Understanding Search Engine RobotsWritten by David Bell
If there is one thing I have learned about robots, it is that there is absolutely no pattern to them. Most robots are stupid and wander randomly. For example, 50% of robot hits to my sites, ask for robots.txt page and then go away never asking for anything else. Then they come back a week later, ask for same thing and then go away, again. This happens over and over again for months. I have never figured it out. What are they doing? If they wanted to see if website was really a web site, they could just Ping it. This would be much faster and much more efficient. They seldom visit another page and if they do, they ask for one other page every visit or so. Some come in and issue rapid-fire requests for every page in website. How rude! You have to quit worrying so much about robots. It takes 6 months before they request enough pages to do you any good. I really quit thinking about them a long time ago. Build a lot of pages correctly and, if you have reciprocal links to them, robots will find them someday. Try this: Go to AltaVista and type into search box link:YourSite.com (Leave off www). This will list reciprocal links to your web site. Try link:crownjewels.com and you get 136 links to it. Think about this now: The robots say to themselves, "Here is a site that must be popular or why would so many websites SIMILAR to it have it's link on their pages?" Remember that only SIMILAR sites with SIMILAR THEMES would probably have a link to your site. They give more importance to this than you submitting your link to them. Wouldn't you? Go to heavily trafficked sites matching your web site's Themes and use AltaVista to find out how many reciprocal links they have. This will prove to you I am right. Search engines are nothing more than reciprocal links to your site. The problem is, you are constantly having to fight for your positioning in search query listings. Forget about that. Leave fighting to people who are able to spend 24 hours a day trying to trick everybody. Quit trying to compete with large organizations pouring millions into their marketing. Completely forget about Search Engines after submitting to them and go after reciprocal links. The Search Engines will then believe you are a heavily visited site because you will be. You will now be getting traffic you so richly deserve. Search engine visitors to your site, are often-times not qualified visitors. Too many visitors pop into your home page for 2 seconds and then leave. You know how it is. We all do it when we are using search engines. Either it wasn't information we were looking for, or they had this huge graphic on this stupid portal page, which just took forever to load. These visitors shouldn't even count, but they get counted as 12-18 hits in your server logs. Hits are requests to server. One page request can incur a lot of hits: requests to page itself plus graphics, each count as a hit. Reciprocal links bring in qualified visitors. These are visitors who were already on a web site which had matching Themes to yours. They already have a good idea of what type of site you are. They will come into your site and actually stay awhile. These visitors should count as double credit, they are so good. I know which type of visitor I would rather have. How do you get people to WANT to put your link on their web sites? Why would a similar site put a link to your site on theirs? Simple, you have similar Themes. You are similar, but not competition.
| | The Art of Website OptimizationWritten by David Bell
They say "diamonds are a girl's best friend". Just like a flawless diamond in making, a website demands significant attention to detail in order to stand up and deliver and captivate its target audience. Ever wondered what components clearly define a website as "professionally" done? It should have a polished look! You don't need to spend thousands of dollars on web design, simply make sure it loads quickly and employs a simple navigation system. Your visitors must feel that time spent at your site was time well spent! Pay extra close attention to your sales copy. If you have all kinds of questions popping in your head as you read your own sales material, so will your customers. There is a simple approach to creating great sales copy and it works like crazy. Ask yourself a few simple questions, "What's in it for me?, "How can you fulfill your promise?", "Why should I believe you?", "What if I don't like it?". Write your sales copy to paint a portrait of "yes, I can!" by answering each question; giving a risk free assurance by including a money back guarantee along with a good time factor. Strive to incorporate all of your answers in your sales copy and you'll convert your readers into buyers. One of hottest topics on Internet today is search engine optimization, another critical and important component of a professional website. With recent surveys showing over 40% of all search engine traffic coming from Yahoo Directory, it has never been more important to pay close attention to selection of your title and description. First and foremost, get a head start on competition by choosing a keyword rich domain name. It's a clear advantage you may have overlooked in preparing for search engine submission. Make sure that your title is 5 words or less and includes your most important keywords. Try to limit your site description to 25 words or less. Remember, Yahoo doesn't look at your meta tags like a typical search engine, so make your title and description count! If you are submitting to Yahoo for first time, make sure to submit to Google, Yahoo's search partner, then Yahoo in a few days. Google creates description of your site by looking for first bold word so make sure you optimize your site accordingly.
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