The text may be inputted as a single word or a string of text. It may be with or without capitalization, abbreviation, punctuation or parenthesis. The inputted text is termed a 'keyword' or 'keyword phrase'. These keywords are used by search engines to retrieve web pages with required subject matter, which are then presented to you for selection and viewing. How do I get my site listed on search engines? In order for a web page or site to be found by search engine it must first be indexed, that is a record of it's existence made by search engine in it's extensive library or data base of pages. If your site is not indexed by a search engine, then it can only be found in one of two ways: Through direct input of URL or site address into location bar of web browser, (user must have prior knowledge of site address), or: By clicking a 'Hyperlink' or advertising banner that connects directly to site. For a site to be 'visible', it must therefore be indexed by search engines. To have a site indexed by a search engine, site URL or address must be individually submitted to each search engine. The search engines are programmed to examine pages of a site (sometimes called spidering) and record specific information about site, in a manner that permits easy retrieval of relevant pages, when called to do so during a user search. What is search engine 'ranking' or 'positioning', and how is it important? Most people or businesses that have Internet presence do so because they want to be visible, they want to inform others of their products and services. The Internet if utilized correctly is perfect medium for attracting prospective customers to your business. The most effective method of generating traffic to your site is through search engines, i.e. someone is searching Internet for a product that you happen to offer, and your web site is presented, along with others, to be viewed by searcher. The problem is one of volume. For example, if user enters keywords 'surfing in California', and a list of 20,000 web sites is returned, then 19,950 are probably going to be ignored, user will generally find what he needs in first 50 or so. In other words, if your site is all about surfing in California, and you are not positioned or ranked in top 50 of sites that are presented to user, then you may as well not be there.
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