Recommendations
In addition to following the web site optimization guidelines, we recommend that every few months, you submit the site by hand to the search engines and directories. Manual submissions are more likely to be accurate. You can custom-tailor your information to the audience --- you can evaluate each search engine and choose appropriate language, and when available, the right categories and descriptors for your site. Many search engines are in fact little more than tools for generating leads which are then used by solicitors who will contact you. Submitting to the search engines can result in lots of spam for your inbox. It's also a time-intensive task. We maintain a list of search engines and directories and you are welcome to use the list to do submissions yourself. We also are available for hire to do it for you, and if we do it for you, not only does it save you time but it also drastically reduces the amount of spam you will receive.
What Makes Good Rankings
Overall, over a hundred factors go into search engine ranking. There are many things you can do, which are detailed elsewhere in our documentation. However, these are the biggest factors:
- How much relevant content is in your site
- How well-structured is the content, including page titles, keywords, and descriptions
- Does the site title (including the domain name) reflect the search string
- Does the site adhere to accessibility guidelines
- How many other sites are "competing" for rankings from the same search string
- How popular is your site --- both in terms of the number of links to it, and its "stickiness", or ability to hold the attention of visitors
Web Site Effectiveness
The best thing you can do is build an effective web site --- one which converts your visitors into buyers. Who cares how many hits you get, if they don't do anything once they've reached your site? It's easy to get inexpensive, guaranteed and qualified traffic to your site. There are many pay-per-click services to help you with this. Since qualified traffic is cheap and guaranteed, focus on maximizing your site's ability to work with that traffic --- to generate conversions from visits. Then, experiment with small investments in pay-per-click services, to find the right combination of keywords and venues to maximize your ROI. Then, buy as many visits as necessary to generate the level of business that you want!
The second stage in having an effective web site steps away from this marketing perspective, and looks at your web site as a tool to help manage your business processes. If you have to do everything manually once a web site converts a visitor into a buyer, then you won't want to do much advertising because you'll quickly get swamped with more business than you can handle. Many of our services can help you manage your business so that you can handle more business, without becoming disconnected from your business, and while increasing your profits.
There is one more essential piece to your web marketing strategy: affiliate links.
Continue to Page 4: Affiliate Marketing