Newsletter #8 - Get Your Site in the Search Engines

Here is Part 3 of our letter about Search Engines: How to get your site into the engine results. Next issue: viruses. Bob gives an overview on what viruses do, then Jay tells us how to stop them from doing it... a review of anti-virus software, with some surprising finds! Also, watch for upcoming details on a price break we’re putting together for McAfee anti-virus subscriptions. Now, back to Search Engines.

Unlike the upcoming letter on viruses, which holds important information for all computer users, this article is intended to those of you who have (or want) commercial websites. Everyone else, back to work.

There’s no magic bullet when it comes to getting your website seen. Search engine technology is complex and becoming more so everyday. But if location is the secret to success in brick and mortar business, then content, content, content is the secret to a successful website.

A well-written site that has something to show, something to say, only needs the jump start of search engine submission to make a big splash on the internet. Case in point, the beautiful new website being designed at sister company, sdwebpro, for Paloma Editions, Inc.

The SAME keywords, descriptions and links have been on the internet since September, when their homepage first went up. Between September and March, the site (then just one page with contact information) got about 600 hits per month. But look at this chart. Obviously something extraordinary happened in April, and hits have nearly doubled every month since.

What happened is content. In April, they started putting their artwork on the website. Sure, their keywords and description are well-crafted. Sure, we’ve done a few site submissions. But what’s really responsible for the jump from 600 hits per month to more than 65,000 hits in July is content.

That is not to say keywords and descriptions and links aren’t important. They just aren’t as important.

They’re the window dressing, the inviting sign over the front door, and content is what you have to offer inside. Of course, if your front door is uninviting (a poorly written description in our analogy), then a lot of people just aren’t going to come in.

Keywords are what search engines focus on to rank site relevancy and return results. Keywords need to be plentiful and present in the meta-tags, text, titles and descriptions, but that’s a problem for your webmaster. As a site owner, your problem is to come up with a list of keywords that match what people put in their searches when they want what you’re selling.

There are tools you can buy which tell how many hits in various engines a given keyword receives. But some thought, reflection and playing with your own search engine results will probably give you all the insight you need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and come up with a good list of words to describe your product and market.

Then there’s the description. Website description is the textbox that comes up when you mouseover the search engine results… 20 to 150 words. You know it. You read it to see which site in the results you want to visit.

Overture just came out with a nice little flash video on how to write a description that makes people want to see your site. Here's the link. Check it out if you have the time. Basically it says, be straight-forward and informative when writing a description. That is, include the facts, and leave out the superlatives. Again, I think looking at it from your customers’ point of view is the way to go… then you put together a single, complete sentence that lets people know you have what they want.

That's all there is to it,
Cheryl

Here's WHY you want your site in the search engines
(and this is just traffic at the top four!)

Service	Number of Searches PER DAY
Google	250 million
Overture	167 million
Inktomi	80 million
LookSmart	45 million

As of February 2003

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156461

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