Getting Found ~What Web Presence Is All About
Getting found is what web presence, what marketing on the internet, is all about. You want, you need, to get found by your prospects when they are searching the web, right? We’re going to outline how you make that happen and we’re going to tell you how to waste money trying to make that happen.
First, the bad news. If you’re paying $60-$70-$80/month to one of the many proper sounding companies to “get to the top” on the internet, you’re probably wasting your money. Some of these companies might deliver on their promises but it’s doubtful. Just consider what you’ve spent “tuition” and get ready for some education!
The Good News? You’ve found your way here and we’re going to help you get to the top. All you have to do is read and apply! Let’s get going…
The Goal:
Get As Many Qualified Visitors To Your Site As Soon And As Regularly As You Can.
Some Facts:
People use the internet to search…
…and they basically search for 3 things. They search for information, they search for entertainment and they search for products they might want to buy.
People hardly use the yellow pages online and even less all the different formats of “the yellow pages”, online. They use search engines to look for these things. They use Google, the use Yahoo, then MSN, Ask & A bunch of other “search engines” and pretty much in that order.
The Search Engines Check You Out & “Rank” You Based On Your “Content” ~It’s a very democratic system; whom ever has the most relevant information, and continues to provide the most relevant information on a subject, generally gets pushed closer to the top.
Your particular business, interest or entertaining offering is the topic of “relevance” and from that you develop “keywords” & “keyword phrases”; the words & phrases you think your prospects would input to Google, Yahoo, etc. to find the product you offer.
All the biggies have arcane formulas as secret as the one for Coca-Cola that tells them whether your site belongs at the top or not, and they like to keep those equations as secret as they can.
Think about it; if they told everyone how they chose the best sites, people would try to “game” the system. And, BOY, do people try to game the system!
There Are Specific Criteria That Help Your “Ranking”; Quality text goes a long way towards pushing you to the top, and quality text in a web-specific format helps even more.
Submitting your website to the search engines for “indexing” helps, as does submitting to the proper web directories(and this doesn’t cost hundreds per year). The search engines will eventually find you(if your website is properly constructed) but there’s no charge by the search engine when you make a submission.
There Are Criteria That Make The Search Engines Drop You Like A Hot Potato
Search engines regularly send out a program called a “spider”, a “bot” or a “crawler” that search over the content of web sites and pages and use mathematical algorithms to make determinations on your site; like Santa Claus, they know if yiou’ve been bad or good & will reward or punish you accordingly.
The Basics Of Getting Found
The basics are:
1)Build your site properly.
This means using the proper html code for text, headings, etc. so that the search engines can “read” it properly. Using “website-from-a-can” packages & programs(like Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc.) might give you a funky, flashy, fun website but often create junk code that will confuse search engine bots and leave you buried in the rankings.
Proper use of keywords in text & titles is important also; the more your chosen keywords show up & their use on your pages is factored by the visiting bot. Some folk figure that if they just jam all the white space of their websites with keywords/phrases in white text, they can get better rankings & get over on everyone. For those “operators”, Google and the other search engines have a place they call “the sandbox”.
If your site gets sent to the sandbox for keyword spamming(which is what they call that), do not pass go, do not collect $200. In fact, you might’s well mothball that site and start all over.
So build it proper, build it legit.
2) Submit Your Site To The Search Engines
Google, Yahoo & MSN all accept submissions and they’re free.
Google Site Submit
Yahoo Site Submit
(Requires a free registration)
MSN Site Submit
3)Start Driving Traffic
Is your URL(your website name) on your business cards, your flyers, your car? Do you participate in forums that let you have a link in your ID signature? In some form or another, start banging your drum and getting some(positive) attention! The rest will come…
So these are the basics of getting yourself found, of establishing some web presence. Next time around we’ll dig a little deeper into the tool box to really start pushing you up the ranks and getting you nailed to page #1 for your keywords & phrases(I know, I know ~I didn’t really cover keywords/key phrases but I wanted to leave a thread worth tugging at for the adventurous/curious~do some research, it’ll be worthwhile).
