Here is my latest article. It may be freely used in ezines, on websites or in e-books, as long as the Resource Box is left intact.
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Not on page one of the majors yet?
Elsewhere, I've written about getting on page one of the major search engines with an article here: http://online-wealth.com/yahoosuccess.htm and the relative ease of actually developing a website to do just that here: http://online-wealth.com/articles/gettingonpageone.htm.
If the process is so easy then, you may ask, why are there so many services touting their ability to "guarantee a top 10 placement" for your website?
The easy answer, of course, is that most people do not know how to go about designing a website that SEs drool over, and have even less knowledge about the HTML coding required to display the website on the web. For a relatively easy approach to site building for yourself - and a fun one at that - go to this link:
http://online-wealth.com/buildasite/ where you'll get the help you need...and then some!
Of course, there are many services that will do the job for you, and obviously, many of them do a good job. But again, if you're gonna do the job yourself, you have a lot to think about...
First of all, however, just what do SEs drool about? Well, the best phrase I can think of is "a website with themed relevance".
Meaning? Well, suppose you're an expert on the sport of baseball, and you want to build a website that ranks in the top ten SEs. Most of all, you want to have a site devoted to baseball rules and terminology - a narrow-focus topic, but still having broad appeal and relevance to all baseball players and fans (your target audience, naturally).
Well...a couple of days ago (it's June 18, 2001 today!) a quick search on a few of the majors, for the search term 'baseball rules and terminology'(the 'and' in the phrase isn't required, actually), drew quite a mixed bag, thus :
Altavista: 17,115,664
Google: 8720
Excite: 1,621,610
Lycos: 5728
Northern Light: 6086
Now they were the results when I entered the above search phrase without quotes. When the phrase is entered with quotes, the results are markedly different, thus:
Altavista: Zip
Google: 2
Excite: Nada
Lycos: 1
Northern Light: 4
By placing the quotes around the phrase, I forced the SEs to find the exact phrase somewhere in their databases. However, not one of the SEs returned the exact phrase, which means it may not even exist anywhere on the web.
Furthermore, when I enter the same search phrase in one of the meta-search engine (a fancy term that means it searches the search engines), I get the following:
Ixquick.com - Without quotes: 20,346. With quotes: 1.
And, just so that you know I haven't ignored the one and only:
Yahoo.com - Without quotes: 2230. With quotes: 1
So...all of that means you have a golden opportunity to be number one in the majors, with your baseball rules and terminology site.
Why? The first set of results ranged from many thousands to multi-millions, so how can that be beaten, you say? No problem - those first set of results covered any occurrence of 'baseball', 'rules' and 'terminology', so there were even sites for cricket, public administration, medicine, religion and goodness knows what all on the results page I received!
Do you see my point: if there had been a site with that exact phrase, the search engine software had to pick it. That's the way search software works, basically.
To make sure your site appears on page one though, you have a bit more work to do.
A quick check with Betterwhois.com for 'BaseballRulesAndTerminology.com' showed that it is available for purchase. Guess what? So are the.net and.org names available, and I'll bet.TV and.biz are also!
Now, for ranking purposes, most - if not all - SEs place more emphasis on the domain name, the domain title, the domain description and the themed content of the site. The last is perhaps the most important. The keyword meta-tag is all but dead (I'd make sure I followed the rules, but I wouldn't worry about keyword meta-tags much). Links are important, but they're last in priority.
Now, if I were that baseball expert, I'd boogie on down to my favorite domain registrar, buy the name(s), build the site and get on page one...
Well, now...how can I be so sure, you ask?
Let me answer that with examples from my own domain, online-wealth.com. The two words - 'online' and 'wealth' - are pretty common on the web, right? And, when used as a phrase 'online wealth', you'd be inclined to think the same, right? Well...right again!
Here are the results (i.e. number of web pages) for the search phrase 'online wealth', using the same search engines, without quotes and with quotes:
First up, without quotes: online wealth
Altavista: 105,722,390
Google: 946,000
Excite: 15,634,290
Lycos: 525,516
Northern Light: 490,409
Yes, those figures from Altavista and Excite are the numbers returned to me, I assure you!
Now, with quotes: "online wealth"
Altavista: 1556
Google: 1750
Excite: 490
Lycos: 1662
Northern Light: 871
The only results page that does NOT include our domain of online-wealth.com on page one, is that from Lycos. All of the others have us on page one, and usually number 1! (I'll have to find out why Lycos is ignoring us!)
What does all that mean? Simply this: anybody who punches in "online wealth" or 'online wealth' (no quotes), into a search box, will find our site on page one of the majors and probably in number one position. And that includes Yahoo, Ixquick, and a few others!
So, you expert on baseball...with more information about the topic than anybody else...get that domain name, organize that information into a coherent whole - be it a catalog, a dictionary, a database, an e-book or whatever - develop a killer title and description that precisely encapsulate what your new site is all about, promote it to all SEs and directories and...
Hey, don't expect me to click through...I prefer deep-sea shark fishing...even if you are on page one of the majors, for your theme! ;-(
Huh!?
Well...that's the web! Even if you are on page one, 30% of searchers will ignore you, anyway!
But, at least you'll be on page one, and ahead of the rest, whenever your target prospects find you.
P.S. When I last made enquiries, there were maybe only 48 links pointing to online-wealth.com. I get different results from different SEs...so I don't worry about links at all.
About the Author
Roger Burke has been involved with computers since 1967, and has managed to break quite a few, over the years. He, and his wife Sherry, are now actively engaged in online self-publishing and promoting specific affiliate programs at http://online-wealth.com. If you have any comments or questions about this article, please send emails to mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com.
Copyright 2001, Online-Wealth. All rights reserved.