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Surfer Net Optimizing Your Website for Search
Engines:
Setting up and troubleshooting an online store
The very first thing the owner of a website must do, is let people know the store is there. There is a television
ad showing people very excited when their first website order came through and their jubilation turned into fright
as the number of orders became more than they could possibly handle. This is a fairly common myth about the Internet.
Truth: You can build it and no one will come
unless you tell them about it.
There are parallels to having a retail store in a mall and having a website on the Internet. You have to put up
a sign in the mall, products in the window, and open your doors. On the Internet, you have to build the site, advertise
it, advertise it and advertise it.
One way to think of the Internet: it is like a huge office building with over 8 million offices. If you rent an
office in this building, no one will know you are there if you don't tell them. It is not like having a business
on Champs d'Elisse where millions of people walk by every month and see you there. On the Internet, no one sees
you unless you or someone else tells them to come to your store.
Watch your weekly statistics.
If you have no visitors, you can't expect any sales. Note: hits are not the same as visitors. One web page with
10 images on it is 11 hits per visitor. The most common way to get visitors to come your site is to submit it to
as many search engines as possible. Getting listed on search engines will most likely bring from 80% to 100% of
your customers to your site.
Most of the search engines are free, but all have certain criteria they judge sites by. Each site is ranked according
to those rules. None of the search engines will tell you their rules if you ask them, so over the years, website
owners and business who will submit sites have determined what most of the rules are.
One thing to keep in mind is that except for one or two, the engines do not list every website submitted to them.
Search engines are in business to find websites for the people who are looking for something. If no one looks for
a certain category of site, they will drop all websites from that category after a while.
We provide a service to our customers to do a "reverse keyword lookup". You can ask us to check to see
how many people searched on your keyword last month. If the number is zero, you need to find other keywords and
change your site to match them. For example, if you sell "Phollows", and your site is all about "Phollows",
you will not get any traffic from search engines even if you are listed number 1 in the category because no one
is searching for "Phollows". On the other hand, if you spend 20-50 million on television advertising
for "Phollows", people will now start searching for you.
Let's say that "Phollows" are a kind of body pillow. If you change your site to "Body Pillows by
Phollows" then resubmit under the Body Pillow category, you will be in a category that 20,000 people searched
on last month as opposed to zero.
If you are listed on search engines, the next thing to check is what your ranking is. If you search on body pillows
and find the engine showing sites 1-10 of 10,173 in the category and your site is deeper than 100, you can be pretty
sure you won't see any visitors coming from that engine. So just how can you get your site listed in the top 100,
or better still in the top 10!?
There are a lot of submission services who say they can get you in the top 10. The only thing they can do is get
you in the top 10 under the category "Phollows", which we already know, no one searches for. Knowing
how the sites who are in the top 10, in the categories that people are searching under, got there is the important
thing to know.
In order to be listed in the top 10 on any free search engine, a site MUST meet that engine's requirements. It's
that simple.
OK, what are the search engine requirements?
All engines have general requirements which you can check your site for.
1. Metatags:
• Your site must have a title and if you want a high ranking,
your keyword(s) must be in the title.
• Your site must have a metatag description and if you want a
high ranking, your keyword(s) must be in
it.
• Your site must have a metatag for your list of keywords
(The metatag description is a short sentence or two about your site-similar to a sign on a store in a mall. This
description is what the search engine displays for a prospective visitor to read to decide if he wants to click
on your site instead of the one above or below it)
This is the result of an actual Alta Vista
search on body pillows:
10,173 pages found.
body pillows - Click here for a list of Internet Keywords related to body pillows
1. ComfortChannel.com, Air beds, exercise balls, back, reading, body pillows, memory
Baby Care, Back Braces, Back Pain, Back Supports, Back, Body built, Cold, Heat Packs, Comfort Care, Cushions, Ergonomics,
Exercise Balls, Footrests,...
URL: www.comfortchannel.com/
Translate More pages from this site Related pages
2. Bedloungers, Body & Reading Pillows
Check out the selection of comfort sleep pillows, body support pillows and wedges, mattress overlays and reading
bed loungers. Stop in our Central...
URL: www.sitincomfort.com/comfortstore/baccussup.html
Translate More pages from this site Related pages Facts about: Comfort Store
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The first line of the listing is the title and the second
and third lines are the metatag description.
Notice how the one ranked 1st has "body pillows" in the description and the 2nd site has body and pillows
in the title and the description.
Comfortchannel.com has this
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Baby Care, Back Braces, Back Pain, Back Supports, Back, Body built,
Bodybilt, Cold, Heat Packs, Comfort Care, Cushions, Ergonomics, Exercise Balls, Footrests, HAG, Hammocks, Healthy
Gifts, Interactive Health, Laptop Desk, Massage, Mattress Pads, Mattresses, Microsphere, Neck Care, Neck Pain,
Office Chairs, Pillow, Reading Comfort, Swings, Temperature Sensitive Foam, Writing Desks, Zero Gravity Recliners">
sitincomfort.com (the 2nd site) has this:
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="bedlounge, bed lounge, body pillow, pillow, sleeping bean, comfortu,
comfort u, bed wedge, zero gravity bed wedge, backsaver, tempurpedic, dream pillow, obus forme, ultra foam, fossfill,
memory foam, reading pillow">
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Notice that only the 2nd site has "Body Pillows"
in the keyword list.
Next, both sites have body pillows for sale on their sites. Looking at the site listed number 200 on this search,
the metatag description has body pillows. The title does not and the keyword list also has
them, but the site doesn't have them for sale on the page you click to.
200. Ryan's Marketplace Sports, Gifts, Home Accents, Collectibles, Nostalgia items.
Affordable gifts for home, sports, nostalgia and collectible items. Biederlack blankets, throws, pillows, body
pillows, bean bags, wall hangings....
URL: www.ryansportsproducts.com/index.html
Translate Related pages
<meta name="keywords" content="silk ties, neck ties, ties, leather, handbags, wallets, digimon,
christmas, chaps, blankets, gabriel, gifts, blankets, throws, wraps, wall hangers, textile, bean bags, body pillows,
animal, ethnic, fleece, covers, materials, bedding, acrylic, cotton, shams, kids, rugrats, java, designer, collections,
professional, corporate gifts, sculptures, steel sculptures, art, coffee, musicians, planes, trains, handcrafted,
recycled steel, welding,home, office, clock, unique gifts, nostalgia, licensed sports, harley-davidson, lighters,
sports, football, baseball, hockey, basketball, wrestling, auto racing, motorcycles, college teams, sports gifts,
autographed memorabilia, h-d, sports stuff, officially licensed, memorabilia, budweiser, nascar, mlb, ncaa, nhl,
nfl, nba, mls, wcw, nwo, john deere, products, teams, players, american biker, apparel, major league baseball,
national hockey league, officially, licensed, retailers, stores, shops, cowboys, packers, redskins, patriots, bengals,
bears, titans, steelers, lions, broncos, jax sunglasses, rams, saints, lakers, stanley cup, chargers, colts">
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So how can I get my site listed in the top 10?
The plain answer is that among other things,
you have to meet the requirements better than existing sites to be listed higher than one already there. Some of
the "among other things" include how many other sites link to yours. Getting your site listed on FFA's
helps with this number. An FFA is a "Free For All" site. It is a place where your site gets placed on
the top of a link list and the last person gets bumped off. The nest person gets the top and you move down until
you get bumped off. FFA's are where the spamming companies get your name to send you the volume of junk mail you
get when you submit your site.
We include a service to our customers for blocking the mail from submissions. You all have an email address: submissions@yourdomain.com.
Using this as your submitting email address will send all that junk to a trash email account so you don't have
to wade through it every day to get to your real orders. I just trashed 977 emails for this week.
If you are listed well in a good category and aren't getting visitors, your description needs rewriting. A high
listing in a good category means a lot of people are seeing you but what you have to say doesn't appeal to them.
If you are listed well in a good category and are getting a good number of visitors, but no sales, your presentation
of the products or your prices are making them not buy. Place yourself in the position of a store manager watching
200 or more people come into your store every week, week in and week out, and they don't buy anything at all! What
would you do? The most common thing is to put sale items right out front. Make the store look more appealing, and
put bigger and better signs on the products. Getting creative here makes a difference. The thing you DO NOT do,
is nothing. Make changes.
If you have submitted your site, done everything right, are in a good category, and haven't been listed after 6
weeks, you need to resubmit according to each engines resubmission parameters.
Keep in mind that all but one or two of the search engines will drop you if you have no traffic. It is in their
best interest to do so. It makes them more attractive to the people who use them to search. You must check your
listing to know if you have been dropped and resubmit if you have. Some "services" automatically submit
your site every week or month. The engines really don't like that. They will ban your site if you do it. Never
submit to a search engine when you are already listed, and never submit more often than they allow.
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By
Scott Creative Services
