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By: Linda Rocco, Wed Feb 22nd, 2006
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:But, when I'm finished with it, it might look something like this:
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.