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The search engine landscape is changing. More and more search engines are
charging for site listing. And those that have been charging before, like
GoTo.com, are increasing their rates. Whereas time was the only resource you
needed before, the increasing monetary cost makes it all
the more important to get better rankings and results from search engines.
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Search engines have remained as the primary method Web surfers use to find
out about other sites. Consistently since 1994, GVU's WWW User Surveys find that
well over 80 percent of users find web sites this way. Even when consumers are
looking for a product to buy online, 28 percent go to a search engine and type
in the product name, according to a recent Jupiter Consumer survey.
Everyone knows that a good listing in a search engine could increase your
traffic. Yet not all Internet marketers know exactly how to harness the power of
search engines. In fact, ICONOCAST pointed out in their "ICONOPOLL: Search
Engine Optimization" report that, "Search engines are the most widely
used navigational tools and the most misunderstood promotional tools."
Are the search engines and directories doing the best job for you? There are
four ways you can track the effectiveness of your search engine strategies, and
these are:
- Look at the traffic you are getting from the search engines and
directories. In your site statistics, check which search engines have been
giving you traffic. To understand the importance of search engines to your site,
calculate what percentage of your total traffic comes from search engines. Make
a listing of the top engines that bring traffic to your site. Be sure that you
maintain, if not improve, the level of users that these top engines bring to
you. If you are not seeing results from engines that you submit your site for
listing, think of reasons why these low-performing engines are not giving you
the traffic that you expected.
- In your log files, list the keywords used by your
visitors. Now look at
the keywords that are driving traffic to your site. You'd be surprised
sometimes that the specific search terms visitors used to reach to your site are
not they keywords you are currently using in your meta-tags. In many cases,
visitors will not be coming through your front page, but in one of your
sub-pages.
- Compare the rankings of your
competitors. The good thing about search
engines is that you can easily compare how your site ranks relative to your
competitor. If your competitor gets a higher ranking than your site, then the
other site must be doing something right! If the opposite is true, then you can
give yourself a pat on the back with a stern reminder not to follow the
wrong strategy that your competitor is using.
- Take a peek at your competitors' meta
tags.
If your competitor is ranking better than your site, try to find out what he or she is doing right.
First off, check the source code of your competitor's site by right clicking
the mouse and hitting "View Source"¨ in IE or Control-U in Netscape. How does your competitor use
keywords in his or her meta tags? Perhaps you can "borrow" the same
keywords for your site. If your competitor is doing something right, be sure to
know it and apply those same techniques to your site.
To improve a site ranking in the engines, the ICONOCAST survey found that the
most effective methods are:
- Changing meta tags (61%)
- Changing page titles (44%)
- Reciprocal
linking (32%)
- Purchasing multiple domains (28%)
- Multiple home pages
(21%)
- Hiding key words in background (18%)
- Pay-per-click (13%)
Tweaking page titles and meta tags are very easy to do. If "Welcome to
ModemWorld"¨ is not working for you, then change it using your keywords to
"Modem Information, Troubleshooting and Updates."¨
I am not sure about hiding key words in background, as you might be penalized
if caught by some search engines. Doorway pages are also a questionable
strategy, yet a fifth of the respondents found it to be effective.
The lesson in this is that you have to continuously experiment how to drive
traffic to your site through the engines. You also need to look for ways to get
listed and stay listed in the engines. Make sure that you follow the cardinal
rule of search engine and directory placements: get your site is listed in the
right category, create the right site description, and continually monitor,
resubmit and update all this information to stay listed.
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