To get optimal listings in search engine and directory queries, keywords and key concepts must be placed strategically throughout your web pages. To summaries, you need these words and phrases in:
1. Title tags
2. Meta-tags (keywords and descriptions)
3. Headings (if used)
4. Body text, and
5. Alt-attribute in the image source tags
When online marketing professionals optimize a web site for search engine and directory queries, they should not spend most of their time redesigning the layout (in HTML) or submitting the site to the search engines. Most of their time should be spent on researching, writing good copy that will index well in search engines, and writing thorough, accurate descriptions for directory submissions. Good web copy must contain well-researched and varied keywords and key concepts based on a web page’s topic; accurately reflect the web pages’ content; and be strategically placed throughout a web page as mentioned above.
Most sales and advertising “fluff” should be eliminated.
Here’s an example (and one of our pet peeves). How many of you have seen this scam, “Put your printed brochure on the web!” Print advertising copy contains a lot of “fluff” phrases such as “service that is second to none.” Search engine analysis? “Service” is a stop word in some search engines and will be ignored in a search query. “Second to none?” How many people do you know really search using that phrase? When we are looking for something on the web, we are going to type in exactly the type of product or service we are looking for, not sales and advertising “fluff.”
Web copywriting should contain keywords and key concepts without all the “fluff.” Web copy has to flow and be strategically placed to get your web pages ranked well in search engine and directory queries. Your potential customers will also appreciate being able to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. That’s just good customer service.
The one time that web copywriting is extremely important is your site submission to Yahoo. Although Yahoo reserves the right to change or modify the site description you send them, if you can submit a well-written description containing your most important keywords and key concepts without word stacking, Yahoo will likely keep most of your description intact.
Good copywriting is a necessary element of both online and offline marketing. If you do not have experience in writing good copy for the web, we recommend that you hire an online marketing consultant to initially write the copy for you. Then you can learn from the copy you paid for. The more practice you get at web copywriting, the better you will get at it.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Search Engine Submission Myths
Search engine submission is a matter that often mystifies those who are new to the Internet. It is natural to scratch your head and wonder how you will get your website listed on the major search engines. If you ask someone how to go about getting your site listed you are likely to hear many misconceptions about search engine submission. You may even be taken for a ride and end up needlessly parting with some hard earned cash. So, before this happens to you let’s examine some of the most common myths surrounding search engine submission.
1. Search engine submission is a very important matter
It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you? Sure, you have to be included in the search engines but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to actively “submit” your site. This is because search engines use their “spiders”, or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. If another site, that is already included in the search engines, links to yours, then when a search engine spider visits that site, it will follow the link to your site and gather your information.
So, if you are building a new site make sure that you get some links to your sites from already established sites. Ask your webmaster, your friends, other organizations and complementary sites for links. This will be enough to get you listed in the major search engines. You may still want to submit your site to make sure, but consider the other points before you go ahead
2. There are thousands of search engines that you should be listed in
“Get listed in 300,000 search engines” read the headlines for some submission advertisements. If you look at the traffic logs of most websites you will see that the lion’s share of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. There just aren’t thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don’t pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam.
Concentrate on the major search engines and don’t worry about the non-existent phantoms referred to in the advertisements.
3. Monthly submission to search engines is a must
In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages.
It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is “down” for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.
Also, you don’t have to resubmit your site to notify search engines about changes to your page or pages. The spiders of search engines regularly revisit pages that are already in the index. You can in fact create a “robots” meta tag and give instructions such as “revisit every 15 days” and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.
4. Automatic submissions are useless and you must submit manually
There is often a hot debate about whether manual submissions are better than automatic submissions. For Yahoo, MSN and Google it is now better to do it with a manual submission because all of these engines require you to fill in a code word that is displayed on the screen. These search engines instituted this procedure to block out automated spam submissions. So, for the giants of search, manual submission is the way to go.
What about the secondary sites? There are smaller search engines and directories. Some of them can be useful to you, especially if they represent a particular geographic area or business niche that you are aiming for. If the list of these secondary engines and directories becomes too large, then you may want to consider automated submission. There are some programs that do this or you can find submission services that are free or inexpensive, which brings us to the last myth.
5. You should be prepared to spend a lot of money to get proper submission
If you look at the first point you will see that you probably don’t have to do any submission at all to get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Bing. These are the search engines that will provide you with 90% of your visitors. So, do you really want to spend a good amount of money to reach the last 5 or 10 per cent of your possible visitors? Look around for a free or inexpensive service to take care of the secondary search engines, and if there are smaller search engines that are very important to your business, then visit them yourself and submit your listing. Save your money for other important tasks.
1. Search engine submission is a very important matter
It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you? Sure, you have to be included in the search engines but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to actively “submit” your site. This is because search engines use their “spiders”, or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. If another site, that is already included in the search engines, links to yours, then when a search engine spider visits that site, it will follow the link to your site and gather your information.
So, if you are building a new site make sure that you get some links to your sites from already established sites. Ask your webmaster, your friends, other organizations and complementary sites for links. This will be enough to get you listed in the major search engines. You may still want to submit your site to make sure, but consider the other points before you go ahead
2. There are thousands of search engines that you should be listed in
“Get listed in 300,000 search engines” read the headlines for some submission advertisements. If you look at the traffic logs of most websites you will see that the lion’s share of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. There just aren’t thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don’t pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam.
Concentrate on the major search engines and don’t worry about the non-existent phantoms referred to in the advertisements.
3. Monthly submission to search engines is a must
In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages.
It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is “down” for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.
Also, you don’t have to resubmit your site to notify search engines about changes to your page or pages. The spiders of search engines regularly revisit pages that are already in the index. You can in fact create a “robots” meta tag and give instructions such as “revisit every 15 days” and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.
4. Automatic submissions are useless and you must submit manually
There is often a hot debate about whether manual submissions are better than automatic submissions. For Yahoo, MSN and Google it is now better to do it with a manual submission because all of these engines require you to fill in a code word that is displayed on the screen. These search engines instituted this procedure to block out automated spam submissions. So, for the giants of search, manual submission is the way to go.
What about the secondary sites? There are smaller search engines and directories. Some of them can be useful to you, especially if they represent a particular geographic area or business niche that you are aiming for. If the list of these secondary engines and directories becomes too large, then you may want to consider automated submission. There are some programs that do this or you can find submission services that are free or inexpensive, which brings us to the last myth.
5. You should be prepared to spend a lot of money to get proper submission
If you look at the first point you will see that you probably don’t have to do any submission at all to get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Bing. These are the search engines that will provide you with 90% of your visitors. So, do you really want to spend a good amount of money to reach the last 5 or 10 per cent of your possible visitors? Look around for a free or inexpensive service to take care of the secondary search engines, and if there are smaller search engines that are very important to your business, then visit them yourself and submit your listing. Save your money for other important tasks.
Leveraging Your Content for Google
The Search Engine Optimization Quality guidelines have a direct impact on how search engines rank your website in search results and your website’s page rank. While they are listed as “suggestions” wise people are advised to listen REAL CAREFULLY when Google talks search engine optimization guidelines. Failure to follow them may have their website from being removed from Google. Worse than death (at least you have a grave stone) banishment removes your site from Google’ and partner sites. Here are search engine optimization techniques to stay friends with Google and sleep soundly at night… (while thousands of people visit your website)
First of all, forget search engine ranking and website design and concentrate on website content. Create a enough web pages to give a sense of what visitors will experience on your site. Email pages to people for their comments and feedback on your subject. Soon you’ll have a sense of what you have to offer and how to design your website. With the emphasis on content useful information to people, website design is logical and quick.
How will people reach the pages on your website. A proven SEO approach is to provide a simple hierarchy and text links for your website along with a site map. If you don’t have one, Google offers an online site map generator. It seems like an obvious search engine positioning technique, but worth repeating – a visitor should be able to reach each page from a static text link. Your site map point to the right page and also boosts your search engine ranking – not a bad deal. For large site maps… over a hundred links, create smaller site maps.
An important search engine marketing tool is the proper placement of titles on your web page – H1, H2, H3, and so forth. These title tags guide the search engine though you page and help it determine what to read first, second and so on. The main subject of the page should be identified with an H1 title tags and secondary subject with an H2 tag and so forth. The proper use of titles benefits both the reader and search engine optimization.
Do you just go nuts trying to write the perfect meta tags? Join the club! While what’s in the meta tags are important.. how should we say, “It’s what’s in the bun that counts! In other words, search engine positioning techniques such as meta tags are secondary to what’ written on the page. Create useful, useful, entertaining content and your meta tags will write themselves. Be sure that your pages have the words listed in the meta tags and display important names, content, or links in text not pictures. Got that? See you in Google Heaven!
Enhance Content
First of all, forget search engine ranking and website design and concentrate on website content. Create a enough web pages to give a sense of what visitors will experience on your site. Email pages to people for their comments and feedback on your subject. Soon you’ll have a sense of what you have to offer and how to design your website. With the emphasis on content useful information to people, website design is logical and quick.
Site Maps
How will people reach the pages on your website. A proven SEO approach is to provide a simple hierarchy and text links for your website along with a site map. If you don’t have one, Google offers an online site map generator. It seems like an obvious search engine positioning technique, but worth repeating – a visitor should be able to reach each page from a static text link. Your site map point to the right page and also boosts your search engine ranking – not a bad deal. For large site maps… over a hundred links, create smaller site maps.
Web Page Hierarchy
An important search engine marketing tool is the proper placement of titles on your web page – H1, H2, H3, and so forth. These title tags guide the search engine though you page and help it determine what to read first, second and so on. The main subject of the page should be identified with an H1 title tags and secondary subject with an H2 tag and so forth. The proper use of titles benefits both the reader and search engine optimization.
Meta Tag Mania – Search Engine Marketing
Do you just go nuts trying to write the perfect meta tags? Join the club! While what’s in the meta tags are important.. how should we say, “It’s what’s in the bun that counts! In other words, search engine positioning techniques such as meta tags are secondary to what’ written on the page. Create useful, useful, entertaining content and your meta tags will write themselves. Be sure that your pages have the words listed in the meta tags and display important names, content, or links in text not pictures. Got that? See you in Google Heaven!
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