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Monday, April 19, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Your key to high search engine ranking
It seems like more and more search engines are using link popularity as a part of their ranking process. Google certainly follows this method and uses it as its most important factor for ranking sites. Other big search engines like Altavista, Hotbot, MSN, Lycos, Northern Light, Inktomi, Excite are following by using link popularity as part of their their ranking algorithms.
What is Link Popularity?
Literally speaking, link popularity means the number of sites linking to your site. However, this does not mean that you should aim at getting thousands of sites linking to yours. However, if you are aiming to get a high ranking in the search engines, you need to know that the quality of links is more important that the quantity of links. If your site is linked to many popular sites then you are sure to get a higher ranking than if it is linked to hundreds of unpopular sites. The idea behind link popularity is that other sites will link to you only if you are a quality site offering quality resources. So, if many sites link to you it follows that you are a popular site and therefore deserve a high ranking.
Look at link popularity as a way of getting more traffic to your site. So, by getting other sites linking to you, you are not only ranked higher in the search engines, you also have a large volume of targeted traffic coming to your site.
With the competition increasing daily, getting a good ranking in the search engines is of utmost importance. If you really want a high ranking with the search engines, you need to follow a focussed linking strategy.
Let's look at some of the linking strategies you can adopt:
1. Writing articles on your area of expertise
Writing quality articles is a sure way of attracting visitors to your site. What could be easier than writing what you know about? So write a great article, find sites that are related to your area of service and submit your article to all those sites. If it's a quality article it's a sure bet. For e.g. we offer free website design and promotion tutorials on our site.
2. Reciprocal Links
Asking webmasters of other sites to link to you is a good way of getting links to your site. Politely ask the webmaster (preferably using their name) to add your link to their site. You could tell them that you have added their link to your site, give them a brief description of what your site is about and how it will fit into their site. If you have a good site most probably other sites will want to link to you.
Tip: A great way to find people who may be willing to link to you is to check your competition's link popularity through a search engine. You can do this by typing: link:/www.yoursite.com or through an online tool such as linkpopularity.com.
Other link popularity strategies involve submitting to FFA'a or Free For All page and submitting to all the major and minor directories.
Finally, every week or so, make a list of the new sites which you know have linked to you over the past week. Also, have a look at your site statistics and find out the new sites from which you have received traffic. Submit each of these pages to the search engines. This ensures that the search engines have spidered the pages which are linked to you.
# Meta tags
The first and most important step is to create relevant meta tags after studying your competition and coming up with the most important keywords for you site. All the pages in your web site must have the relevant keywords, title and description.
# Keywords in your Content
The keywords used in your meta tags should be repeated in your content - specially in the heading and the first paragraph.
# Alt Tags
Put your keywords in the image alt tags. Some search engines index the alt tags.
The golden rule for effective search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking with the search engines.
# Create Doorway Pages
Create doorway pages for your most important keywords. These keyword specific pages will rank higher in the search engines and can be used as a doorway to your site.
# Site Readiness
Directory submissions are reviewed by people, so make sure your site is 100% complete before submitting it.
# No special Symbols in your URL
Don't put any special symbols in your URL (e.g. &, %,=, $ ,? ). Search engines cannot recognize these symbols.
# Don't Spam
Try to stay in the search engines' good books by not spamming. Spamming includes excessive keyword repetition, machine generated doorway pages with little or no content and pages that contain invisible text.
# Submit to the Major Search Engines and Directories
Make sure you have submitted your web site to the 10 big search engines and directories. Most of your traffic will be generated from these search engines. Keep checking to see if your web site is indexed. Dmoz, Direct Hit and Inktomi seem to be gaining a lot of importance so make sure that you are listed in these sites. Their results are used by a number of other important search engines.
# Don't change the URL of your pages after submission
Never change the path of any of your web pages after submitting your web site. Don't rename a file or change the file extension. This can really hurt your promotion efforts because it will show up as a dead link in the search results page.
# Be Patient
Don't expect miracles overnight. It may take anywhere from 2 weeks to 5 months to be indexed in the big search engines and directories. Keep checking every week and be patient. Continue to add quality content to your site. That will be a sure winner.
Analyzing your site traffic to know your visitors
Using a web site statistics tool is an absolute must for all those of you you are serious about site promotion and Internet marketing. You need a reliable traffic analysis tool to know what are your total hits, how many visitors are coming to your site, where they are coming from, and other important visitor information.
Lets see how web site statistics can help us. We have explained some important terms that you will come across while analyzing your statistics and how you can use them to understand your traffic.
* Visitor/Unique: A visitor is a unique person that visits your site. He/She may travel through many pages in your site but will be counted as only one person. E.g. After reading this article you may choose to click on some of our other articles on web site promotion. Whether you read only this article or many articles, our statistics will show you as one visitor.
* Hit or Page View: The number of times your web site has been hit i.e. Each time a page is viewed on your web site it is a counted as a hit or a page view. E.g. Every time you click on one of our links our hits will increase by one.
This information is very useful and needs to be tracked on a regular basis to see if your hits and visitors are increasing, decreasing or remaining stagnant. At one glance you will be able see if your promotion efforts are paying off or not (If your visitors and hits are continuously increasing it is fantastic).
You should also check if your page views are proportionately much higher than your visitors. If it is, its good news! This means that your visitors are interested in what your site has to offer and are moving around the site. If it is almost the same or just double then it means visitors are only viewing one or two pages and then clicking out of your site. Tip: Make sure you have a good navigation system so that visitors can easily find what they are looking for.
Other Terms
* Referrer Domain: This is the URL through which your visitors come to your site. It could be a search engine, directory or just another site that has linked to you. Using referrer information you can find out where your visitors are coming from and where you are getting the most traffic from. It is also a useful way to find out if you are indexed and ranked high on a particular search engine. As soon as you see visitors coming to your site through a particular search engine you know that you are indexed and ranked pretty high. If you find that even after 2-3 months you aren't getting visitors from certain search engines, it probably means you are either not indexed in their database or are not ranked high.
* Stats by monitored page: This tells you the hits for each of your pages. Through these stats you will be able to tell which are your most popular pages and which pages are not being visit. Use your popular pages to draw visitors within the site. Give them a special offer or put cool links to get them to visit the rest of your site. Resubmit or work on the pages that are not getting hits.
These are some of the important things that you must look at. Other useful information includes hourly stats, browsers and platforms, stats by location and weekly and monthly stats.
A friendly piece of advice - Be patient :)
Don't expect visitors to come flocking to your site right after you submit your site to the search engines and directories. Search Engines will take approx. 2-3 weeks to index your site and since directories are reviewed by people they will take much longer, sometimes upto 6 months. Be patient and use this time to develop quality content in your site that you can promote by getting other sites to link to you. But don't forget to check your site statistics everyday.
There are plenty of free search engine submission tools available on the Net. While some of them promise to submit your site to hundreds of search engines, my personal favorites are those that submit web sites to only 20-40 major search engines. The reason is simple - these search engines generate approximately 85% of web site traffic. I hardly get any traffic from the other search engines.
First time submission? Do it manually
Before telling you about the search engine submission tools available, I'd like to tell you that it's really easy to submit to search engines and I recommend very strongly that you submit manually. I have made a page that gives you the URLs of the submit pages of all the major search engines, and tips to submit to these engines. It will only take an hour or two of your time and you will be able to see the confirmation of your URL being submitted. You can read my article on Search Engine Submission and find out just how easy it is.
Use free tools to update or resubmit
You must be wondering why I'm recommending manual submission, when this article is about free automatic search engine submission services. Well, as these free tools are available on the Net we should make use of them. Here's what I suggest - After manually submitting to all the search engines your web site promotion efforts are not over. You have to resubmit every 2 months or so and also submit new pages that you have added to your web site That's when you should use these tools. Try them out and update your site in the search engines in just seconds.
Free Search Engine Submission Sites/Tools
* Submit Corner
You'll like this submission tool because it allows you to choose the search engines you want to submit to. This wizard usually takes under 30 seconds and you'll have your site submitted to the top engines instantly. It also has other cool tools you can use to optimize and improve your web site. It's a great resource site!
http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Submit/
* Submitplus
Good tool because you have to fill only two fields (Email and URL) and their service effectively submits your web site to the top 10 search engines in less than 1 minute! Its other cool features include real time status reporting, live confirmation link and an email report.
http://www.submitplus.com/top10.htm
* Cyberid
Simply fill in the form and click 'Submit' - you will be able to verify each entry by clicking the relevant hyperlink. They also have a FREE Meta-Tag Builder that you can use to ensure that your tags are optimized for the Search Engine Spiders.
http://www.cyberid.co.uk/submit.htm
* Add Me
Submit your site to the top 30 most popular search engines and directories.
http://www.addme.com/submission.htm
* Webtoolcentral
Here's another simple form to fill up. You can also choose the search engines that you want to submit to.
http://www.webtoolcentral.com/webmaster/tools/site_submit/
Meta Search Engine Characteristics
A meta search engine itself does not index or rank web sites. Instead, it queries multiple web sites simultaneously and will deliver a page of combined results of the best sites from each search engine. The higher you rank on each individual search engine, the higher your site will rank on a meta search engine.
Note: You don't need to submit your site to metacrawlers as they query other search engines to get results.
The Major Metacrawlers
* Dogpile
Popular metasearch site that sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites, then displays results from each search engine individually. Owned by Go2Net, which also owns MetaCrawler.
* MetaCrawler
It is one of the oldest meta search services. MetaCrawler queries the top search engines including Altavista, Looksmart, Lycos, GoTo, Direct Hit, Google, and Infoseek (Go Network).
* Mamma
Sends search requests to major search services, with results a bit heavy from search engines that sell listings.
What is a Directory?
A directory does not use robots to index a site. All sites that are indexed are directly done by people. You need to submit your web site under a particular category, after which an editor will review your site and then accept or reject your site according to its quality.
Guidelines while submitting to Directories
* Make sure your site is 100% up and running, with no "under construction" signs. Good site design, fast loading pages, and content are important, especially for Yahoo.
* From the homepage of a directory take your time and find the appropriate category your site fits into. You can do a keyword search using your most important keywords or key phrases and note the category that lists these sites. That will probably be the best category for your site. You may also have multiple categories, in which case you must submit under all the suitable categories.
* Once you have found a suitable category, look out for a "Suggest a site" or an "Add URL" link. Click on this link to submit your site.
* Before rushing off to submit your site, carefully read their suggestions on how to submit. They REALLY mean it. Follow their instructions to the absolute letter.
* Since Directories do not use robots, everything indexed into a directory is done by people. No META tags, ALT image tags, HTML comments or image maps will help your performance here. Your best bet is to describe your site accurately and the final decision of adding your web site to a directory's database rests with the editor who reviews your web site. Best of luck!
Search Engine submission is an important factor that could help make your business succeed online. In order to get the best results from search engines, Entheos offers you the following web site submission tips.
Before you start the process of submitting your web site to all the major search engines, make sure that you have optimized your web pages and checked your site thoroughly. If you would like to learn more about this, read our article on Preparing your web pages for effective web site promotion leading to high search engine ranking
It's easy! Just read our tips, click on our links and submit your site
In this section we have made a list of all the major search engines which will drive approximately 80% of visitor traffic to your site. These are the search engines that you need to focus on getting listed in. We have given tips on submitting to these search engines and have provided links to their 'Add URL' pages. All you have to do is read our tips, click on our links and submit your site to the top search engines. It's that simple. You'll be finished in just an hour or two.
Are you ready? Have fun. Work hard. Get ready for a lot of traffic!
Altavista Search Engine
AltaVista usually adds a page within a few days. It's best to submit only a few URLs per day to them, even though they appear to accept as many as you try to feed them. For whatever reason, they just don't seem to index them as quickly if you give them a lot at once. All you need to do is submit your URL.
Submit to Altavista here
Google Search Engine
Google is one of our personal favorites. It makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them. The system works so well that Google has gained widespread praise for its high relevancy. Google also provides some results to Yahoo and Netscape Search. Submit only your homepage URL. It will automatically index the entire site.
Submit to Google here
Excite Search Engine
Excite claims it takes about two weeks to add a submitted URL to its index. Sometimes, but not always. You'll need to be very persistent with them. But take the time to do it, Excite is the primary search service for the new giant AOL/Netscape.
Submit to Excite here
Lycos Search Engine
Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from either Direct Hit or Lycos' own spider. Just follow their simple instructions and don't expect immediate results from your submission. Again, your best bet is to get indexed in the Open Directory project.
Submit to Lycos here
MSN Search Engine
Enter your URL, e-mail, site name and site description to submit your site.
Submit to MSN here
Fast Search Engine
Enter your URL, category and e-mail address to submit your site. The Norwegian company behind FAST Search also powers some of the results that appear at Lycos
http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site
Check your site with these free site analysis tools
Before you hurry off to submit your web site to all the search engines and directories, remember to check your web site thoroughly to see if your web site is optimized. There are a number of free web site analysis tools available on the net that will check your site for spelling mistakes, dead links, browser compatibility, html design and loading time. They will also rate your web site on a scale of poor to excellent. Checking your site with these online tools will take only a minute of your time will give you a lot of valuable information about your site.
You know how frustrating it is to wait for a page to load. Most of the time you won't bother to wait for more than 30 seconds or so, and if a page has still not loaded you might think 'To hell with it - I'm going somewhere else'. Another often frustrating problem is to click on a link only to find the following error on your screen: 'The requested URL does not exist'. This is known as a dead link. It could happen by giving a wrong link or by deleting a page that is linked to other pages in your site. And when you see a spelling mistake, your response is probably 'If they haven't checked their own web site for spelling mistakes, are they professional enough for me!'
Make sure your web site loads fast and it doesn't have any dead links or spelling mistakes. You could lose tons of visitors if you don't optimize your web site.
Web site Analysis and Optimization Tools
Among the many web site improvement tools available, we have listed only the best ones - and the best part is, they also happen to be FREE! We have used these tools on entheosweb.com and have changed the site according to their suggestions, to get a good rating. They seem to give different results for the load time but you can take an average of these results to get a better idea of your web site load time.
Some of our Favorite Tools
* Netmechanic
This is our absolute favorite. We strongly recommend that you use this tool for checking your load time, spelling mistakes, and browser compatibility. The report generated is concise and easy to understand. You can also use the HTML design report along with the Hit Box HTML report.
http://netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm
* Website Garage
This tool offers two extra checks i.e. Link Popularity and Register-It! Readiness. Your load time results may not be accurate as it does not recognize Flash and other plug-ins.
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
* Hitbox
If you would like to be cheered up with your web site load time go to Hitbox to get a good report on your load time. You will find that there is a big difference in these results when compared to the other tools. We recommend that you use the HTML design report along with the Netmechanic HTML report to get a good idea of how to improve the HTML design in your site.
http://www.hitbox.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?tools/doc
* Bobby
If you want a strict evaluation of your web site we recommend you use Bobby. If you pass his stringent criteria you can get a Bobby Approved stamp.
Preparing your web pages with meta tags for effective search engine submission and ranking
Crafting your meta tags is the most important step in Search Engine submission. A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. It provides information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices. The most important meta tags you need to focus on are the Title, Keywords and Description tags. So, lets get right into it!
Step 1: Prepare a list of Keywords and Key Phrases
What are Keywords?
Keywords are words that your customers would enter into a search engine to find your site. E.g. while searching for a web developer you would type 'web developers' , 'web designers' , 'web development companies' , 'web site development' as possible keyword searches.
Guidelines while preparing your keywords
1. Make a list of your target audiences - This must include all possibilities. Compiling a list of your target audience will help you know what they are searching for in search engines. E.g. Small businessmen, fellow web developers, corporates, professionals. Each of these target audiences will have different needs and interests which you should address in your web site.
2. While keeping in mind your target audience, make a list of keywords and key phrases that describe your site. Put yourself in their shoes and think of the words they would type in a search engine to find you.
3. Come up with as many keywords and key phrases as you can.
o As in the example I gave above, I would put 'web designers', 'web site development' , 'global web development', 'professional web developers', 'web promotion' ,'dynamic web site development' as possible key phrases.
o Use plurals - e.g. 'web developer', 'web developers'
o Use important words in different forms - e.g. 'develop web sites', 'web site developers' , 'web-site development' , 'developing web sites'
o Don't use the same word more than 4 times. Try using it in different forms instead. E.g. web site, web-site, web sites. Using the same keyword more than 4 times may be considered spamming in some search engines and may cause you to be blacklisted.
4. Keep your keywords meta tag length between 200 and 500 characters.
Step 2: Deciding on your Title and Description
What is a Title and Description?
Title - This is what appears on the title bar when you open a web site. This is also the link you see in the search results page of any search engine.
Description - This is the description of the site (1-2 lines) which appears along with the title in the search results page.
An example of a Title and Description
Title - Web site design and development, DHTML, Flash, Promotion
Description - Developing creative, innovative and cost-effective static and dynamic web sites. We believe in making your business succeed online by expanding your business to the Global Marketplace, find out what makes us so unique.
Guidelines while deciding on your title and description
* The golden rule while preparing your pages for search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description and content of your web page.
* Make sure that your title and description is populated with your most important keywords. At the same time it should be a 'grabber', as your potential clients will read your title and description and based on that synopsis of your site, decide to click and enter your site. Make sure that they are catchy and grab a person's attention.
* Keep your title between 15 and 20 words and your description between 100 and 200 characters.
While preparing your web pages remember to also use your important keywords in your alt tags. Some search engines also index the alt tags. An alt tag is a name given to an image that is used in your site. You can see a sample of an alt tag by pointing your cursor entheosweb.com on this page. In a second you'll see a box appear below. That's the alt tag. Don't underestimate its importance.
The next (optional) step in search engine submission is to use free online tools to make sure that your site does not have any spelling mistakes, dead links, HTML and browser compatibility problems. These tools also test your site loading time and give your site an overall ranking. They are very useful and will take only a minute of your time. This will ensure that your site is ready to be submitted to the search engines
How do people find you on the Internet?
Through words, of course.
Carefully chosen words and keywords will determine your website or web page's rankings on the Search Engines, and will pull visitors to your site.
Not just any visitors, but people who want and need your product or service. Targeted Web traffic.
Once they've come to your site, how do you ensure you make a sale?
Again, through the right choice of words.
Words prompt people to think, consider the options, decide, and most important, take action.
Words make the sale
What are these words?
* Credible words
It's important that your web content is believable and sincere. Or you may drive visitors away instead of attracting them.
Millions of sites use words that are overstatements or exaggerated claims. Words like "killer apps", "incredible results", "never before", "world-famous", "extraordinary features" and a whole lot more, usually followed with several exclamation marks!!!!! Limit yourself to a single exclamation mark where relevant, or drop those marks altogether.
Unless the words above are backed up by research or documented evidence, most of your visitors would discount the exaggerations and feel the claims are untrue. How would they trust you with their money?
* Simple words
Use quality words, information-rich words, yet easy-to-understand words.
* Powerful words
Use keyword-rich and targeted words, designed to bring the right people to your site.
This is specially important while writing descriptions and ads to promote your site, writing headlines and subheads, writing words in bold or coloured text for easily scannable content.
* Action words
Words like "Free offer", "Free resources", "Big Discount", "Sale", "Free trial", "Try us out", are powerful action-generating words.
* Documented words
Use research to back up claims of product superiority.
Use client testimonials to assure people that you deliver on your promises.
If you add links that lead to more information on the subject, your visitor can check out the authenticity of your statements.
Quotes from experts in the field you are writing about, add weight to your statements
* Thought-provoking words
How often have you read a whole article because the headline triggered a whole thought-process?
This is a highly effective way to draw the reader's attention.
And, as you know, readers are 25% slower while reading on the Web.
All the more reason to grab their attention:
o with a question in the headline
o with a paradox or apparent contradiction in facts
o with a bold statement that refutes popular beliefs
Naturally, such attention-getting devices have to be backed up by persuasive content that retains the reader's interest or puts forward a different point of view
* Persuasive words
Just like a salesman in a shop or office, your content needs to sell a product or service.
The difference is that the Web is a virtual showroom, where you don't have the advantage of using body language like energetic gestures, smiles and a tone of voice that draws and holds attention.
Your visitor has the freedom to click out of your website at any time she chooses.
The words you use can persuade her to stay, take a tour, look at the services you provide, see what other clients have to say, buy your product or give you a project.
* Don't force the sale
The best salesmen know when to persuade and when to withdraw, to let their customers make up their minds whether to buy or not.
Sometimes, your customer may check out your site with interest and yet not make a purchase until he has checked out other sites offering similar products. Don't give up! Once his interest is aroused, he may come back to you a week later and buy a product.
This is when your response to email or telephone enquiries (so dependent on words) will determine whether he is encouraged to come back or to give up the idea of buying from you.
When writing for the web, use
* shorter sentences, words and paragraphs
* one idea per paragraph
* concise text - half the word count (or less) than writing for print
* the inverted pyramid style, putting the most important point or the conclusion first.
* simple words
* objective language to build credibility, rather than exaggerated claims or overly promotional words like "great", "tremendous" etc.
* bulleted lists
* highlighted text (bold or color, also hyperlinked text) for scannability
* meaningful headlines and subheads, avoiding cute or clever lines
Write better web content.
Understand how people (don't) read on the Web
1. Reading on the web is too much work!
Reading from a computer screen tires the eyes. People read 25% more slowly on the web than they read print material.
That's why, web content has to be 50% shorter than print.
2. Readers on the Web scan text
According to a study by usability expert Jacob Nielson, 79% of readers on the Web tend to scan or skim text rather than read word for word.
Highlighted text (bold or color, also hyperlinked text) and bulleted lists aid scannability.
3. Readers on the Web are impatient
Readers on the Web are in a hurry to get the information they want, and move on.
They don't have the patience for obscure and complex text. They don't enjoy scrolling through masses of text either.
Since there are millions of alternative websites in cyberspace, they will quickly move to another site if they don't enjoy the information gathering experience on your site.
Attracting attention and retaining reader interest is a challenge, specially as you have just
* 10 seconds to grab attention with your web site content
* 55 seconds to develop an understanding of your company or product
To combat reader fatigue, make it easy for your Web users to get relevant information. Put the most important information at the top. Use clear and concise text.
4. Readers on the Web are skeptical
Credibility is a major factor in retaining reader interest on the Web.
Use objective language, write meaningful headlines and subheads and avoid marketing jargon or exaggerated claims to build credibility. Cute or clever lines could mean that the reader takes longer to get to the main point.
Hyperlinks to the sources of your information or to related information also add to credibility.
5. Readers avoid information overload
In an average workday, people suffer from information overload . They already have a large number of emails in their inbox to contend with, and several documents to read.
They don't want to spend time and effort reading content that they may not find useful.
Offer your readers information in bite-size chunks which are easily digestible. Use short sentences, short paragraphs, one idea per paragraph.
Use meaningful headlines and sub-headlines which help them nail the information they want, quickly and easily.
After trying out various strategies, tips and tricks given in many promotion sites we've come up with a few important tips and advice that have worked well for us. These tips would help you get a better listing, position and ranking in the popular search engines. They are simple to follow and are guaranteed to give you good results. Lets go through them right now!
1. Quality Site with Quality Content
The first and most important rule is to promote quality sites. Don't waste your time promoting junk sites. It won't pay off in the long run. This is honest talking here. You must be willing to spend time developing a quality website, if you want your promotion efforts to pay off. The first month you won't do too well but as you keep adding new pages, getting new links and updating your site you will see your hits increasing over the months. Your site will get more traffic as time goes by. Also don't underestimate the importance of small websites. Once they come to your website and they like what they see they will usually link to you with a good review. I can't emphasize enough on building a quality website. If you have a good website you will definitely get a lot of traffic over time.
Important Tip: While we are on the subject of content here's a very important tip - Try to come out with something original or slightly different from what your competitors are coming out with. Write articles related to your field of experience and focus it on specific topics. For e.g. If we were to write on 'website promotion', we would have thousands of sites competing with us in the search engines. Whereas if we were to write on 'website Promotion Tips and Advice' we would have a better chance of ranking high in the search engines. Now visitors would come to this page and through this page they may go to our website promotion page or services page. The idea is to write something a little different from the norm to draw visitors to your site. There's no use writing a great article on what others have already written about. It will only be lost in the search engines.
I'd like to share a personal experience here. When we first launched Entheos I wrote this entire website promotion guide on very generic and common keywords. I made these great pages on search engine submission, meta tags, link popularity etc. - keywords I was sure people would search for. What I didn't realize was that there were thousands of sites offering what I had written about, as a result of which my pages never came up in the first few pages of search engines. Though they were good pages they failed to bring traffic to Entheos. I then changed my strategy and wrote articles on slightly different topics - like Google Tips 'n' Tricks, Altavista Tips and boy did we do well in the search engines. They got the 1st position in the search engines and resulted in an increase of traffic. I wrote these articles because I just learnt of some new tips after a lot of experimentation and research and I was just dying to share them - the rest is history!
2. Meta Tags
While preparing your meta tags don't use generic or common keywords, try to use a combination of keywords and see if you can make them different from your competition. This would give you a better chance with the search engines. Try to come out with something different and you'll probably do pretty well.
Tip: The golden rule for effective search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking with the search engines.
3. Concentrate on the Big Search Engines
Google is my favorite search engine so I've really been concentrating on our listing, ranking and links here. Its brought us the most amount of traffic (more than 40 times the other search engines - no kidding!). Google brings in a lot of traffic because it takes keywords from the content as well as the meta tags resulting in a good chance of getting ranked high when searching for unique keywords. Also it gives a lot of importance to link popularity so getting many quality sites to link to yours can get rid of a lot of unwanted competition. Focus on the search engines that are sending you the most amount of traffic - understand their strategies, study their sites, visit forums and get as much of information as you can to tackle them. Contrary to popular belief Excite, Lycos, HotBot, Direct Hit don't send much traffic. Google by far is the Best.
4. Get Like-minded Sites to Link to You
This is the key to high search engine ranking and placement. Link Popularity means how many sites link to you. The idea behind link popularity is that other sites will link to you only if you are a quality site offering quality resources. Google uses this concept while ranking websites. Get quality sites to link to you and you will get a good ranking in Google. This is also a great way to bring traffic to your site. Usually sites that link to us send us more traffic than the popular search engines.
5. Be Patient - Traffic increases over time
Be patient. Don't expect miracles to happen overnight. Promotion is a continuous process. You need to continue to update your site, add new articles and resubmit to search engines. Over time you will see your site coming up in search engines, getting better placement and sending you more visitors. Check your ranking every month. Be involved in the promotion process. Check your website statistics to see which sites are sending you the most traffic. Work on getting new sites to link to you. Tweak the pages that are not sending you any visitors.
Search Engine Submission, Ranking, Link Popularity and More
Web site promotion is the most important step in making your business succeed online. To help you promote and maintain your web site, we have dedicated a whole section of our web site to site promotion. We hope that you will find these articles, guidelines and tips useful.
Some people mistakenly believe that as soon as a site is on the Internet, the search engines will automatically index their site and people will start visiting their site from Day 1. This is not true. Once your site is live (i.e. uploaded and accessed through the Internet) you need to concentrate on web site promotion. This is the step that will really give you a powerful Net presence. It's easy and it's fun so let's jump right into it.
Let's start with the basics
There are many methods that you can use to promote your web site. But one rule remains the same. Make sure that your web site is 100% ready to be submitted before you begin with promotion. You don't want to give anyone a chance of rejecting your web site and you don't want to disappoint visitors who come to your site.
1. Submitting to Search Engines
The first and most important method of promotion is submitting your web site to search engines and directories. The webmaster fills out a form that tells the search engine or editor (in case of a directory or site) to visit and index the suggested site.
1. Preparing your web pages - Meta tags
You must submit your web site only after you have prepared your web pages for the search engines. This means you have to insert appropriate meta tags on all your web pages (keywords, description and title).
Preparing your web pages for effective web site promotion leading to high search engine ranking
2. Web site Optimization
For your site to score high with search engines, you will need to optimize your web site (improve your HTML, load time, browser compatibility and other factors to cater to search engines). Only after optimization should you submit your site.
Web Site Optimization - Using Free Web Site Analysis Software to improve your site
3. Finally, it's time to submit!
After optimization, it's time to submit your site. We recommend submitting to all the major search engines, since search engines generate approximately 90% of web site traffic. Top search engines have a form for site suggestions. A link to this form can usually be found from the home page; it may say "Add a site" or "Suggest a URL." You can jump to our article which has links to all submission forms and tips on submission, so you don't have to spend hours looking for them.
2. Submitting to Directories
Once you have submitted your web site to all the top search engines, it is time to submit your site to the important directories, like Yahoo, Looksmart, AOL etc. Submitting to Directories is different from submitting to Search Engines as human editors review your site and accept or reject your site according to its quality. Before submitting to Directories, you need to make sure that your site is 100% ready. You also need to carefully follow their guidelines while you submit your site.
Note: There are a number of free search engine submission tools available but I suggest that the first time you submit your web site, do it manually. And never use these free tools while submitting to Directories. This must be done manually. Don't worry, submitting to search engines is very easy. It's only preparing your web pages with the appropriate meta tags that takes time.
3. Other Internet Marketing Techniques
You need to know that web site promotion is an ongoing process, as there are thousands of web sites being added every day and the competition is getting tougher by the minute! Most of the sites listed on the search engines are getting lost as there may be 100 -10,000 other web sites in the same field. We all know that most people don't look at more than 2-3 search result pages. The web sites that are not found in these pages are lost in the competition. New promotion techniques are coming out every day to get around this problem. We will discuss these new promotion techniques soon. Some of them are as follows:
1. Link Popularity
This is a very important Internet marketing technique which is rapidly gaining importance. The term "link popularity" refers to the number of sites that are linked to your site. Search engines check your link popularity and based on how popular your site is, give you a higher ranking. Try getting as many quality links as possible to boost your search engine position.
Read more about link popularity and ranking high in the search engines.
2. Writing Quality Articles
Get visitors flocking to your site by writing quality articles. Write articles that are related to the content of your site. Most people come to the Internet for quality information. Articles build your credibility and reputation and your visitors may use your services in the long run. You also get more links to your sites through this method.
3. Publish your own ezine or newsletter
Ezines (or e-mail newsletters) are the latest buzz for marketing on the Internet. Everyone is talking about how you should publish your own ezine to increase traffic, hits and sales. Popular ezines usually give current information and resources that will keep subscribers informed and updated. Ezines are also a great way to keep in touch with your visitors.
4. More Internet Marketing Tips Coming Soon! We will continue to update this page so don't forget to bookmark it for your future web promotion endeavors.
Use the Dreamweaver behaviors panel to create jump menus, swap images, pop-up windows, play sound, validate forms and more. Dreamweaver behaviors make it easy to add interactivity to your site. Try out all the cool stuff possible using Dreamweaver behaviors.
What are behaviors?
Behaviors allow visitors to interact with a Web page to change the page in different ways. While using behaviors you need to specify the action and also the event that triggers that action.
Favorite Behaviors
Pop-Up Windows
The 'Open browser Window' behavior can be used for promotional ads, zooming in to pictures etc. It allows you to open a browser window in any size you specify.
Play Sound
Play sound on rollovers, on page load etc.
Jump Menus
If you have a lot of links on a page and don't have enough of space to fit them all a simple way to add the links is to create a jump menu.
Tips and tutorials on tables, forms, CSS Styles, behaviors more
We've shared some really cool tips on Macromedia Dreamweaver in this article. They are handy tips that all Dreamweaver users should know about to allow more flexibility and creativity while designing sites in Dreamweaver.
Jump Menus, Pop Up Windows and Swap Images
The Dreamweaver Behaviors panel makes it easy to create jump menus, pop up windows, swap images and more.
Click here to learn more about Dreamweaver Behaviors.
CSS Styles
Instead of using endless font tags, use CSS Styles in Dreamweaver to format text in your site. You can also use CSS Styles to create text rollovers and remove the underline from links.
Learn how to create Style sheets in Dreamweaver
Links
* Change the link colors from the default blue link color by going to Modify>Page Properties. Here you can change the link color, visited link color and active link color. All your links will change to the link color specified.
* Have you ever wondered how to get a text rollover on a link? The answer is to use the a:hover style!
Click here to see how it's done! (Cut 'n' Paste Code is also provided)
* You can link to a particular section of a page by using a feature called Named Anchors. E.g. If I want a link to Rollovers I would link to this same page but would add a named anchor to go to the section Rollovers. Here's how you add an anchor. Position your cursor at the point you want the link to go to and click on Insert>Named Anchors. Give the anchor an appropriate name (in this case we would name it 'rollovers'). Now while linking all you need to do is add the # symbol along with the name of the anchor. An anchor is understood by HTML by the # symbol. In this case the link would be: Rollovers
Customizing Form Objects and Validating Forms
You can give a background color and font type to form objects using CSS Styles in Dreamweaver. You can also validate forms using Dreamweaver behaviors.
Click here to learn how to customize form objects and validate forms.
Tables
* Making table rows with heights less than 15 pixels sometimes seems impossible. Especially in Netscape! Here's a great tip - all you need to do is insert a transparent gif in your row and all your heights will be fine. You can find a transparent image called a shim in your Fireworks file. This is just a 1 pixel x 1 pixel gif. You could also export a transparent image from Fireworks.
Table with a thin border
* Have you ever wondered how to get a nice thin border instead of the thick border that is automatically generated using the 'border' property? Or have you ever wanted only the table to have a border and not all the cells. Well the answer to this is to make a table with the width you want and 1 as your cell padding. You then have to insert the actual table inside this table with width 100%.
More Cool Table Tips 'n' Tricks
Custom Submit Buttons
Have you ever wondered how to create custom 'Submit' or 'Go' buttons in Dreamweaver? Well, It's really simple. All you need to do is create your custom image, save it and in Dreamweaver click on Insert>Form Object>Image Field, to choose the submit button image. You now have your customized submit button. The code will look like this:
Rollovers
Rollovers are very easy using Dreamweaver. All you need to do is export two images from Fireworks (the image itself and the rollover image). Next, in Dreamweaver, click on Insert>Rollover Image. Give a name to the image, choose the images from the folder icon and finally give the link to the image. That's it! You've now got a great looking effect for your site.
Best Time Saving Tips in Dreamweaver
The best time saving tips in Dreamweaver are to use
* Dreamweaver templates and
* Server Side Includes
Check Broken Links Throughout The Site
Before uploading your site you need to make sure that there are no dead links in the site. You can do this by going to your site map, right clicking on any of the files and then clicking on 'check links'. Now you can choose to either check links in the entire site or within the selected file or folder. If there are any dead links you can fix them by using the folder icon to select the right files.
Spaces
If you need to go to the very next line and not to a new paragraph use use Shift+Enter instead of Enter.
Ctrl + Shift + Space gives you more than one space between characters
Bullet Shapes and Types
Customize bullets by using the Type attribute in the
- or
- tag.
* Point 1
* Point 2
E.g.
- would give you a square bullet rather than the default circular bullet.
See more examples
Resizing Images
After resizing an image in Dreamweaver, click on Commands>Optimize Image in Fireworks. You will get a dialog box saying 'Editing image.gif. Do you wish to use an existing Fireworks document as the source of image.gif.' Click on No and then click Update. The image is now updated and optimized in Dreamweaver. This saves you the trouble of opening the image in Fireworks, resizing it and exporting it again.
Dreamweaver Interactive Video Tutorials - Discover Everything You Need To Know To Build Your Website Step By Step From Start To Finish With This Dreamweaver Tutorial.
Cool Transparent Effect on Clothes
In this Photoshop tutorial I’m going to show you how to make an interesting creative effect of creating transparent clothes on woman body.
Professional Designed Banner
In this Photoshop tutorial I’m going to show u how to create professional designed banner for your designs.
Changing Time of the Day on a Photo
Do you want to know how to use Photoshop to change the time of the day on a photo and transform it from a sunny day to sunset? Then this tutorial will be interesting for you.
How to Sharpen Photo without Increasing Noise Visibility
Sometimes it happens that we need to sharpen photos for which there is noise, for example, pictures taken at night. But overall increase in photo sharpness increases and the noise visibility also. How to be in this situation? I can show you one method in Photoshop, how to avoid it.
