|
"Top
Ten Search Engine Positioning"
How
to grab the attention of millions of potential customers who are using Internet
Search Engines right now. Few topics in e-commerce attract the big
interest that search engines get. Why? Get your site listed "high" on a search
engine and you can expect your hits to soar!
By getting listed high,
we mean your site comes up as one of the top ten choices presented when someone
searches for a site like yours. The vast majority of sites never come anywhere
close to getting listed in the top ten. Your site can be on the search engine
buried on the 15th page of links. That means few if any will ever see your listing.
They key to search engine success is to get listed high, in the top ten if possible.
How
search engines work. Search Engines are the road maps of the Internet.
Back in the early 1990s, when the Net was still just an infant, programmers
were trying to devise a way to find their way through the Web's several hundred
sites. Search engines were born. The Net soon grew at a pace no one ever imagined
with the number of web sites rocketing to several million by 1996.
Many
web site owners used various tricks to dupe search engines into listing their
sites at the top of the heap. Engines were relatively simple in those
days and it wasn't hard to figure out a way to outsmart them. There was a downside
to this. When people asked a search engine to find sites on a particular topic,
many of the sites listed at the top had little or nothing to do with the search
topic.
Programmers
to the rescue! Search engines have gotten much smarter. Their automatic
robots scour the Internet cataloging tens of thousands of web sites each day.
Now a search engine robot can read all through your site and come up with a
pretty good idea of what your site has to offer. The search engine then lists
your site accordingly.
What
a search engine looks for. All search engines operate a little differently.
Some put more emphasis on some factors than others. For example, one engine
lists your site according to the title (those few words that are listed in the
little box on your browser). Another takes a close look at meta tag info embedded
in your site's html code (containing a description of your site and keywords
that can be found in your site's copy). Still others read through your copy
to find words that appear often.
It is best to closely focus
your site on a few keywords. Consider the terms or short phrases that your best
customers would use to look for a site like yours. Center your web site's content
around these words.
Title.
Your site's title should contain your business name and a few words that describe
your site. These words must be keywords that people will search with
and also be words that appear frequently in your web site copy. If we were going
to put up a web site that contained these lessons, it might be titled: JustWebIt.com
with 7 Ways to Make Your Web Site SELL including search engine placement, writing
copy, free media publicity, web site design, and Internet promotion.
This title is probably a
bit too long. Some search engines ignore any words after the 16th word. It doesn't
matter if visitors can see all of your title. You are mostly writing it for
search engines.
Meta
tag info. Several search engines pay close attention to your site's meta tag
info. Many sites that do not rank well on search engines have no
meta tag info. This is code in your site's html that is visible to search engines
robots, but not to people who visit your site. To see what Meta tags look like,
go to any popular site, point your cursor at the page, and click the right mouse
button. Choose "view source."
The Meta tag looks like
this: Copy this code exactly, substituting your description and keywords for
ours, and place it at the top of your web site's opening page in the html code.
You can also go to http://www.free-services.com and use their handy Meta Tag
Generator. You type in your site's info and, presto, you get meta tag's to go--free!
Focus
your copy. Search engines like sites that are narrowly focused on a particular
topic. When someone clicks to a site like that, the search engine
feels confident they will find a site very much like the one they were searching
for. Narrowly focus your site on a few keywords many people use. Search engines
will love you. You will be rewarded with high placement.
The
first 100 words of your page are the most important. Search engines
read for words that match the words in your title and meta tags. If it finds
the same words in all three places, you've got a great chance of getting listed
high when someone searches for those same words.
Sites
with lots of graphics
but very little text don't do very well with search engines. Add a bit more
descriptive text to your page and include alt tags in the html code behind your
graphics (check your html editing program for ways to do this). Write a few
lines of descriptive copy for each of these tags.
No
keyword spamming. It might seem like a good thing to do to list the
same word over and over again like "marketing..marketing...marketing" to get
listed high when a surfer searches for "marketing." Search engines are wise
to this trick and will drop any site that engages in "keyword spamming." The
same goes for typing keywords over and over in a color that matches the background
of the page (you've probably seen faint words written in white blending into
the background of some pages).
Things
you can do NOW: Think of 10 to 15 words that people would use to
search for a site like yours. Write them down. Focus on the most important four
to six words. Write a sentence (not more than 15 words) that uses these most
important keywords, includes your business name, and describes what your site
is about. You've now got the materials you need to get your own title and meta
tags.
Work those words into two
or three short paragraphs that you can place at the top of your opening web
page. For example, you want to use "babies," "kids clothing," and "discount
prices." The first sentence in your copy might read: We have everything for
babies and a wide selection of kids clothing, all at discount prices."
When you've finished getting
your site ready for search engines, use these free sites to register it. http://www.all4one.com
does a good job of registering your site with all the major search engines with
a single click. Almost 95% of search engine traffic goes through these top engines.
http://www.submit4free.com registers your site with a whopping 400 search engines
and link libraries.
If you have enjoyed this
straight forward advice consider our complete e-business package below:
MASTER
E-COMMERCE! Here's
how to make money online with your new or current business. One Stop e-Commerce
solution offered by JustWebit.com gives you hundreds of power strategies you
can use NOW to supercharge your success on the Internet. Plus we give you a
merchant account, shopping cart, secure server, web builder, domain name, and
real time transactions.
COMING NEXT in Lesson #3:
"E-zine advertising
and publishing" Nothing gives you a strong base of loyal customers on the
Internet like your own email newsletter (or e-zine). They're almost free to
produce and send. We will show you how to produce and send your own e-zine using
equipment you already have. E-zine advertising is also the best advertising
value on the Internet. The extremely low cost of electronic publishing allows
'zines to pass their savings along to you in the form of very low ad rates.
Lesson #3 tells you how to find the best e-zines and use them to quickly build
web site traffic and sales.
Need
some tools to get your Internet Site automated so you can generate a cash income
and still have time to enjoy life?
Contact Justwebit.com at 800-264-0458. We can help!
|