FIVE SIMPLE STEPS TO CREATING A TRAFFIC MAGNET WEB SITE
The first essential key to creating Online Marketing Success is to CREATE A TRAFFIC MAGNET!
You’ve got a web site, but it’s not doing well. You know you need traffic, and you’ve tried everthing and nothing works. You’ve joined web rings and found they aren’t much help. You’ve tried paying $39.95 to have your site submitted to the top 1500 search engines, but all that got you was a ton of spam and not many visitors to your site.
Six steps on how to create a web site that works, or at least one that can be found by the search engines.
TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Search Engine: Search engines sift through the millions of web sites on the web and sort them into categories so that when you type in your search criteria, the search engine can return a list of sites that reasonably matches your query. The basis of the search engine model is software which can quickly and efficiently determine how to index your site. An example of a search engine is Google.
Directory: A directory is a lot like a search engine, except directories use real live humans to create the database. Inclusion into these usually requires a fee. Because of the growth of the internet, many directories are also including results from search engines. An example of a directory is Yahoo.
Search Engine Spiders: These are the programs which the various search engines use to "crawl" the world wide web, looking for web sites to index.
Step one: Where your site lives
If your web site is living in a sub folder, you’re starting the game with one strike against you. How do you know if your web site is living in a "sub folder"? Look at the REAL address of your web site. If there’s a slash in it, such as http://www.yourisp.com/your site, then your web site is located in a sub folder.
You can "point" your domain name at a sub folder on a server. This way, instead of the http://www.yourisp.com/your site address, you have a neat and tidy www.yourname.com.
Keep in mind that the URL forward can actually hurt you when it comes to the search engines. While the search engine spiders will penalize you for your site living in a sub folder, URL forwards make it impossible for the search engine spiders to index your site at all.
Best strategy: Purchase a virtual hosting account so your domain name points to the root folder. This strategy also allows you to have your e-mail address set up to be the same as your domain name.
Best Alternative: When you submit your web site to the search engines, use your "real" address and not your forward. Yes, the search engines will be able to "see" that it’s located in a sub folder, but at least the spiders will have access to the content.
Step Two: Your Web Site’s Navigation Structure
Your opening page should include links to every page within your site. These links should not be in the form of javascript "rollovers". The search engine spider is not set up to read the javascript roll overs, so linking your pages in this manner means the search engines will never get any deeper than your opening page. Using javascript rollovers is like locking the doors to all the other pages on your site.
How do you know if your site uses javascript rollovers? When you move your mouse over one of your navigation links, if the image changes in any way, then it’s probably a javascript rollover.
Best Strategy: Have your designer create your site without using javascript rollover images.
Best Alternative: Have your designer place a "site map" at the bottom of every page of your site. This site map includes links to each and every page inside the web site in text. You’ve probably seen this technique on larger sites such as Petsmart.com.
Step Three: Opening page content
The search engines crawl the web and when they come upon a web site, they begin reading…. not your web page as you see it, but your web page in it’s actual form…code. To see your web site’s code, look to the toolbar at the top of your browser. Click on View > Source in Microsoft Internet Explorer or View > Page Source if you’re using Netscape. A new window will open with what looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo. This is what the search engine spiders "see" when they index your site.
If your opening page content is a flash movie, then what the search engine spider sees is "flm.swf". While your visitors are greated with a specatular show, the search engine spider only sees a few characters and moves on. While spiders don’t think, it’s almost as if they say to themselves, "Well, there’s nothing here for anyone to see and I’ve got millions of sites to index. Time to move on."
If your opening page is a giant image, again the search engine spider only sees "giantimage.jpg", and again assumes since there is no content, there isn’t any point of indexing the site.
The ideal opening page content is lots and lots of text. At least 100 words describing what your web site is all about. If your web site is about dogs, then make sure you talk about DOGS on your opening page.
Many search engines include in their algorithm a measurement called "keyword density". As the spider indexes your content, it makes a calculation as to how many times "key words" are used in your document. So, for example, if your web site is about "dogs", then the spider will count how many times you use the word dog in your opening page content. Ideal keyword percentages range from 5-8%. Don’t focus on including "the right" keywords until you’re done writing your copy. If you’d like to "target" specific frequently searched for keywords, click here.
Don’t try to artificially inflate the key words or the word count, for the search engines will penalize you. Long ago, a paragraph which included the word "dog" repeated 50 times would win the search engine wars. Another "trick" was to include text that was the same color as the background so the repeated word wouldn’t appear to visitors, but would appear to the search engine spiders. Today, such moves may get you blacklisted which means you will NEVER be included in their listings under that IP and domain name.
Best Strategy: Write naturally, focusing on what your visitor wants to know when they reach your web site. You’ll find you naturally include prime "keywords" in your content.
Best Alternative: Hire a content writer with experience writing for the web.
Step Four: Meta Tags
You may have heard that meta tags are the key to getting your web site listed with the search engines. Yet, we have purposely addressed them here as #4.
There is only one tag that will make or break you with the search engines and it’s the title tag. You must title each page. Be sure to title it to help the search engine spider or human editor to know what the focus of your page is. For example, if you are writing a page on how to improve your rankings with the search engines, then a good page title would be "How to improve your rankings with the search engines."
The only other meta tag that you should worry about is description tag. This is what the search engine will list when it returns your page for a requested search. Frequently, when a description tag is not found, the search engine will list the first 15 words on your site.
If someone tries to tell you that you need to include the keyword meta tag, run for the hills. The keyword meta tag was dropped from Alta Vista’s algorithm in 9-2002. They were the last major search engine to use it, and their dropping of it declared it legally dead. The death of the keyword meta tag also means death to pages using Frames, flash openings and images.
Best Strategy: Pay careful attention to page titles. WYSIWYG editors usually don’t provide an easy way to include page titles.
Step Five: Recruiting page links
Many search engines determine how "good" your web site is by analyzing how many similar sites link to yours.
When this fact got out, hundreds upon hundreds of "link farms" sprouted up all over the internet. Pages upon pages of link after link were born in an effort to inflate the number of page links any one page had.
One thing to remember about search engine technology is the search engine’s job is to return pages that contain the information for which you’re searching. When webmasters try to "cheat", whether it’s including text that can’t be seen or by linking to 100 link farms, the search engine programmers usually figure out what’s going on pretty quickly and move to eliminate such "cheats" from the system.
While having others link to you is still essential for getting a high ranking with the search engines, the links must be QUALITY links. A quality link is one that you could actually expect to see some traffic as a result of the link.
Most quality links include non-hyperlinked text surrounding the link. The link is included in a paragraph or includes a description, and isn’t just a lone link surrounded by other links.
Of course, once your site has been up for a while, if you’ve invested time and effort into creating quality content, you’ll find that other sites link to your quality content without you even having to ask!
Best Strategy: Focus on your content. Great content not only provides lots of search engine fodder, it also increases the chances that another site will want to link to you.
That’s it! Five simple steps to making sure your site can be indexed by the search engines.
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