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Web Site Hints
sponsored by rpsoft 2000
note: These web pages are somewhat up and running, but will
be
added to continuously. Stop back if you wish as we add more
Forward:
Getting traffic and good traffic to a web site is very important.
One can have the best product in the world, but it will matter little if no
one sees it. There are three ways that I am aware of to get traffic to
a web site: search engines, advertising and links. We will
discuss each of those below. Whether your advertising budget is low or
high, some knowledge of all three, and some schemes on all three can be
helpful.
At this stage, I have read many e-books on the subject and learned much
the hard way. I have also found some good sections that gave some free
advice. This section, though, is the largest free section on
establishing a web site that I have personally seen. I truly wish it
had been around when I needed the information.
To be sure, some of the items to click on in this section are free and
some cost money. I will only put in the cost items that I think are
excellent deals. If you believe one of these links leads to a useless
item, please let me know and I will review it again. Thanks !
- owner of rpsoft 2000 software
The Web
Site Itself
Get a Domain
First of all, it is best to get a domain and not just use the free space
allotted by AOL, Geocities or others. It is really not that expensive,
plus the pay sites are often much easier to maintain. Also, having
your own domain in a pay site where the advertising is YOUR idea and not due
to the free place, will make your site seem that much more professional.
When choosing a web host, look not only for low prices, but also one that
will acquire your domain in your name and not theirs, and whose site is easy
to work with, plus gives the email mailboxes that you need. If you are
using Front Page as your web site creator, it will be necessary to have that
web hosting site able to load "Front Page Extensions" - which are code that
makes Front Page uploading to that site more automatic.
Get Rich Quick? Or is it really Hard Work?
There are many advertisements that suggest that you can get rich quick on
the net with no effort. If you are a legitimate business and not a
scam, this is highly unlikely. A good site that works well will in
fact take much work. The scheme to get established is:
- Get an excellent Product and / or Service and get it tested and
ready for sale
- Create an exceptional web site that attracts people and presents
your product in an excellent appealing manner - and ensure good and
enough "content" on your site
- Get your site search-engine-ready (including title and meta tags), and then registered on the search
engines - at least the major
ones
- Advertise and or acquire links to your site to get traffic
- Every time you reach this item 5, start over and improve 1 through 4
again and again
Web Site Issues
There are many styles for web sites. But the advice that seems the
most believable is the advice to make it look professional, but to avoid
"flash" and other gimmicks which might in fact cheapen the appearance of
your site, and or make it take a while to load. There is also the belief that
if a site looks "too good" that people may be less trusting of the ethics of
the person. What seems to make sense is a middle of the road approach
- a professional but clean look. Look at the major corporate
businesses that you admire. You will likely find that they look
professional but avoid visual gimmicks.
Site load time - try to ensure your web pages load in half a minute at
28.8 K Bytes service. What does that mean? It means that for the
people connecting via telephone line, that your web pages should try to not
take longer than half a minute to load. More time to load is always
bad. Note that some people even browse the web with "pictures"
capability turned off in order to browse faster. For those people, if
you have pictures, you might consider using the "alt" function of pictures
to give those people a few words as to what the picture is that they are not
viewing. That is a nice touch for those people who browse that way.
Plus the added words may also help search engines understand your site.
Note the robot software used by search engines also does not look at.
pictures.
Also there seems to be strong advice to avoid using frames on your web
site. They are complex and may create problems for both customers and
search engine robots. Simple and professional is the key.
Web Site Hint on "Tables"
For those not familiar with web site programs for creating web pages, one of the greatest basic
secrets is to use "tables" - with no borders in order to space things
correctly on the page and also to provide margins for your print. In
fact, some of the web pages here in this site were created with tables
within tables within tables - in order to space things correctly and provide
margins. Of course it is always best to keep things as simple as
possible. Don't add any complexity that you do not need to.
Search Engines
There are at least two stages to dealing with search engines. The
first is getting ready for them and the second is submitting your site to
them. Basically, since the search engines scan your site for
relevance, it makes much sense to ensure that you do the best job of
providing good information - before - inviting the search engines and
their search engine bots (robotic scan software) .
Getting your site ready
There are several descriptions on your web page that need to be
optimized. The first three deal with your title, site description, and
keywords. Site description and keywords are sometimes called "meta
tags". Now, not all search engines look at a site's meta tags, but it
still a good idea to put meta tags in for those sites or systems that do
use them. All of these three descriptions need to be within the html of your
introduction web page between the html headings: <head> and then its end:
</head>. If using Front Page to do your site, a hint follows. If
using another web site maker, look for something similar.
Front Page hint: If you are using Front Page to do your
site, the mechanism to make all three of these is in the pull down menu
under "file" and then "properties". The page title will be under the
"general" tab and then "title". The site description and keywords will
be under the "custom" tab. For these one must press "add"
on the bottom portion
and first give the name "description" and the web page description wording itself
under "value". Then one would press "add" again and add "keywords"
into the name this time, and put the wording for the keywords under "value".
Note that the section that should be used is one that Front Page 2002 refers
to as "user variables" and not "system variables". The correct
variable usage will show up in html code as "meta name" and not "meta
http-equiv". If not using Front Page, look for something similar within your web page
maker.
Title: Pick a title that describes your site very
well, and keep it to approximately 50 to 80 characters. Make sure no misspellings.
Also you might be able to add a few keywords in the title that someone might
want search with.
Description: This is the description that might be seen or
used by someone visiting your site. So try to make it a good sales
pitch but also keep it less than 250 characters. Again, you might
include some keywords in the title, but try to ensure that the description
reads well like a sentence and also makes someone want to visit your site.
Keywords: Keywords are words or phrases that people might
use to find your site. At one time the keywords meta tag was believed
to be the most important item for search engines placement. But the
search engines are now more sophisticated and look for more. Still,
ensure you do a good job with keywords. Many of us separate key words
and key word phrases by commas, but it is not clear that commas are needed.
I use commas as separators. Also keep in mind phrases used as
keywords, that could single you out as an authority on a subject. For
example, a phrase such as "patio furniture" could help bring people to your
patio furniture site much better than just getting lost in the huge
"furniture" only keywords. But of course, you would also use the
keyword "furniture" as well. Keep plurals in mind. Someone
could search for "bananas" rather than "banana", and the "s" on the end
could matter. Keep keywords to less than 1024 characters, and also try
to ensure that you do not use the same word more than 5 times or so - so the
search engine will not try to think that you are stacking things unfairly in
your favor and decide to give you a lower rating for doing that. You
might also consider looking for common misspellings of your key phrases that
could send someone to your site.
Text: Text on your web page itself is also important.
Try to have at least 200 words of good content for the search engines to
browse through. But again, try not to keep repeating key words since
the search engines may think you are trying to cheat and may lower your
rating. Definitely do not stack key words on your page hidden and
using the same color as the background. This has been done by many in
the past, and the search engines may look for it and lower your rating.
Submitting Your Site
The big search engine sites are Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, MSN, Lycos,
Excite, and AOL. Even some of these share lookup services such as DMOZ. There are others of course such as Northern Light, Hotbot, iWon and many more. Most of these sites have options for how
to submit. One can pay and receive a preference in the listing and
speed of submission. There is often a free submission type that is
lower in priority for them, and might take weeks or even two months before
you get listed.
The way to submit to some of these search engines, such as Google or
Yahoo, is to find the directory of how they store sites into categories.
Then one goes down into the categories through multiple levels till one
finds the best fit. Then, one looks for the phrase on the page "submit a
site" and click that to begin the site submission. Some of the
starting points for submission are listed below: (note: if the links
to the specific correct page to add a site no longer work, begin at the main
site and browse for its new whereabouts)
Simple Google Submission (simplified
one that just asks for the url)
Yahoo Submission (look
for the directory as indicated above, find your best fit, then "suggest a
site")
Ask Jeeves & Teoma (charges
a fee, but I paid anyway)
28 site submit - some
of these are smaller search engines, and some are only for a specific type
business, and one should worry about spam to whatever email they give.
But then again - a fast way to submit to many.
Of the above, I have noticed that Alta Vista is often the easiest and
also the fastest to update. It is hard to not like doing business with
Alta Vista. Nice place.
Now, we would be the first to tell you that you don't need specialized
software to do the above. However, some software might save you some
time or aggravation repeating the same phrases needed for submission.
We ourselves use our membank software for
storing the title, description, url and keywords on our key web pages.
Membank allows one to send this information to
the computer clipboard then for immediate usage, such that one need not
remember nor retype the same information over and over again. We also
use membank to store signatures, www addresses and their passwords, search
engine www addresses, and basically any of the myriad of items that one must
recall and use quickly for web site management.
Search Engine Bots and Web Crawling
Some spiders that examine your site seem to use inputs from Alexa - an
Amazon.com company. As to how they relate, I am not yet positive.
But if Alexa thinks that your site is great stuff - perhaps some search
engines will also. You can ask Alexa to crawl your site via the link
below. The Alexa link also gives information on what text to put at
your site to invite bots or to restrict them.
(sorry link seems to be gone)
The robot information that goes within your html page
itself, goes in your header - that is the space between the html commands
<head> and </head>. One would of course pick only one
option of the four below commands. The robot information is a meta tag and follows
the following protocol
<META name="ROBOTS" content="INDEX, FOLLOW">
(The Search Robot indexes the page and follow all links)
<META name="ROBOTS" content="INDEX, NOFOLLOW">
(The Search Robot indexes the page but does not follow any links)
<META name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW">
(The Search Robot does not index the page but follows all links)
<META name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
(The Search Robot does not index the page or follow any links)
How Many links do the Search Engines think
I have?
Links are normally checked by spider software. However, for a few
of the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Lycos, one can find out who
these search engines thinks links to you by trying a search at them for your
website url followed by a blank followed by a + sign . . .such as:
(substitute your website name for "website" of course)
http://www.website.com +
In some cases, there is a difference between the above list and the list
of links that you might actually get credit for - such as in the case of
google. Google it seems only credits links from the higher page rank
sites. You can find out how many (counted) links to you from google
and some others by:
link:http://www.website.com
note that in the case of google that the above two lists may not have
much overlap - the list of site links you get credit for and the list of
other sites that it found link to you
patience
Don't be surprised if it takes a long time for links to be recognized by
the search engines; it can take 3 or even 6 months. Note that the
above commands do not work for all search engines.
Another free method for checking links - as long as this free option is
still available - is provided by "i need hits" and it is much more automatic
and shows links at a number of sites at once. It is at:
http://www.ineedhits.com/free/popularity/
It does take a minute or two to do its work - but I would still consider
that very fast.
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onto the next page:
LINKS
note: use the following link to also send comments to us regarding
this page. Note that comments may be sent at the bottom of that page.
The comment section is set up to allow link exchange with rpsoft 2000 if you
wish. Please understand that for link exchanges that there are no
definites, but that each side must feel comfortable with linking to the
other. Again, best wishes on your site!
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