Web Site Promotion #11

Web Site PromotionÂ

Placement on Internet search engines is still the key to getting your retail web site seen. Over the years this task has gotten more difficult to do as the number of web sites has grown and the search engines change their methods of ranking sites. If you have read through this book, you know that what you choose to offer for sell, can have a large effect on your web site's search engine rankings. Here we will cover META tags, doorway pages, page optimization, and other things you can do that will help you get or improve your position.

Web site promoting is a learning experience and requires constant vigilance. I suggest you get a current book on the subject and subscribe to a newsletter or two. You can find newsletters on line.

Who Are You Trying To Attract To Your Web Site?

In the beginning, before the World Wide Web became so crowded, we all wanted to attract as many visitors to our web site we could. Today when a search engine can return tens of thousands of hits, your web site can get lost. Customers do not have the patience to look at web site, after web site trying to find the good ones.

You have to ask. WHO?

Who do you wish to attract? And how can they find your web site? I shall assume that as a retail web site you wish to attract prospective buyers and not just general shoppers. To attract buyers you must be specific in your use of copy (text) and META tags as outlined below. Shoppers tend to search using general terms, for example; a buyer looking for patio furniture would use search words such as "patio furniture". Buyers on the other hand will tend to be specific as to the search words they use to search the Internet, for example, "Telescope Patio furniture". The search results will be quite different. I would rather have the buyer who knows what they want, who has seen it somewhere and who is looking for a better deal, rather then the customer who is just looking. Getting to the top of the search engine rankings is easier if you are trying to attract customers with specific requirements.

You can also attract customers with help pages. For example, if you sell swimming pool parts, pages that show the schematic drawings or installation instructions might attract a person needing the parts. Search engines like these information pages.

Unless you are willing to pay for good positioning on a search engine you will need to do something to stand out from the crowd.

META Tags.

META tags are words used by search engines to sort web pages by search words. If you view a web page in source mode, you will find the META tags towards the top of the page. Your choice of words will help decide what type of user you will attracted to and what your position will be on the search engines results list. Make a list of possible search words for the page you are building. Then refine that word list based on whom you want to attract to your web site.

Brand Name Items:

For our examples here we will use Telescope patio furniture. Telescope is a brand name of patio furniture. Because we are trying to attract shoppers looking to buy this brand of furniture we would use META tags as follows, "Telescope, Telescope furniture, Telescope patio furniture, patio tables, patio umbrellas, gardenelle patio furniture, Aruba patio furniture." The names are the brand names or the furnitures style name. We also repeated these words in the text in the top one third of the web page for use by search engines that read and rate the text areas. You can see how this was done at patiostore.com view the page in source mode.. The results of a search will get us buyers looking for the Telescope brand or a specific Telescope style of furniture. We will also get good search engine placement for those search words. Had we used general tags such as, "patio furniture, aluminum patio furniture, patio, patio tables, umbrellas." we would get lost in a sea of other web sites.

Non Name Brands:Telescope

If your items are not name brands you will have to use general descriptive words. I would recommend you get some name brand items to drive traffic for your non name brand items. If that is not possible you will need to use some of the other web page promotion methods discussed in this book to drive traffic to your web site. You can also pay for position and you can pay for key word placement.

Sadly, many web site promoters have used search words not related or only remotely related to what the web page is about, with the result that search engines have had to change their methods to try and improve the returned results. More is not always better.

Doorway Pages.

Doorway pages are flat html coded pages, which can be searched for by a search engine's spider and thus ranked.

You create flat html pages using software like Microsoft's front page or Adobe's Page Mill. You then use a re-direct to send the user to your web sites home page or link out to your department pages. We at patio store never delete a page we turn any non relevant or old pages into door way pages. these pages have thumbnail photos and links to the product pages, but no product information.

You can create doorway or department web pages and have the customer click on a link to get to your web site, or use a re-direct or direct link out to other web pages. For example, if you sold lingerie you might make a page for each type of garment such as baby dolls or night gowns. The web page could explain what they are and the comparison to other lingerie types. Add a link to your web sites home page and you have a promote-able doorway page. You could create a page with thumbnail pictures showing all your different categories of lingerie, with links out to your web site.

Page Optimization.

You can optimize a web page for a particular search engine. The best web site to learn this from is searchenginewatch.com. Besides META tags, some search engines read the text looking for sentences with repeated phrases. Some look for how many other web sites link to your web site, under the theory that the better pages will be more popular.

Directories such as Yahoo, are human based, you submit your page for review and approval. Directories are becoming more popular as web portals try to improve their revenue and customer experience. This subject will require some study and research on your part.

Customer Help Pages.

Help pages are less common then a few years ago because the many data based web sites do not make a provision for them. They still can be a good way to get extra traffic.
You create web pages that provide free information of interest to people who might be a customer.

For example; at patiostore.com/pool.html you will find links to a free deck plan for aboveground pools and a link to how much water does my pool hold? These are free information pages that are designed to encourage the user to bookmark the web site for future reference. As there will be very few similar pages on the World Wide Web, it is hoped the search engines will rank these high. You can add links from these pages and put banner ads on them. To see how this works try typing in a search on Google for "free pool deck plan" or "pool deck plan" and you will get links to Patiostore.com we were site seven last time I checked.

Paying For Position.

More and more web browsers are charging for rankings on their search engines. Some of the search engines are charging by the key words, highest bidder gets the best position. I am not a fan of this method and do very little of this type of advertising. If I had a very high margin product or a non-name brand product I might try more of this promotional method. You will have to decide if you can afford the rates and if the expense produces enough sales. We spend about $500 per week on promotion and my son spends about $1000 per week on his site.

There are a lot of web sites offering to send you leads or improve your web site's traffic. I have not found any yet that is cost effective. If you find one that gets you extra orders at an affordable price we would like to know about it.

Customer Databases.

The big advantage to an E-commerce web sites is that creating a customer database is almost automatic. This database can be an invaluable tool. The more customers that you can get entered into a data base for future E-mail promotions the better chance your business will have to grow. Besides adding actual customers in your data base consider giving you site visitors a reason to register, early notice of sales, a monthly drawing for discounts or a prize, or signing up to get a free newsletter.

The future value of your business will be based on, your customer name database, your search engine rankings, your product selection and size of your web site. The reason this is true is that, any competitor will have to spend money and time to catch up with or duplicate what you have created.

Paying For Outside Help.

There are lots of services that will offer to get you top ranking, or bring you customers etc. Be careful and ask for references and check them out very carefully. Most of what can be done, you can do yourself with a little effort. The more your know about what is required to get good search engine positioning for your web sites the more your company will grow. Before you hire someone to do your work for you be sure you know what it is you expect and you will get for your money. I personally would make the payment contingent up on the results achieved.

"Good luck comes to the man who earns it" Unknown