The Internet of your ancestors is not your Internet

by Donna Lynn Farrell

Okay… it hasn’t been that long that the internet has been around. But it’s been around for a while and during that time it’s changed quite a lot. Now you have to do so much more to get noticed and a great looking site is just the beginning…

Once upon a time, getting noticed was as simple as placing your site with a search engine….this is not true anymore. The reason is competition. The competition was not as great then, there were not as many companies on the web. Now the internet is an integral part of a company’s marketing plan.

Some things still remain the same… search engines can provide the main source of traffic to your site. The problem is that it’s not the same search engine of long ago and placing your site with search engines alone will not get you the traffic or the sales you once had.

Marketing includes understanding search engines and employing a number of other marketing techniques to get the response you need.

The importance of the search engines

As a general rule, most traffic that websites receive comes through search engines. For that reason, having a search engine presence is important to having a successful website. For search engines to list your site you must have your site optimized and then submitted.

There are many methods to optimize your website and each search engine varies in terms of how they rank web pages. Generally, search engines use the following factors for ranking web pages:

• Keyword phrase repetition
• Keyword phrase use in your meta tags
• Link popularity

Optimization involves focusing your web pages in ways that improve the chances they will be found and positioned well.

• Search engines read from the top down on a web page looking for a specific keyword phrases.
• Phrase repetition should be between 5-7% of the text content on each web page. So for about every 100 words 5 of them should be your keyword phrase.
• The most important place for your keyword phrase to appear is at the top and bottom of your page.
• Meta tags are where keywords are placed in the source code. Some search engines read the meta tags and use them for ranking purposes.
• Some search engines also use link popularity for ranking web pages. How many web pages link to your web page. The more incoming links the better the link popularity.
• Build relationships with other companies and have them reciprocate a link from their website back to yours, and vice versa.
• The link popularity ranking usually incorporates other variables such as the ranking or popularity of the site that links to you.

No matter what you do with search engine optimization it will be impossible for you to rank high on all the search engines because they are all so different and are forever changing their algorithms. One search engine, for example, uses 5 million different variables in ranking a page. They will never tell you their secret to ranking high so don’t even play the game. Your time is too valuable and there are other marketing methods to work on.

Search Engines are not the only method of marketing a site.
There are plenty of other methods of marketing that you should be applying, and search engines are the first on the list.

Below are examples of other marketing techniques:

• Pay per click engines
• Opt-in Email
• Ezines
• Sponsors & Affiliates
• Offline Marketing

Keep marketing your site, apply all that you learn and keep the faith.
One quick note: Beware of those that guarantee a ranking or website success.