To: "General chatter and discussion about Actinic" <actinic.chatter@forums.actinic.com>
From: Greg Hewitt-Long <infous@webyourbusiness.com>
Subject: Search Engine Success - WAS - Re: Yahoo Listing
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>Try submitting to Google. Google do not charge. I understand Yahoo is
>powered by Google. I submitted a site to a new site to Google and it
>appeared on Yahoo within 7 days. Was that tactics or good luck ?
>
>Hope this saves you $299.
>
 
 

There is a way round all of the paid programs, EXCEPT - AltaVista - but their data is too crappy these days, we don't worry about it. Anyone using AltaVista to try and find anything useful is spending WAY too long on there, and is probably prone to clicking on banners too (read "Not too bright" - but if that's your market....)

If you use paid for placement in Goto.com - you get AOL, Netscape, Hotbot, Lycos and infoSpace - between them, about 12% so searches - this is the only 'good deal' in paid for placement I have found. But you need to do the maths - if your average cost per click is $1.00 or £1.00, and you need 25 clicks to get a sale, you have a cost per customer of £25 or $25 - if your profit margin is only 20 ($ or £) you're foolish to try and buy the sale this way.

Web Hosting and Domain Name sales - tight margins at the bottom end of the scale, and clicks that cost $5 or there abouts - most people buying hosting shop a dozen or more places before buying, and then they buy on impulse (or so it seems) - so we consider it lost money to advertise there. Your mileage may vary considerably.

Here is my run down of the search engines, and my top 12 tips for search engine success:

Google - the dream search engine (imho - the results surpass anything else on the net) - has partnership agreements with:

• Yahoo - this is your route to the world - crack yahoo, you crack 60% of search engine traffic
• Netscape - about 20% of browsers in the world are Netscape, NOT IE
• Virgin.net - Don't know how important this one is
• Virgilio - major Italian portal
• 163.com - yes, the Chinese portal you get all the spam from
• Nextel - one of the leaders in phone internet access here in the USA
• Palm - everyone wants one?!? Those next generation annoyances which beep in meetings despite people turning off their cell phones ("Oh - I forgot to turn off my Palm 28 ™!!" - subtext - Don't I think I'm cooler than Arctic frost!)

Oh and they partner with Cisco, but I'm not sure how you can capitalize on that one.

If you are in doubt as to what value a search engines has, search for their partner companies - these often tell you exactly how much you should value the engine.

Simply rule - there are only 10-12 search engines that matter:

Yahoo - #1 ([Deity] knows why!)

AOL/Compuserve/MSN - these Internet sanitizers screen/grab about 10-15% (some say 20% - but they would - they want you to buy into it)

The rest fall into

Google, DMOZ, NorthernLight, Excite, Lycos, Hotbot, InfoSeek, AskJeeves (crap), Goto.com and Fast

Anything else either doesn't have a single 1% of the search market, or uses the others to source it's data.

If you want to work at optimizing your site, think fast:

1. search engines give up loading pages at 40 seconds - if your page is this slow to load - change jobs.
2. if you use some kind of JavaScript or Java calls, or anything else that doesn't contribute to keywords, put it last on the page if you can.
3. meta-tags are important - research the major engines and find out their limits - either come up with a good balance of what works for most, or do separate pages for each engines - this is a LOT of work - but worth it - we used to do separate pages, but now don't consider it worth the effort in keeping up the maintenance
4. alt tags - if your images don't have them, and they aren't keyword rich - shoot yourself or get out of web site design
5. content - you need your content to relevant to the page meta-tags - don't try to cover too many areas in the meta-tags - if necessary, have more pages, but better defined - more intense keyword coverage in a specific area is MUCH better than being too vague - your page won't rank well on any particular keyword - so you won't get position - you NEED position - position = visitors, visitors = sales = money - no position = no money.
6. update your pages and keywords at least monthly - make a couple of different versions, and every month to 6 weeks, rotate them - even if you don't update you page, the search engine will read your page as being different. If you can't change the content, put in HTML comments and move them around every month - you need to remain fresh or you will lose hard earned position.
7. when you have position - leave your page alone for at least a month - change things SLOWLY and wait at least 3 weeks before the next change - you need to know WHAT loses you the position you have when it happens, and you need to reverse it immediately if it makes you fall in the major search engines.
8. don't be surprised when things go bad! Search engines change their ranking algorithms and get wise to all sorts of tricks which gain ranking - we recently lost all our AltaVista positions - TOTALLY dropped out - but we didn't care any more, they aren't worth anything to us, their results are POOR and they are one of the harder engines to maintain position in.
9. Don't expect results from search engines overnight - they are slow creatures - you can't expect them to re-index too frequently, and you'll probably find things change about once a month.
10. Don't copy meta-tags from sites that have better position and expect immediate results - there is far more to this than tags - content and who links to you are equally important.
11. link quantity isn't as good for you as link quality - a few strategic links from 'important' sites will do you more good than 1,000 links in FFA pages - FFA pages are for losers - they generate you tons of spam email and not much else - most search engineers use FFA pages by the thousand - they are a pain in the rear - avoid them.
12. track your submissions - use an email address you know for each engine and submission - for instance - use jan01@yourdomain.com for submitting to engines in January - you can get good results tracking these emails as they come in - find out who sells you name and avoid them. Make a spreadsheet and don't repeat submit to the same engines too quickly - if you always do the main engines in the first weekend of the month and work on smaller ones every weekend that follows, you will be ok - if you do the main engines every week - expect problems!

If all this is too much - hire a professional - we do it for a living - we won't tell you to update your site every month, but we'll do the submissions and the initial optimization - above all - we guarantee our results - don't accept services of a company that doesn't do the same!

I think I've covered the main points - if anyone has specific questions - I'm closed to questions from non-clients for the rest of today - I have LOTS of work to do!!

regards

Greg Hewitt-Long

We do Marketing of Web Sites of course - that's how we know all of the above! Greg Hewitt-Long is our Company President, a computer Programmer and a Web Designer, plus of course, a keen follower of Search Engines and their ranking tactics!

More information on our Search Engine Marketing can be found HERE