Promoting Your Web Pages

Problem is, no two of them are going to find you the same way.   YOU may always start with Yahoo!, for example, but millions of people choose a different engine, or use different vocabulary when describing your product or service.  Some  even ignore engines and work with directories.  Some go into discussion groups and ask around. 

If you want to get a big piece of that potential customer group, you have to be thorough.

key word phrase finder

By the time you get to the end of this page about building traffic, you might feel a bit overwhelmed at how difficult it looks.  But first take heart in these findings from some recent industry surveys:

• Even the biggest search engine holds ONLY about 16% of the entire Web.  This means that once you're indexed by an engine, you're ahead of about 84% of all web pages.
• Only about one out of three websites uses even the MOST BASIC techniques of getting found.  Those basic techniques consist of 1) the invisible meta-tag codes that are possible on any website, and 2) basic rules regarding doing the main text of the page.
• Of those few who use either of these techniques, only about one in four does it with any degree of competence.  The other three tend to make all kinds of errors that damage their findability.
• Only about one in twenty takes advantage of the opportunities beyond search engines, such as subject-matter directories, regionally-focused directories, and the "recommended links" pages that are found on many websites.  In many cases, these are a tremendous source of well-qualified traffic.
• Only about one in fifty bothers to keep tabs on the zillions of Internet discussions that go on every day, looking for opportunities to put in a word.

The great news in the above is that it's fairly easy to do a better job of building traffic than most of your competitors do.  It's a wide-open field.

The bad news is that there is a horde of hucksters selling shortcuts to naive website owners.  It damages the credibility of those of us who actually can get results, through hard work, ingenuity and insight, technology, and ethics.   That's what it gets down to.

My business is building traffic for other people's websites.  I do it individually, with great attention to YOUR industry, YOUR clientele, the strengths of YOUR way of doing business.  

Here are some of the things I do for my customers.  Most activities happen every week or every month.

Some of the work is done manually, and some is done using automated software (robots) that save me a lot of time and make my work more affordable. 

Search Engines

• I evaluate your site for its "findability."  I discuss your market with you and do some research of my own.  And, in all probability, I recommend changes to your site --- usually inconspicuous ones.
• I submit your site to the search engines.  Another phrase for submitting is "registering."  I use a combination of submission programs and hand-submissions where it's critical.  But submitting is only the first step, despite what some people tell you.
• I submit individual pages as well as the home page, whenever the subject matter allows it and the search engine accepts it.  This is a powerful technique if each page on your site is tailored to get top rankings for a different aspect of your product or service.  If you have a ten-page (ten topic) site, then you have ten times as many chances that at least one of your pages will be at the top of any given search.  I hope I'm clearly making the point that it's nearly impossible for a home page or any one page to do well on a variety of search terms --- chances are, it will have medium rankings for many terms, and be tops on none. 
• I check each engine at intervals to make sure your submissions "took."  A surprising number of submissions never show up --- ask any webmaster about this.  I have information on how long it takes each engine to add a site, and I keep checking.  If too much time passes, I re-submit.
• I resubmit everything at intervals even if the submissions did "take," because most of the engines drop sites that don't get regularly re-submitted.
• I check the rankings every week for all your relevant search terms.  If your ranks are low or have slipped down, they get special attention right away.  I concentrate on the twenty biggest search engines.  (Don't believe claims about 400 or more search engines --- if you examine those lists you'll find hundreds of junk sites.)
• I look  for additional search terms to target that you or I may not have originally thought of.  First, I look at the vocabulary used on your competitors' sites and in newsgroups about your topic.  (When looking at your competitors, I check sites that already exist and also set up "watchdog" software robots that inform me when new sites come online that might be related to your site.  I use watchdogs in the newsgroups as well.  Also, I visit Internet places called Keyhole Sites that allow me to examine what search terms tend to be used, in what combinations.   These methods also tell me about common misspellings that your site should take into account.  Finally, I look at the visitor logs collected by your website's server.  These logs contain information about exactly what search terms brought your visitors in.  If any good ideas come up because of any of these activities, I incorporate the new vocabulary into your site and re-submit your site to be indexed afresh by the search engines.

Directories and Related Websites

• I keep a big list of directory sites --- those that divide the Web into subject categories that visitors browse rather than search.  Getting listed in the right category is more complicated than getting listed on a search engine, but the directories are critical because a lot of people find them to be the most rewarding way to surf.  I examine every directory for just the right place to list your site.  Sometimes I suggest new categories to the directory managers, which means that until the category fills up, your site may be the only one on the list.
• In the last few months, directories have become absolutely critical.  This is because all except three of the main search engines now use data from one of the main directories or another.  The search engines still use their spidered databases, but also offer directory results.  Sometimes, as at HotBot, they list the directory results first.
• I also work with regional and city directories.  These are very important if you want to draw customers just from your own part of the world.  For example, if your business is in Ann Arbor, you probably have heard of the fee-based MLive, but do you also know about Arborlink or the dozen other freebie Ann Arbor, Southeast Michigan, and Michigan-focused directories?
• I find WebRings related to your company and get you on them.  A WebRing is a group of sites on a common topic --- each site contains pointers to the next and previous site on the Ring.  It's an interesting alternative to webpages that are lists of related sites.  People who stumble across one site on a WebRing (usually as a result of a search engine search) often follow the links to other sites on the Rings.
• I look for topical sites dealing with your site's subject matter, and request that other webmasters put your site on their "links" pages.  This can be done with or without having a reciprocal "links" page on your site, or a complimentary banner for their site --- but "with" is better.  How do I find those other sites?  I use the search engines, the directories, links pages ... and also a cool technique called back-searching that finds out where your competitors' sites are listed.  I have a tool that does a double-layer of back searches and helps me evaluate which sites to target first. test

Kinetic Visuals email kv@mi-way.com