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| 'Time Management for Internet Marketers' |
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Ten Tips for Search Engine Results
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If you have an online shop, you shouldn’t ignore the marketing opportunity represented by the major search engines. Search engines are the top source of traffic for bringing new visitors to your site. According to a recent survey, almost 90% of small to medium businesses with ecommerce sites have submitted to the major search engines. You can’t afford the competitive disadvantage of being in the other 10% - and you can’t afford to ignore the traffic which search engines generate. Building your site with a software package that generates static HTML pages will give you the best chance of catching the eye of the search engines. Nevertheless a little time spent actively promoting your site to the major search engines can deliver dramatic returns. Take for example Surf-Wax in Exeter providing a one-stop shop for anyone into boarding and surfing. Jo Morecroft built her web site (www.surf-wax.co.uk) to display her photography and supply equipment and information for those into extreme sports. She put all her marketing effort into search engine optimisation with the result that traffic went up to 1000 visitors per day. Seventy five percent of users don't go beyond the second page of search engine results. That means if your site isn't in the top 40 results, you probably won't be noticed. So make sure at least one page on your site – preferably your home page - is set up as described here, to give yourself the best possible chance of being towards the top of the listings. Choose two or three key phrases that you think customers will use to search for a product or service like yours. Avoid single words or very broad terms - there will be so many sites in these kinds of category that you will be very unlikely to get ranked on the first or second pages. The smaller the pile, the easier it is to climb the top. To find out roughly how many pages exist that match your chosen phrase, search for it at AltaVista (www.altavista.com), which returns the total for the number of pages found. For example searching for ‘birds’ yields over 170,000 pages, and searching for ‘parrot’ yields over 20,000, but searching for ‘african grey parrot ‘ yields less than 150 relevant pages. To get an idea of how many people are searching for your chosen phrase, sign up for the Google Adwords program. Don’t try and cover too many phrases in a single page. If you need to use more phrases, set up separate pages for them. To be sure you’ve trapped all the appropriate, use an analysis tool like the one at http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml. Also take a look at your competitors’ sites to see what key words they are using. In the header section of your home page include Meta tags (Description and Keywords) that contain your key phrases. Use lower case - over 80% of people search entirely in lower case, and most search engines are not case sensitive. Include the same key phrases in the Title tag. For example, suppose you are running a sailing site and you have decided that 'boats for sale' and 'yachts for sale' are the search phrases your potential customers are most likely to use. You would set up your meta tags something like this: <HEAD>
Use the key phrases about four times in your web page, starting near the top. If your page is based on a table, the top means near the top of the left-hand column. Repeat the phrases in comments, and in Alt text attached to images, eg <IMG SRC="yacht.gif" ALT=" boats for sale, yachts for sale "> Get as many links to your pages as possible from other sites, as this will affect your ranking in some major search engines. Don't put text in small or white or the same colour as the background - you will be penalised by several search engines. Don't use frames. Several major search engines won't link through them. However well your pages are optimised, they won’t get ranked if the search engines can only find the frameset page. Many search engine specialists do use frames to present additional information to search engines, or to ‘cloak’ pages and make them appear differently to search engines than to end users; but it’s very easy to get blacklisted for spamming using these techniques. If you want to use them, employ a specialist. Manually submit your pages to the major search engines listed below . Some require payment. Resubmit on a regular basis - you can obtain software that will help you with this. · AltaVista · AOL · Direct Hit · Excite / Webcrawler · FAST (http://www.alltheweb.com/) · GoTo · HotBot · Infoseek · Inktomi · Looksmart · Lycos · MSN · Netcenter (Netscape) · Northern Light · Open Directory (http://dmoz.org/) · Yahoo Several of these share the same underlying databases. To see how your site ranks with the search engines, visit one of the many sites that offer this as a free service (search the web for ‘free position checker’ to find them), or download a copy of the free AgentWebRanking software (www.aadsoft.com/agentwebranking/ranks.htm). Search engine optimisation is still as much an art as a science: there are no guarantees, and the results can range from the spectacular to the bizarre and inexplicable. Love them or hate them, they are still a major source of web traffic – ignore them at your peril. Supplied by Actinic, the ecommerce software developer, www.actinic.co.uk, 0845 129 4800 |
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More articles on running an online business: How To Make Your Site A Search Engine Magnet Getting Targeted Traffic To Your Website There's Gold In Your Server Logs Higher Search Engine Ranking: How to Top Google for Free
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