The Search Engine BluesWritten by Jennifer Durocher
There's no easy way to talk about this without getting frustrated…getting your site known on net these days is a most difficult task. Search engines are picky and their rules change everyday, getting a top ten listing is almost impossible, all those "submit to 5000 sites" are bull and other mediums are just too expensive for small businessman. It's a difficult process to drive customers to your site but it can be done. It is a question of getting someone on top of it - now. There are lots of options available, it just depends on what you're looking to accomplish. The single most important aspect to consider in promotion and positioning of this nature is to make sure that your website is functional. There is no use in having a website at all if it just does not work. That is probably worst possible press out there - if word gets out that your site has broken links all over place and that images are constantly missing, it does not look favorably on you or your business. So make sure that all links are working, all form submissions do not return errors and all files are there in their proper order. There should probably be minimum one person in your team who does this check at least once a week. Next, consider META tag & keyword side of things. We've all heard horror stories about people abusing them to try and get high rankings on search engines. That is, obviously, not such a good idea. There is no easy solution to search engine blues, but consider using them, far too many people continue to ignore them. Any web page generator program usually does not include creation of such tags but they are not that hard to do. A META tag is what "talks" to search engine robots that index your site. For most part, you need to include them if you want any indexing at all. The two most important tags are: & . The description of your site should be no more than 15 - 20 words, it should be accurate and it should contain at least some of your keywords. Keywords should have relevance. For example, attempting to use word "sex" 50, 000 times will not win you love of search engines. Instead, think carefully about what you think people would type in to find your services. Now use those as your keywords. Do not worry…they'll change over time to better suit your site's changing services, and as you get better with it you'll know exactly what words work best.
| | Getting Your Website VisibilityWritten by James M. Duerr
A funny thing happened other day on my way to successfully list my company on major search engines. Not being a novice to search engine listing game, but never claiming to be an expert, I read with interest an e-zine on obtaining search engine position. The article was well written and basically very helpful. But what I did next was very interesting.Viewing Source Code I went to Author’s web site and viewed his source code to see if he practiced what he preached. To see source code of a web page all you have to do is select "View" button in Microsoft Explorer and click on "Source". Here you can view Title, Description and Keyword Meta files that are so critical to high search engine position. Indeed, author did exactly what he was recommending to his clients. His meta files were text book.. The HTML code had word search engine listed in meta title section once, in meta description once and in meta keywords three times. The code was very clean and should produce good results using keyword "search engine" So next thing I did was go to three main search engines, AltaVista, Northern Light and Lycos. I typed in keyword "search engine" and what do you think happened? Well, none of three search engines listed Author’s Web site in any of first three pages of results. And everyone tells you that if you are not on first couple of search results pages, well…just forget about being found. Directory Listings This brings us to point of this article. Search engines are not only resource on which to list your site. Another option is purchasing a listing with a directory. A directory is a Web site where users search a limited number of web sites, not entire web. Web directories include http://www.GoTo.com, http://www.Stopsurfing.com, and http://www.b2bnow.com to name a few. To find other directories you can go to http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/search.html. This is a pretty comprehensive listing, some sites are outdated, but it is a good place to start.
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