Getting a good ranking in the major search engines is
probably THE BEST way to get traffic to your site, but just
how to do this is the question. There are literally
millions of web sites out there.
But remember a good website ranking is virtually FREE
advertising and will bring in a steady flow of traffic, so
it is worth going to some lengths to get a good position.
First, sit back for a minute and ask yourself what exactly
you are selling. What keywords are people going to search
for to find your page? Getting a good ranking on a search
engine depends on the keywords you are using - or more
specifically the keywords people are using to find you!
Your aim should be to create a few HIGHLY FOCUSSED
doorway pages for your site, each one optimized for a
particular keyword of phrase. But be honest with yourself. Use
keywords or phrases that describe your product or service
as closely as possible.
To help you find out which keywords are most searched for,
and how likely you are of getting a good ranking, there is
a very good tool called WordTracker. It emails you a free
weekly report of the top 500 keywords (phrases) that are
requested on the major search engines. It also filters out
all pornographic words which account for 25% of search
engine requests. However it also does more!
You can enter a keyword or phrase that you want people to
find your webpage with, and it will return a list of 100
other related keywords. You then click on any of those
keywords and you will get a list of how many searches have
been made for it in the last 24 hours. Then Wordtracker
compares the results with the number of pages ranked on
AltaVista for each keyword or phrase and compiles a report
for you.
Now here is why this tool is so valuable. You can see
which keywords you have more chance with in obtaining a
higher search engine ranking - those keywords with a lot of
hits but relatively fewer pages listed on AltaVista - and
create doorway pages optimized for those keywords. The
doorway pages you create will now have a better chance of
ranking in the top 20 or 30. Wordtracker has a free trial.
Now after choosing your keywords, create a doorway page for
each one.
Most search engines place a high importance on the keywords
and description "META" tags on your web pages. For a more
detailed explanation of META tags, look at our HTML
tutorial at http://www.TheWebsEye.com/HTML.htm.
As well as the meta tags, search engines take into account
a number of other considerations such as keywords in the
TITLE tag, in your header tags, and how keywords are placed
on your pages. If you want to know more about how search
engines rank your pages we strongly recommend you
download the award winning free e-book "Search Engine
Tactics" from our downloads page -
http://www.TheWebsEye.com/downloads.htm (only 129 KB).
The more specific your keyword or phrase, the easier it is
to get a high ranking. A page optimized for "Chinese herbal
tea" should get a good ranking much more easily than a page
optimized for "tea", because there would be a lot fewer
sites trying to have well-positioned pages.
What we are saying therefore is that you need to use
keywords that directly describe your product or service. If
you are paying someone to do it for you, make sure you tell
them the exact search phrases you want your site to be
found with.
Designing a number of "doorway" pages, each page optimized
for a different keyword or phrase, will multiply your
traffic. ALSO remember that search engines don't all use
the same set of rules (algorithms) to rank your pages. Some
might place more emphasis on the META tags while others
may spider the content.
You can take your page optimization one step further now,
and create a doorway page not only for each keyword, but
for each of the major search engines. So it is quite easy
to have 30 doorway pages for one product or service - 3
different keywords and 10 search engines. To do this
properly involves searching for your keyword on a
particular search engine and then analyzing what the top 5
or 10 sites have in common. You can then optimize your own
page based on the results of your search. Doing this
manually is not time-efficient when you can get software to
do it for you.
There are a few good software packages that will spider
your web pages, compare them with the top "X" results for a
particular search, and then let you know what you should
change. They can also monitor, keep track of your positions
in the different search engines, and schedule your
submissions. Optimizing your pages is still time consuming
but if you are prepared to spend an hour a day creating a
new doorway page, you will soon be able to create your own
"traffic puller" on the web.
You will find details of how to get WordTracker and free
trials of Webpage optimizing software at our website -
http://www.TheWebsEYE.com/search-engines.htm.
About the Author
Richard Igoe, - http://www.TheWebsEYE.com -
FOCUSSING on the ESSENTIALS of website design,
promotion and internet marketing.