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You_CAN_get_over_50000_hits_to_your_web_site_every_month
| You CAN get over 50,000 hits to your web site every month!
Naturally, you ask "how?". You might think this is a lot of
hype, but its not. My Ecommerce web site gets well over that
number of hits every month and I don't even purchase banner
space anywhere on the Internet. So, how do I do it. It's simple.
Search Engine Submissions
I'm sure you've seen numerous companies claiming that by
submitting your site to 1000+ search engines, that you will get
tons more traffic to your web site. Is this true? Maybe. But
wait, you just said that the success of gummylump.com was due to
search engine submissions. Right. Let me explain.
You can submit your web site to 1000 search engines a day, every
single day for the next year and never get a good ranking in any
of them. How come? There is a lot of work to be done before you
submit your site. I like to think of it as 3 Steps. 1. HEAD
content of page 2. Image Tags 3. Site Content
First, you need to know how Search Engine submissions work.
Generally you go to the Search Engine (ie. Excite) and add your
site. Once you do that Excite send a robot or spider (a little
search program) to your web site to scour it and see what it's
all about. The robot or spider also travels through every link
on your site and scours those pages as well. Once it has
collected all its data, it reports back to Excite where the
information gets indexed or filed according to its content. Then
the indexed web sites show up in a particular order depending of
the keyword(s) searched. Although every Search Engine has its
own method of determining the ranking of web sites, the
information below is bound to help you enormously in your fight
to be at the top.
In all three of these steps the most important thing to think
about is keywords. Keywords can be words or phrases. They are
the words or phrases that people will search for in order to
find a site of your topic. So, in this example we are using a
pet store. Therefore some words or phrases people would use to
find a pet store would be "pet", "pet store", "pet shop", "pet
supplies", "pets". In addition, people might search for specific
products or brands. So, more keywords would be "IAMS", "Science
Diet", and "catnip". Once you have a good sense of the most
important keywords for your web site, you're ready to start
changing some of the HTML code and content (text and images that
show up in your web site).
1. The HTML of your index page is especially important. There is
a section called the . This section is extremely important
to spruce up before submitting your site to a search engine.
Before a client sees me for help, his HTML typically looks like
this: Joe's Pet Supplies
But, when I'm finished with it, it might look something like
this: Pet supplies and pet toys. Joe's Pet
Store. pet supplies, pet shop, pet products,
pets
This is just an example.
There are rules about the length of any one of the above tags.
For example, the meta description tag should be less than 200
characters (characters include spaces). The title tag should be
less than 50 characters. The meta keywords tag can be up to 1000
characters. So, in the example above I would have added many
more words and phrases for a real client.
Once you've set up the HEAD section of your index page, it's
time to tackle the Image Tags in your document. All of your
Images should be named and have ALT tags as well. This is
something that many web designers overlook. Keeping your
keywords (and phrases) in mind, check all of your images to make
sure that they have these 2 important elements. This simple step
will help you enormously with your search engine submissions. If
you use an editor such as Dreamweaver, you can just open your
index page and click on an image. In the Properties Inspector,
you'll see the opportunity to give the image a name and an ALT
tag. Keywords, keywords, keywords. So, in our Pet Store example
if the image was the logo for the store, a good Image name would
be "pet_store_logo". A good ALT tag would be "pet store logo" or
"Pet supplies, pet toys, pet food, pet shop". The ALT tag only
shows up in PC's when the mouse hovers over the image, so as
long as the ALT tag is relevant to the picture you'll be fine.
In Mac's the ALT tag will be seen before the picture loads.
By including keyword rich Image Names and Alt tags throught your
index page, you will be giving the spiders and robots lots of
content for indexing. So, if you used to name the image of your
logo "logo", I hope you know better now.
3. Site Content. Content is the "stuff" of your web site. It's
all the words and images that make up your web site. The most
important thing to remember about content is that keyword rich
text will help you the most. What are the words on your page? I
don't mean the gif's that look like words, I mean actual text.
Read them very carefully. Are you using your keywords and
phrases or are you just rambling on about your store location
and directions? Especially on your index page (first page) you
should have all of the most important keywords and phrases.
Repeating them is even better.Please don't interpret that to
mean that you would have the words "Welcome to my pet pet pet
pet store". That would be funny, but that's not what I mean.
Instead, here's a good example for the Pet Store: "We welcome
you and your pet to our pet supply store. Our pet shop has been
open for business for over 15 years in New Jersey. Now, all pets
and all pet owners can enjoy our great prices on every pet need
from dog and cat food, to chew toys, to dog grooming supplies.
Our virtual pet shop is open 24 hrs a day 365 days a week. Enjoy
savings on brands such as IAMS, and Science Diet. What are you
waiting for? Doesn't your lovable pet deserve a special treat
today?" Notice which words are being used repeatedly.
Invest in a software program that can track your Search Engine
Rankings for you. Web Position Gold is reasonably priced $99 and
will keep track of up multiple web sites, with multiple
keywords. It's an easy to use program that will help you keep
track of your progress. Or, if you're a Webmaster, it'll help
you in preparing reports for your clients.
Now that you know how to get your site listed on the first page
of the Search Engines, get started. Please, don't get impatient.
It is going to initially take you at least 6 weeks to get your
web site listed with the major Search Engines. You don't have to
submit your web site to 1000 Search Engines. You only need to
submit your web site to the Top 6 or so including Yahoo, Excite,
Lycos, Alta Vista, Hot Bot and Web Crawler. Just between the top
2 (Yahoo and Excite) you'll cover over 60% of all online
searches. So, if you can be on Page 1 in Excite for a few of
your chosen keywords, your web site is being exposed to hundreds
of thousands of searchers per day!
If you find that after 2 months, you aren't showing up where you
want to be, then do a little research. Check which sites are
ranking best for your keywords, look at their HEAD section,
their image tags, and their content. You'll get some great
ideas. Borrow them and resubmit to the Search Engine you need
to. Then, wait approx. 6 weeks for an update.
If you are diligent your site will soon have thousands of
visitors per day and per week, instead of the measely few
stragglers that are finding it today. Best of all it costs you
nothing but a little time and effort.
About the author:
Linda Rocco. I am a web designer, online marketer and Owner of
Web Spinners Design Co. (www.webspinnersdesignco.com) and Gummy
Lump wooden toys (www.gummylump.com). I also teach Web Design
and Online Marketing at a NYS accredited school.
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