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Website Marketing Tips
It's a fact:
Many small business owners manage to get an attractive,
functional website up and running, then sit back and wait for business to
find them through their website. They complete step 1 of 2, and
wonder why nothing good happens. How many times, we've heard the words, "I
get NOTHING out of my website. It's just sitting out there costing me
money. It's a money pit and not bringing me a dime!"
Our first question
is usually, "Have you registered your website with search
engines?" quickly followed by "Has your website been optimized so that it
can be found and indexed by search engine robots?"
If you're not sure what these questions
mean, you probably need to address them now, if you expect your
website to help you achieve your business goals.
Optimize your web site!
Many top positions in searches now go to
companies that pay big bucks to be at the top, but there are still
selected search engines that scour the Web to find and index
text-rich websites. Your site must show your keywords and phrases in two places
in your text (minimum):
- In the visible text that users see when
visiting your home page and key pages, in sentence form. Display your
major keywords and phrases at least three times for every 150 words, always
in a sentence or phrase.
- In the meta tags in the HTML code that
supports your home page and major pages. (If you have a web developer,
you can simply type the following information for each major page,
starting with your home page, and email it to the developer. He or she
will convert the material to meta tags.
- Include a headline at the top of the page that includes the keyword
or phrase for the page.
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Here's an example for Career Builders Network (a fictitious name): |
| For:
(home)______ page at www.___________________.com |
Page Title
Career Builders Network of Calabasas helps those in career
transition |
Page Description
Tuesday
job seeker meetings at Calabasas Holiday Inn |
Page Keywords
career builders network, Calabasas, job seekers, career
transition, support groups, meetings, employment support, career
counseling, career support, employment opportunities, networking
opportunities (list all the appropriate terms you can think of, up
to 250 words) |
Want to find out if you
have keywords in your HTML meta tags?
If you use Microsoft Internet
Explorer, simply open your website and, as you are displaying your home
page, click on your toolbar at the top of your screen on "View", then
select the option called "Source". Look for the word HEAD. There should be
two instances of the word HEAD. Between those two instances (we call them
'tags"), you should find the tags beginning:
- <meta
NAME="Description"......>
- <meta NAME="Keywords".....>
- and one for the page itself, called
<TITLE>.
If you do not find these "meta tags,"
develop the information (per the above example) and send it to your
developer for HTML coding.
What should your
keywords include?
Keywords are the words and phrases one might use to find a company,
product or service
like yours. For example, if you operate a career counseling service, your
keywords might include: "career counseling services, career consultant
consulting, resume preparation, employment service." In addition, for the benefit of people who
search for services in their local area, or who remember you but cannot
remember your web address, you should include: your name, your company
name, city and nearby cities, county, state. But if you really want to
have a well optimized web site, select one page and focus all its text
around one topic only, making sure to use no more than two keywords
(including keyword phrases, if appropriate) throughout the page. Each
occurrence of your keyword/phrase should be in sentence form (not a
bulleted list).
Tip:
In the meta tags in your HTML code, also include common misspellings of
your name, company name and city! (Who knows how people spell when they
search for your type of business?)
In what other ways
can you market your website?
Don't abandon traditional marketing methods such as displaying your web
address on all your literature, offering incentives for people to visit
your website, giving your web address when you introduce yourself or
address a group, listing your web address in all your advertising and in
listings of your company in organizational directories.
Explore online
opportunities as well.
Ask associates and companies with services or products that relate to or
support yours to exchange links. They install a link on their site to
yours, and you reciprocate with a link from your site to theirs. (In some
search engines, such as Google, links are like votes and the more
"popular" your site is the higher it will appear in a search.)
There are many ways to optimize a website
for search engines and those who visit the site. We've barely scratched
the surface of the topic here. We can perform this service for you, so get
in touch and get your site working for you right away!
Contact Wordpix.
Working with Search Engines
and Online Directories
Most major search engines now offer
paid position or premiere sponsor plans -- they place sites higher on
a search results page for a fee. Search engine directories can be
compared with your local "yellow pages," i.e., the more you pay
the bigger your ad (the higher your placement) on the page. Certain search engines now place sites they have
"reviewed" higher on their search
results pages, and you must pay to get your site reviewed. Major search
directories charge substantial fees to
review your site. Yahoo charges $299 annually. Still, there are
FREE listings available at many search engine sites. The rules are
changing daily, so check with the individual search engines for
their services, opportunities and guidelines. Visit our
master list of Search Engines.
It's really very simple to
register your site with most search engines. With most, it's a matter of
finding the "Add Your Site" link on their home page and typing in your
website address. What could be easier?! Start today. Register with one
search engine a day. It only takes a couple minutes. See our
master list of Search Engines.
The success of your web site
is more likely when it is set up to be "search engine ready" and utilizes
as many of the methods on this page as possible.
| Tip O'
The Day: 95% of web site hits come from the top six
search engines. This means it's not really necessary to register
with all the thousands of search engines, just a few. The
Open Directory is
probably the most important of all, as it feeds many others.
Don't use an automated submission service to register your site
with the major search engines, as some of the majors actually
boot your site out of their database if it's automatically
submitted (vs manually) entered and submitted.
Manually
register with the top search engines and directories and then,
if you want to have lots of valuable inbound links to you
site, sign up with an automated submission service but on their
list of choices, de-select the ones you already
registered with.
As you progress through the
eye-opening process of registering your site with search
engines, you'll discover countless opportunities for promotion
-- including online directories for your industry or interest
area that could provide valuable links to your site.
Before you begin the process,
have a sheet of paper handy which includes this information:
- Title for your site
- URL (beginning with http://)
- Ten- to fifteen-word
description for the site
- Name, address, phone and email
address for the contact person (yourself)
- Twenty keywords (some sites
request these)
Check our
master
search engine list and get started today.
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Start Promoting Today!
Contact Wordpix
for a free consultation |
