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In part one we discussed the need to have your site indexed by the major search engines and ordered to be found in the search results. In this article we’re going to discuss three ways to have your site indexed, get into the search engines database that are safe and will not get you banned by the search engines.
Have another website (that is already indexed) link to your site
Once a site is indexed or put into the search engines database, the search engine spiders go out to those pages anywhere for once a month to several times a day. You could get a one way link back to your website from a site that is already indexed the search engines will follow that link back to your site and index it. The challenge care is to put your link on the site that is related to what you do. Ideally, the link back to your site is on a site that is already considered an authority in your field. It is not a good idea for a plumber to swap links with a web designer. Speaking of swapping links, try and stay away from reciprocal linking and buying text link ads, more about that at a later date.
If your website has not been indexed by the search engines you will not come up in the search results. When you search the “web” using Google, Yahoo or MSN’s search tools, you’re not searching the Internet you are searching the search engines databases.
When a site is submitted to the search engines the search engines uses software called “spiders” to crawl the pages of your website through your internal site navigation and captures vital information about each page and in puts it into their database.
The information captured include Meta tags, content, H1 tags, Alt tags, sites that you link to and sites that links back to your site. The Meta tags are at the top of your web page in the code. They are in what is called the header. The Meta tags are very important to the search engines because they tell them what is on the page. Along with the H1 tags Alt tags and the content in the body of the text on the web page this gives the search engines the information they need to index or put into their database your web page. It is very important that your Meta tags are specific to each page of your site. Do not just copy and paste the same Meta tags to every page on your website. There’s a big explanation from that old and that later. There are several ways to get web pages into the search engines a database (indexed).
Search Engines
Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are really just data bases. When you do a Google Search you are not searching the “world wide web” you are searching Google’s data base. There are two ways to get in to these databases. One is to submit your site to the different search engines. In about 6 to 9 weeks the search engine will index your site. They have software that comes to your site and index every page and adds it to the database. They come into your main web URL and follow the links to all the pages of your site. They capture key elements from the code on your page to the content. These are then stored in the data base. When someone puts a keyword in the search box the “algorithms” determine the best page or links to the best pages for your search.
The other way to get added to the search engines data base is to have the search engine software find you through a link to your site from another web site back to yours. The software, called “spiders” will periodically comeback and re crawl your site to see if you have updated it.
One important thing to know is that each page on your site is indexed individually and each page stands on its own. The ranking are based upon the combination of correct meta tags, relevant content to the keyword they are trying to get rankings for and link popularity. Mostly one way links back to their site from relevant sites.
There is more business being done online than ever before. There are hundreds of thousands of new business web sites coming on every month. 70% of the US population (233 million people) are online. Over 1.2 billion people worldwide are online. The question is how do we find clients in an ocean of competitors?
Part of the answer to the above question is which number do you focus on, the number of people on line or the number of competitors? If you are focused on the number of people online, read on. If you are more focused on the number of competitors, read on.
Search engine marketing has been proven to have the lowest cost per acquisition of any other marketing medium. It is the only medium where people are actively searching for you. A successful campaign should include a web site designed around one question: “What are your clients looking for?” This is the starting point and may seem basic but it is surprising how many people have are just scratching the surface in their understanding of this.
Landing pages have the ability to grab and hold us like fly no-fly paper or repel us like jumping on the trampling. The question is what impact does your landing page have on the people who visit your website. As I talk to people who are just getting into SEO (search engine optimization), all they focus on our rankings in traffic. We have to remember that “rankings” in “traffic” or not the end but a means to the end. That end is visitors to your site that take advantage of the solutions that you offer. We can have a lot of traffic to our website but if no one is sticking around long enough to see if our solutions can solve their problems then that traffic does not mean anything.
A lot of thought must go into your landing pages, both from a search engine perspective and from a customer perspective.
Search Engine perspective:
Paid search is a great way to get web traffic to your site from the major search engines. It also can drain your marketing budget in very quickly if not done properly. Someone is going to profit from your paid search campaign. Is it going to be the search engines or or us? Search engines make their money from clicks on our ads. The more clicks on our ads the more money they get. The real goal should be “more conversions with less clicks and lower cost”. Here are some strategies that should help.
1. Turn off Content Network in Google when you first set up a campaign there is a default setting that turns the “content match” setting to “on”. For now, turn that setting off. What this does is present your ads on websites that are using AdSense. If you go to a website and see “Ads by Google”, those ads are coming from Google paid search accounts. Those ads show up on these websites based on the content of the website. There are two things that you need to consider before turning on the content match. The first is that the website that is hosting our ad gets paid every time someone clicks on the ad. The second thing is that most people who click on these ads are doing research. The magic of search engine marketing is that you come in contact with individuals who are actively searching for what you have to offer. Only pay for clicks that come from people in that category.
2. Search Terms. The more general the term, less qualified the lead and the more the cost. What I try to think about what terms are going to get my ideal customer to my site.
A lot of people are beginning to see the importance of writing and publishing articles on the internet as part of their SEM marketing campaign. This is also a great way to improve the link popularity of your website as part of your SEO efforts, showcase your expertise and be seen as an expert in your field. A lot of us know more about our field and how our product or service can help people than anybody else. The question is where to start. This article designed as a starting point so that we can get some of our own ideas and solutions published.
Once the article is written, you can us one of several resources to get it published online.
Many of publishing sites require that you register as an author. The easiest thing to do is use the same user name and password with each website. A template using Notepad is a great idea so that when you are ready to entering in your articles you will have everything in one place.