PROMOTING YOUR WEB SITE (part 1) ©2005 http://www.KnockOutWebsites4U.com   You have either spent hundreds of dollars having your web site hand crafted for you, or you have spent months in front of the computer, carefully designing your "work of art", right? Well, I am sorry to say that the work is not over!   Simply put, the work is never done! You could have the greatest web site in the world, the best custom designed graphics, and all the integrated javasricpts, cgi and perl programs that you want, but if you don't ever tell anyone about your site, no one will come!   As the age old fable says: He who has something to sell should not whisper it in a cave, but yell it out on top of a mountain!   Make sure your web site is completely finished before telling the world!   There is nothing worse for your "online image" then to advertise a web site, that is full of broken links and grammatical errors. Remember, your web page is the only means of having an identity in the virtual world, so make it the best that it can be.   Have friends and colleagues "proof-read" your site. Ask customers for their comments and suggestions. Put your web pages through a spell checker! You'll be surprised how much your 'eye' can miss (even if you checked it 10 times)!   Once your site is complete, get ready for a marketing roller coaster!   Since this will be a four part series, I am going to start off discussing what I like to refer to as the "Initial Steps". The following will deal with what your "initial" online marketing strategies should be.   You must also realize that individual results will vary, like anything else, but you will find that the more time and energy you put into your online marketing campaign, the more benefits you'll reap in the long run!   The truth about search engines is that only the "Top 10" search engines really count!   I'm sure you have heard of the importance of being listed in the search engines. You've also probably heard of the number of various services out there, that will submit your site to "over 600 search engines in 5 minutes"(or something along those lines). The truth about automatic submission services: Your site will be submitted to those search engines, but your placement will be terrible (practically non-existent). Try and stay away from those automatic submission services at all costs. They are fast, but sometimes faster is not always better.   Over 90% of all searches made on the Internet, are done through one of the "Top 10" search engines. Those thousands of other search engines get little or no significant traffic, so being listed in them really won't help your site out! You will find little or no increase in web traffic from submitting your site to the thousand other search engines that are out there.   Let's concentrate on getting good placement in the "Top 10"   Getting excellent search engine placement (preferably between 1 and 50) is an art form. There are companies you can hire that will work on getting your site the best placement possible. However this type of service typically runs well over four hundred dollars!   Aside from spending hundreds of dollars on this type of service, there are some 'specific modifications' you can make to your site, to give you about an 80% edge over the other sites on the Internet today! Below you will find five of the best "modifications" you can make to your web page, to help give you better placement in search engine results:   * Keywords: Proper selection of your keywords is critical! Think of all the different keywords customers would associate with your site. You may come up with 30-50 different keywords, but you then must narrow them down to the 10-15 most powerful ones.   * Meta Tags: Inserting META tags in all of your web pages is a must if you want to increase traffic to your web site! By using META tags, you are telling the spider/robot that visits your site how to catalogue your site based on your description and keywords you've put together. Words in META tags are given a lot of weight in search engines, so choose them wisely!   * Title: Don't just list your business name as the title for your site! This is a great opportunity to put as many of your best keywords into your title. Also, try an start your title with the letter A. This is very important for "category databases" since they list entries by title alphabetically. For example, the title for this site is: "An innovative service, bringing you free monthly information and tips relating to a number of money making opportunities and discount product purchasing."   * Short Description: If at all possible, try and put a short one-two sentence (similar to the title example) at the top of your web site. Some search engines take the first 20-30 words of your site, and make that your "site description"! Having a well composed, keyword-rich description, guarantees you have a punchy message (rather than the "gibberish" you'll find on some search results).   * Alt Text: Don't forget to add "Alt Text" to your GIF and JPEG images! This is an excellent opportunity to add a few more of your keywords on your web page. This also helps when a search engine checks for the frequency of a particular keyword. In other words, the more times a keyword shows up, the better placement you'll get.   Again, search engines are constantly updating and revising their criteria requirements. If you are determined to have your site listed within the first 20 listings from a query, then you will have to spend the time (or money) to research each of the "Top 10" search engines, and find out exactly what they want your site to contain.   For your reference, the "Top 10" search engines in alphabetical order are:   AltaVista www.altavista.digital.com Excite: www.excite.com Galaxy: www.einet.net HotBot: www.hotbot.com InfoSeek: www.infoseek.com Lycos: www.lycos.com Magellan: www.mckinley.com Open Text: www.opentext.net WebCrawler: www.webcrawler.com Yahoo: www.yahoo.com   If you would like to have some more specific information about a particular search engine(s), then check out this link. http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/index.html     "Promoting Your Web Site (Part Two)"

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