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Search
Engine Marketing
It's not enough to create
your site and host it...
You've designed the perfect website, but unless you know
how to market your site using the search engines and other
online resources, no one's ever going to find it. It's
like building yourself a home but not telling anyone your
address, then throwing a party and wondering why no one
comes to visit.
Marketing your site is one of the most important things
you do after you complete your site. Traditional advertising
methods don't work on the Internet. Putting your URL in
your ad in the newspaper or the yellow pages of your phone
directory will get a few visitors, but what about all the
people out there who are looking for your kind of business
on the Internet?
Registering your site with
the search engines is only the beginning....
Unless your site is registered with search engines and
shows up within the first 30 listings on a search engine,
chances are excellent that prospective customers aren't
going to find you. You'll find that designing your home
page with us takes a lot longer than designing any other
page on your site for this very reason—this is the
key page to optimize for search engine submission, and
you want it to show up as high up in the listings as you
can get it.
How long will it take till my site shows up in the search
engines?
Did you know it can take as long as 9 months to get your
site to show up in Google these days if you don't pay for
adwords or some other search engine's pay-per-click advertising?
This is known as the "Google
Delay",
and it can really hurt a fledgling Internet business. This
is why we work with you to build alternate ways to get
to your site and start building the traffic and links that
will help you to achieve better rankings in Google when
Some search engines will list your site in as little as
2-3 days, but some of the biggest search engines take upwards
of 3 months till a new domain begins to show up in them.
What do you do in the meantime?
If we've designed your site we've made suggestions about
optimizing it for search engine placement. However, search
engines are always changing, and this means your web pages
also need to keep changing to remain optimized for search
engines. A website should also be resubmitted to to the
search engines every month for a while, then periodically
when it starts to slip in the listings, in order to maintain
its standings. If your web site starts to slip down
in the search engines (it will do so to a certain degree
as the month goes by, but should not show a substantial
drop), you'll want to review your pages and re-optimize
them.
Your website must be up and running before you submit it to the
search engines or the search engines might find a "page
not found" reference when they attempt to "spider" your
site, which automatically takes you out of their database. Once
you submit your site and results start showing up in the search
engines, you don't really have to submit your site again. But
you do need to change it and add to your website once in a while
to maintain and/or improve your ranking, which also has the effect
of adding more reason for users to come to your site, and the
more who come to your site and link to it, the better your ranking.
If we have designed or redesigned your site, we will submit your
site to search engines for FREE following
the initial completion of your site. Three months later we will
review your site with you to see how it's doing in the search
engines, and make any needed changes at that time to help improve
your rankings. If you wish to continue to review and improve
the search engine optimization (SEO) on your site, we can assist
you in this process for a separate fee.
What about exhange links?
Exchanging links with other sites used to help improve your search
engine ranking, but exchange links carry little benefit any more
as far as search engines are concerned, unless those links are
from quality sites (quality as defined by Google, for instance,
has to do with page rank) and are one-way TO your site. The main
benefit of exchange links is driving traffic to both your sites,
as long as you choose these partners well. Affiliate programs
and the links they create to and from your site can also help
your ranking, but for the most part these also are not nearly
as beneficial as they used to be.
How important are keywords and other meta tags?
In general search engines give no weight to the meta tags of
keywords and description, and have not done so for several years
now. However, the exercise of researching keywords and finding
key phrases that will help promote your site is a good one, and
there are still search engines that will not list you unless
they are present. They also have the effect of raising keyword
frequency in a web page, and that can work to your advantage.
What IS important for seaarch engines?
The most important items on your web page are page title (you
can see it in the bar at the very top of your screen) and the
actual written content of your page. These need to have value
for the user and be written in a human-friendly manner, not stuffed
with key phrases for search engines. The important thing to rmember
is that your site is ultimately for your users, and not just
for search engines. Give enough value on your site with the articles
and information that you offer, and you're going to do well in
search engines as long as you take the time to figure out who
your users are and narrow down the niche of users you are really
trying to reach.
We will work with you on this and many other issues that
will help to get your site listed higher in the search engines
when we design your site. Call us at 828.891.2563 and ask how
we can help you improve your site.
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, Toner Design. All rights reserved.
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