If I were to make a web site or have it done , what would trigger the different hits?
Example ;
I have cabins for rent in the mountains . They will be linked to the Arkansas web site under lodging , camping , etc . When someone types in my town , or state , or several other hit words I will want to be in the results, such as cabins , hunting guides, ATV guides, canoeing , trail rides, etc. How is it done to get as many hit words on as many search engines as possible ?
Thanks , Tim
Look high and low to find and plug air leaks that cost you money and comfort.
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Replies
1) Submit your website to search engines.
2) META TAGS within your HTLML code.
Best thing is to get your site listed under as many different "Chamber of Commerce" type web sites as possible -- the local city site, regional lodging sites, regional travel sites, etc. Some of these are free, some require a small "membership" fee. Try Google searches for the various things you think people would search for, and see what sites come up.
Submitting your site directly to the search engines doesn't do much good -- I'm not convinced there isn't just a bit bucket on the other end.
Tim,
There are many ways to market a web site or page to search engines. The most common method of making a web page more accessible to search engines is to include HTML Meta tags in the page headers. This is transparent HTML code included on the site or page which can provide a short description of your site (what you often see in a search engine), a listing of keywords that are related to your site/page, how often it should be crawled, etc. Here's a good description of the basics of meta tags.
Meta tag keywords are NOT a magic solution to getting your site picked up by search engines. Most engines crawl the web with special tools and scan your site into their database. However, more and more, search engine sites also factor in how much traffic is going to your site to assess its relative 'weight' on the internet. Therefore, most successful marketing efforts also include getting your site linked up on other sites, paid advertisment of the site, etc. It's not easy to get your site to the top of the heap. You might look into Google AdWords. They are a relatively inexpensive way to advertise on the web. However, there are lots of other advertising providers. You should also do some searching on the web to see where you might best fit links to your site (i.e. travel/hunting/fishing related sites for your region, etc.). These are often the best place to advertise.
Good luck.
Yeah,if you want to consider paid advertising (beyond simply paying the fee for listing on regional sites), Google Adwords is a pretty simple, effective, and cheap approach. You basically pay for the number of clicks you get, and the prices are reasonable.
The rules for getting on page 1 of a search engine results are constantly changing... you could be number 1 on page 1 one month, and #12 on page 20 the next month, and 3 months later you are back to #1 on page 1...
MetaTags are not the only answer, they are looked at, but they are not the solve.... There is lots of things the googles of the world look for to better match search needs...
Pay Per Click is a decent solution if that interests you... you can specify how much you will pay per day, and per click, etc.. its very configurable.. and can be quite inexpensive... I know people who use PPC(pay per click) at $2.00 a day, and I know people who use PPC for $200.00+ per day....
If you get other people to link to your page you also increase your rating on the search engines... but this is a two edged sword, if you start hitting message boards and linking back to your website, the googles of the world will figure it out and could black ball you..... not to mention most message boards frown upon people advertising on their forums for this very reason.... Some web providers create a pseudo ring of their customers web sites... One hosting company I create ebusiness web sites for, puts links to their other customers web sites in each page.... thus more links for googles to pick up on... but this could also hurt them, if the googles feel they are being targetted, its pretty easy for them to blacklist a few sites
Web page titles help.. for instance if you are reading this, then you see on the top of your browser, the blue part of the application window, "Breaktime #57020.1" or some such nonsense.... if that read "DW712 Dewalt Widget" then the search engines pick up on the fact that you are listing an item etc... so could help define a specific product that customers could be looking for... e.g.-I constantly go to high end stores and find items I like, and I grab a model number and come home and search google for said model number.... its amazing how putting the model number into the description can help get me buying said product that much faster.... but its also amazing how few companies put these numbers out there....
Also, Webpage names themselves help... so if you had http://johnsonrv.com/bedandbreakfast.html that site name will also help your rankings when it comes to people looking for bed and breakfast...
I have read some information that states that search engines like changes to web sites... e.g.- if you are constantly changing your website, or have a BLOG(Weblog/Journal), or something is changing constantly(not randomized pictures), then the search engines are constantly scanning your site to check for updates...
You can put keywords on picture names, that can help....
Be aware, that getting picked up by the search engines can take 1-2 months.. you can pay to get added, or you can submit yourself to be picked up, but those dont always get you the results you are looking for....
rumormill I listen to says that search engine companies have teams of brilliant people constantly revamping the search/listing criteria... Its not 1-5 little things its tons and tons of things... and there is going to be months were you are number 1 and months where you are #210... your job is to constantly revamp and try to be in the top 10 on a consistent basis.... The bad part is that you are going to have to dedicate time to do this, or pay someone to do this for you, or all of the above and utilize pay per click...
There are also tools out there that let you see what keywords are heavily searched by the googles(I keep saying googles, but I mean yahoo, google, etc).. so you will want to concentrate on the heavily hit keywords...
Most good web hosting companies are running traffic utilities. These tools provide you, wth the ability to see which parts of your website are getting a lot of traffic or hits.... this is a phenomenal wealth of information about where they are going and where they are not going.... I have a friend who works for a company that has a ton of car wash's... he and I were talking yesterday about whether they sell "books of washes" online... he told me that they have a process in place, but it doesnt bring in a lot of orders... so then I asked how the process worked.. and he informed me that the customer could basically fill out a form and they would call him/her back to get the monies and send the books out..... to me that would be a huge turn off... I cant just put in my order, and my credit card number and have it shipped to someone as a gift, and be done with it?!?!? he referred back to his earlier statement of they dont do much business via it, so the point was moot... I told him to check the traffic on his "form" page, and see how many people were visiting that page, but not completing it... I am betting money they get a lot of traffic to that portion of the site, but very little "BUY" going on.. heheh but maybe I am wrong....
There is tons and tons of stuff to do and try to get good rankings for free.... PPC(Pay Per Click) is a good alternative to getting you out there in the here and now.. PPC is also a good enhancement to your ongoing rankings battle.. Lets face it, the googles of the world like money too! hehe
Hope i didnt overwhelm you.... If it was a known entity of what to do to get better rankings, then everyone would be doing them.. hehehe Some people get paid big bucks to get their clients listed in the top 10... but those same people will be the first to tell you its an ongoing process to stay in the top 10....
Some search engines have "sponsored listings" which appear at the top after a search is done. But I don't know any details about how much it costs.
The listings you see on the side in Google are a sort of sponsored listing. The ones that show up on top are expensive, the ones on the side much more affordable.
When I created our website, I tried everything I could think of to get listed in Google: I linked to some of our suppliers, submitted the website to the search engines, and even tried getting listed in the open source directory (dmoz.org)... all of which were unsuccessful. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
1) META tags can be helpful, but not always to the same degree. Each search engine weighs the different types of information differently, so there's not one rule that will work everywhere (see http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931) for a detailed discussion. Use META tags, but don't count on them.
2) Linking to other sites seems to help the "other" sites more than it does you. Also, in our case most of our links were to local distributors and subcontractors. In the big scheme of things, these aren't high traffic sites, so they probably don't contribute a whole lot.
3) The open source directory is volunteer based, so getting reviewed (much less listed) can take forever. I submitted our site almost nine months ago, and so far no one has looked at it.
4) There are certain "no-no's" in the search engine world which may get you blacklisted. One is to include keywords in the body of the HTML, but set the text color to the background color. In concept, this is a work-around search engines that ignore META tags, but is not visible to the viewer and as such does not distract from the web page. If the search engine detects this, though, your site might be ignored. I'm sure there are others, but this is a mistake I have made in the past.
After several months, I decided to start including the company website in the signature tag when I would post to construction-related discussion forums. In less than two weeks, I started getting hits from Googlebot and other crawlers. We also started advertising with Google's Adwords, which gets us a few additional hits, but the [free] search engine listing appears to be the most fruitful.
Additionally, there are a number of construction websites that allow you to post a free listing in their directory. Focus your time on those that have the most traffic (alexa.com can give you statistics).
Brian O'Dell
Kevin Zetterberg Construction
Perkins, OK
http://www.kzconstruction.com
Perkins OK huh?
How far are ya from Ft Smith?
Thanks .
Im gonna stupidly add something that I omitted before;
We answer questions on here all the time and if not us that answers someone else does it which gives us a lot of views at questions and answers on this site.
A lot of the time when I read the question, Im thinking these people need a pro. We arent really going to be able to put these people in control which Ubuildit loves it cause thats where she gets her business. Anyway , more often than not these folks arent gonna cut it although helping them is the purpose of the site.
Are we on a subject that a pro needs a hold of, that makes a living doing it ? Or a bunch of folks uinder one name that does it for a living ?
Tim Mooney
Ft Smith? I was born there, and my parents live about 45 minutes away, but Perkins is about a 3hr drive. In response to your question, I don't think this is something that is necessarily relegated to computer pros, though it can admittedly get a bit overwhelming. If a person is comfortable writing HTML code (and there are hundreds of such 'amateur' sites out there), then adding a few KEYWORDS or META tags shoudn't be too much trouble, especially considering the wealth of help sites available (for example, http://www.w3schools.com). The process should be even easier if they are using one of the editors (FrontPage, GoLive, Dreamweaver).Still, a great deal of time can be spent learning, experimenting, and debugging. It may be a better use of resources to have it done by a 'pro'.
Brian O'Dell
Kevin Zetterberg Construction
Perkins, OK
http://www.kzconstruction.com
Im 65 miles East of the Ft on I-40.
You get down this way Ill buy ya a cup of truckers coffee . Took Imerg all the way to another state the same dadgum night .
Tim
Well neighbor...I'm ready to HIT YA for not telling me ya had cabins for rent in the Mtns!
MORE INFO pls!
Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most!
Workin on it .
Im finishing the first one and have bought the property for the second . Im supposed to buy a third property next to one Im finishing .
Some of it may be put off a few months as Im tryin to get a 6 plex of apartments in too and still bidding weekly on repos.
I will anounce it , lol.
Tim
Well heck buddy - I gotta get up your way soon for some other meetings and talk to you more about all these endeavors of yours (ya make me look lazy in comparison!)...
Think you and your DW can break free for a IRL meeting and a cup of java? I promise to leave my axe in the car. ;-)Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most!
Think you and your DW can break free for a IRL meeting and a cup of java? I promise to leave my axe in the car. ;-)
Sure thing ! <G>
Ck your BT email... in about a minute...Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most!