Web Site Promotion Tips
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Introduction
Most web site owners want more people coming to their site.
During the past couple months, I've been reviewing what it takes
to do just that. Based on my findings, I've written this article
for as a supplement to my online Search Tips.
This article will explain the importance of site optimization and
will also introduce you to the possible benefits of a popular choice
in online advertising -- pay-per-click ads. I've had the benefit
of tracking results from many web sites and want to pass on what
I've learned to you. I encourage you to use
this information to manage your own web site promotion, or to have
us or someone else do it for you.
Tim Tedder, T2Designs
Why Optimize Your Site? (The Long Term Solution)
What does it mean to optimize your site?
It means to prepare your web site pages in such a way that they
will be optimally conditioned for search engine indexing. Pages
that are optimized will show up higher in lists of search engine
results.
As opposed to web pages that are Search Engine Unfriendly (do
not have the necessary coding and content to list appropriately
in search engines) or Search Engine Friendly (do have
the necessary coding and content), a Search Engine Optimized page
will include the coding & content that has been researched
and strategically placed to gain an advantage over non-optimized
sites.
An optimized page doesn't necessarily contain the most popular
search keywords or keyphrases. Instead, it contains those keywords
and keyphrases that are shown to have a balance between popularity and lower
use by other competing sites.
For more about how to optimimize your site by reading
Step 2 of our Search Tips.
Does it really make any difference?
Yes, it always makes a difference. Measured over the long
term, a site's optimized pages will attract significantly more
attention from web users than pages that are not optimized. In
search results, optimized pages will show up more often and in
higher list positions. That means more people coming to your site.
But how much difference depends on a number of factors
including time, competition and site quality.
How long does it take for optimizing to show
results?
You'll see some initial results during the first month, but these
tend to be minimal and sporadic. It takes about three months for
your site to "settle" into it's position in search engines.
Of course, other factors affect your search positioning as well.
What about other search optimizing & submission
services?
There are other online services that claim to get your site listed
in high search engine positions. Some are reputable, but be careful
of lofty promises. Even services that provide quick traffic to
your site may end up hurting you in the following ways:
-
Unqualified Leads: I've had a couple customers
pay hundreds of dollars to a service that did generate high numbers
to their site, but these visits did not convert into sales. Later,
I uncovered evidence that the service may have attracted hits
by people who weren't even interested in what they were providing.
The numbers looked good, but they didn't convert into any benefit
to the site owner.
- Paying a Long-Term Cost: Search services are getting pretty
picky about how sites generate search results. If someone tries
to produce good results for your web site by "tricking" the
system in some way, your site could actually be penalized or banned,
requiring much time and effort to get listed again.
That doesn't mean all services are bad, but be prepared to pay a
good chunk of money if you want to see the strongest results. Although
I've never used them, one company that seems to have a good reputation
in this area is marketmysite.com.
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