You are building a solid Theme-Based Content Site. So how will you let your target group know about it?
If you can't attract free, targeted visitors via the Search Engines, you’re immediately at a huge disadvantage. That’s because you’re going to have to pay to drive traffic to your Web site. While paying for supplemental traffic can make sense for many online businesses, you definitely do not want this to be your primary source of traffic. There are a number of reasons why not…
1) Depending on your niche or topic, advertising can be very expensive. It also prevents you from ever really owning your own business. When you stop paying for advertising, your business disappears.
2) If you do not know what your ROI (Return On Investment) is or exactly what each and every visitor is worth to you, advertising can be a bit of a gamble. This is especially true for brand new sites that are still feeling their way around.
3) Visitors who arrive from advertising campaigns recognize that the relationship is purely commercial, and they expect to be pitched. Obviously, they will have their guard up and will be more difficult to convert into customers.
On the other hand, when you “get it right” at the Search Engines, the engines will deliver more and more targeted traffic on daily basis.
Work With The Free Major Search Engines
1) Build Keyword-Focused Content Pages according to the structure and onpage criteria guidelines outlined in previous chapter.
2) Submit those pages to the Search Engines. (Continue to build more Content pages.)
3) Check for each spider’s visit. (Continue to build more Content pages.)
4) Check for the presence of your pages in each Search Engine’s index (i.e., database). (Continue to build more Content pages.)
5) Evaluate performance of each page of your Theme-Based Content Site. (Continue to build more Content pages.)
6) Track your performance on a regular basis. (Continue to build more Content pages.)
7) Repeat the process for each page you create. (Keep your focus on building more Content pages.)
Submit Your URLs to major Search Engine
Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html Their submission policy (from the same URL)... “Only the top-level page from a host is necessary; you do not need to submit each individual page. Our crawler, Googlebot, will be able to find the rest. Google updates its index on a regular basis, so updated or outdated link submissions are not necessary. Dead links will 'fade out' of our index on our next crawl when we update our entire index.”
Yahoo! Search http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request Their submission policy (from the same URL)... “Enter the full URL, including the http:// prefix (for example, http://www.yahoo.com) of the site you would like to submit. Enter only the top-level page in your site, our crawler will explore the rest of your site from there. We will automatically detect and remove dead links on an ongoing basis.”
MSN Search http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 MSN’s submission policy isn’t clear. They say... “Type the URL of your homepage. MSNBot follows links from your homepage to find other pages on your site.”
Although they do not say not to submit others, it would certainly appear that it is not necessary.
Jeeves/Teoma No, you cannot submit your site to Ask Jeeves, or the Teoma crawler that powers it. The only way to make it into this SE’s database is to ensure the Teoma crawler can find your site on its own by following an in-pointing link. This further emphasizes the importance of obtaining a few good links for your site. (A link popularity discussion is coming up shortly.)
Track The Engines’ Spiders
How can you tell when a spider visits your site?
The answer is simple. Each SE’s spider has a name, which shows up in your log files when it visits your site. For example, Google’s spider is called “Googlebot”. Yahoo!’s is called “Slurp”. MSN’s spider is called “MSNBot.”
So keep your eyes peeled for a visit from one of these friendly little creatures in your log files. Although a spider visit does not mean your page has been added to an SE index, it does mean that the SE has not forgotten about you! Your site is probably queued for addition.
If you don’t see an engine’s spider within a certain amount of time after submitting (varies for each engine), you can resubmit according to each engine’s acceptable limits. Generally though, if you haven’t been indexed and listed with 6-8 weeks, do the following…
1) Resubmit according to each SE’s protocols.
2) Build your link popularity. Quality in-pointing have a credentializing effect. Without a few to validate your site, some SEs may be hesitant to list you in their indices. If you have no links, and you can’t seem to get listed, this is very likely the issue.
Even if you aren’t listed immediately, don’t lose heart. Every new Web business has to go through the hassle of establishing itself with the SEs. That’s true whether you have $100 to invest in your business, or $10,000.
Check And Monitor Presence
Monitor each engine to ensure it lists your pages. Once your pages start showing up in each SE’s database, they are ready to be delivered to an eager search audience.
The best way to check your listings is to use Search It! …
Search It! > Indexed Pages (STEP 1) > Pages in Google (STEP 2)…
Evaluate The Performance Of Your Pages
Ideally, you need to have a Top 10 listing on a SE’s search results page to get any exposure at all. Most surfers will not check out more than ten listings in their search for information.
Now let’s see how you can evaluate the performance of your pages…
1) Manually -- Surf to each SE, and search for each of your KFCP’s Specific Keyword (just as a prospective visitor would). For example, let’s use this keyword, “dangers of high cholesterol,” to illustrate. Check to see where it shows up and in what position. Keep track of your results in a simple database.
2) Automatically -- Use specialized software like Web Position Gold to automate the evaluation process. Be forewarned, though. Web Position Gold is fairly complicated to use.
Webmasters and consultants, however, use it heavily. As a result, some engines ban or block its page-query function. Imagine thousands of Webmasters doing hundreds, even thousands, of automated position checks daily, and you can understand why. It clogs up an SE’s bandwidth tremendously!
3) Through the use of log files -- Use log file analyzer software (server or client side) to identify the keywords that people used to find you. Check with your Web host to see what kind of online traffic statistics they can provide. More than likely, though, they will not give the keyword stats that you need.
Tracking your rankings can be a long and tedious affair. If you’re not careful, it can eat into a lot of time. Instead focus your attention on those efforts that will bring your affiliate business the best results, the fastest. Remember C >> T >> P >> M
To Tweak or Not to Tweak? How to Avoid the SEO Quagmire
Never, except in extreme circumstances, tweak your low-performing Web pages. If a page isn’t ranking for its Specific Keyword, don’t worry about it.
Follow the guidance outlined so far in this course and get your on-page criteria correct (Analyze It!’s job). As you build pages, you might try experimenting by increasing or decreasing keyword presence. But once you have optimized your page as best you can, it's time to move on. Focus on creating new pages.
Improve Your Link Popularity… Build Incoming Links
Search Engines consider the number of in-pointing links to a site as a way to…
1) Establish credibility. An in-pointing link from a quality, related site tells the Search Engine that another Webmaster thinks highly enough of a site to link to it. See how the link becomes representative of human feedback? The link constitutes a vote of confidence.
2) Formulate ranking algorithms. More and more, Search Engines are factoring link popularity and link credibility (i.e., where your in-pointing links originate from) into their ranking algorithms. That’s why it’s so important not to fall into the trap of continuously tweaking your on-page criteria.
Once you have your 20-30 high value pages, build a simple inbound link program, sprinkled with a few high-quality value exchanges (be patient) and even a couple of super-high-quality outbound-only links.
Here’s how to get your link program rolling along…
#1) Get IN-coming links from the major directories, and second tier directories.
#2) Get IN-coming links from theme-specific sections of the major free directories.
#3) Participate in SiteSell’s Value Exchange. It is the simplest, fastest, most efficient, and (most importantly) most real way to identify high-value sites that want to link to your site.
It's also a true ethical use of the Net, exactly the way Search Engines want you to do it -- relevant sites linking to relevant sites only. And did I mention that it’s also free?… http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/
#4) OUTbound-link with high-quality theme-related, non-competing sites as you happen to discover them in the course of normal business or surfing -- exchange links with them, if possible.
Build Word of Mouth Buzz
How do you build word-of-mouth buzz? First piece of advice, don’t bother with those “recommend-a-friend” scripts. Less than one visitor in a thousand fills them in. There’s a far simpler way to get “word of mouth.” Deliver great content.
When the time is right, use the following techniques to seed word of mouth buzz, especially if you are selling your own product or professional service…
• write articles for e-zines or article distribution sites
• make posts in forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, newsgroups (depending on your niche and situation, these can be fairly effective… or totally useless)
• publish your own blog, a Web log/diary
• use a signature file (i.e., contact information, including your URL and preferably your VPP) in your daily e-mail correspondence.
