1. Find the perfect spot
for your homepage on Yahoo!
Act like your customers.
Look through Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) to find useful information,
bargain deals, or great entertainment sites related to your business.
Skip the pages that have a thousand listings. Get a little more specific
and settle on a category that has 40 to 100 pages. This is where your
customers will also be looking. Write a snappier headline and more
interesting description than anybody else. Change your TITLE tag to
match this new headline. Be sure to start your headline with the letter
"A" or "B" (you can see why, right?). And finally, erase all the meta
tags and keyword stuffing tricks from your homepage before submitting.
2. Carefully select three
to six key words or key phrases.
This is the most critical
element to your success. The right keywords will attract buyers. Forget
about the words you would use and think of the interests of your customers.
How many people really search for "professional marketing consultant"?
Research your competition and select "View/Document Source" to see
what keywords they have chosen. If you want an immediate education
and insight into the surfer mentality, take a look at the Search Voyeurs
at Webcrawler ( http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/Fun/SearchTicker.html
) & Magellan ( http://voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi-bin/voyeur.cgi ). Pay
attention to the keyword searches that are actually taking place this
very moment in cyberspace. (ADULT WARNING: this is not for the faint
of heart).
3. Find the popular synonyms
for each keyword.
Go to Excite and type in
your keywords. Notice the checkboxes for "Select words to add to your
search.."? Take advantage of Excite's extensive vocabulary research.
Write down the most suitable synonyms and related words from the list
they display. Keep in mind that these are pre-selected keywords which
are highly likely to be chosen by web surfers, so you definitely need
to target them.
4. Pick someone's brain.
Find a trusted resource
for up-to-date information. Buy these two books and give them to your
web designer. They are the best there is (but don't take my word for
it... they're completely guaranteed so check them out for yourself).
Stephen Mahaney, "The
UnFair Advantage Internet Book on Winning The Search Engines War"
http://www.searchenginehelp.com/promote
John DeUlloa, "The Step
by Step Guide to Successfully Promoting a Web Site" http://www.promoteone.com/var2
5. Now it's time for some
competitive research!
Go to the major search
engines and enter your main keyword or key phrase. Here's a tip: instead
of doing this one at a time, use the Super-Seek WebSearch research
tool at: http://www.super-seek.com . It will automatically create
separate browser windows for each of the major search engines (quite
a time saver!). Then pay attention to the pages that are listed. Are
these sites closely related to yours? If not, you better consider
different keywords! What makes you want to click on some sites but
not others? Take notes on the headlines and descriptions that got
your attention!
6. Write a key paragraph
that is entirely focused on one keyword and its related synonyms.
Repeat this for all keywords.
You will need to write several short paragraphs that refer to your
website. Concentrate on the clear benefits of each separate product
or service that you have. Why do your customers care? What keyword
is in their mind when they try to find this information? Resist the
temptation to write advertisements -- these should look like the opening
paragraph in a Reader's Digest article. Talk briefly and specifically
about the problems that your customers face, then say "Click here
to discover..." or "Click here to learn how to...". Listen to HardCopy
or Paul Harvey and you will learn how to write short "hooks" that
make someone want to know "the rest of the story...".
7. Now create a separate
"intro" page to target every search engine & key paragraph combination.
When you read the books
you'll understand why this is critically important. If you have 3
keywords to put at the top of the 8 major Search Engines, you'll need
24 pages. If you have 5 keywords, you'll be making 40 pages, and so
on. Stuff these pages with all of the tricks from the two books --
using different refinements for each individual search engine. Use
TITLE tags, META tags, heading tags, comment tags, alt statements,
and hidden body text to create the maximum percentage of keyword density.
Name the file after your keyword and save it in a subdirectory named
after your keyword. (If you already knew all of this, then call me
-- you're hired!)
8. Submit all of the pages
you just created to the major Search Engines.
This is the easy part.
Just cut and paste the URL into these submission pages (add your e-mail
when necessary). That's it!
AOL NetFind
http://www.aol.com/netfind/info/addurl.html
AltaVista http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/addurl.htm
Excite http://www.excite.com/Search/add_url.html
HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.html
Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com/AddUrl?pg=DCaddurl.html&lk=noframes
Lycos http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
WebCrawler http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/SubmitURLS.html
Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
9. Start submitting your
pages to the huge list of Internet Link Sites.
There are two ways to place
your submission requests on the search directories. One is by hand.
You actually go to the page and fill out the questions and answers.
The second way is automating it. In almost every case, the automated
routines do not take into account the fact that you can have longer
descriptions, and more keywords on some directories and less on others.
Most auto-submit-it sites do not ask for different categories or multiple
length descriptions. You have to do a few of these by hand to understand
what they are and how they work.
Here are two great places
to start,
The Huge List - http://www.hitstosales.com/searchlinks.html
1,200 Specialty - http://www.super-seek.com/directories.htm
Breeze through these listings
and you can quickly determine whether you want to be added to the
directory, what area is most appropriate for you, and how you want
to describe your page to the other readers.
10. OK, you quickly got
tired of doing this by hand and want to automate the task, right?!
Here are my recommendations:
Limited budget? Get the
www.SitePromoter software http://www.netresults.w1.com/sitepromoter/
(or try a FREE download) http://www.sitepromoter.com/htsoffer.htm
Buy it once and use it repeatedly. Great for the do-it-yourselfer
or webmaster with a few clients to promote. This is a very sophisticated
and intelligent program that a novice can learn to use. Online downloads
keep the search engine submission database constantly updated.
Limited time? Check out
WebPromote. http://ad1.webpromote.com/wplink?AP736 Fill out the form
and press a button. Easy. Automatic. One of the few auto-submit sites
that asks for categories and multiple length descriptions.
Serious about your traffic?
Give us a call at 1-800-701-8176. One of our knowledgeable technicians
will help you find the right resources.
11. Now check the results
of your efforts.
You have to check out Rank
This! ( http://www.rankthis.com/
) and Position Agent ( http://www.positionagent.com/
). These two sites will save you a significant amount of time
by searching for your website and telling you how well it placed.
In the "old" days we used to do this by hand... very tedious. Hat's
off to these guys for figuring out how to keep providing these resources
for FREE! Another resource is WebPosition: http://www.webposition.com/cgi-local/index.pl?DS1=RP&DS2=7W8-55CE
You have to buy this one, but we use it and it's definitely worth
the price.
12. Continually monitor
the search words people are using to find your site. To do this, you
need access to referer logs from your ISP or a CGI program like KeywordCapture
(keywordcapture@hitstosales.com
). This will tell you which search engines people are looking
at to find your website and what keywords they used. This feedback
is essential. You want to keep identifying new words and themes that
you can use to create additional "intro" pages. When you catch on
to this idea, you'll realize that the strategy is to leave your website
alone. Your website becomes the rod & reel. The "intro" pages are
flies that you cast out at the different search engines to see which
ones they bite on. It is a continual process of tossing out different
ones to see what works!
That's about it -- it's
late and my brain is drained. But call me sometime and I can probably
give another pointer or two...