Making the Search Engines Work for Your Website!

IAchieving a high ranking on the search engines is the best advertising "bargains" on the Web today. The reason is simple: Millions of searches are done every day! The thousands of Web sites that appear near the top of those search results essentially get free advertising. The visitors coming to those sites are more likely to buy on average since they were specifically searching for that product or service. Therefore, you have a very low cost of advertising (free), with a potential high rate of return, maximizing your profits, while minimizing your risk.

The one problem is that search engines are changing and will continue to change over the next year or so.

They are looking for different revenues and ways to increase their profits and are actually switching to different profit models. They are giving sites bold listings for a price, ranking them higher for a price and trying out a lot of other different things… all for a price. They are adding different categories, and are using methods that lead visitors to a certain advertiser, rather than actually taking them to the real search… something that is listed by algorithms and displays what the visitor is actually looking for.

The bottom line is that search engines may not be free for much longer, so get in while you can... the traffic you can generate will amaze you, so utilize this resource before it is gone.

The effectiveness of search engine marketing is not just our own opinion. Third party surveys back us up on this claim: According to a July 1998 study by WebCMO, guess what the most effective advertising strategy was for Web marketers?

Banner ads?
Print ads?
Spam mail?

Sorry, none of the above! The single most effective method of generating Web site traffic is Search Engines followed closely by Solicited or Opt-In Email.

The following scale demonstrates how each Web marketer in the WebCMO survey rated the over-all effectiveness of the following methods on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most effective.

Search Engines 3.35
Solicited or Opt-In Email 3.34
Offline Advertising 3.04
Press Release 3.00
Banner Advertising 2.85
Discussion Forums 2.83
Sponsorships 2.61
Newsgroups 2.46
Strategic Linking 2.44
Spam 1.83

Those Webmasters that found the search engines effective must have known the secret: People must be able to find you on one or more keywords when they perform a search!

OK, so the Web marketers in the above survey found search engine marketing effective you say? But if everyone wants to be in the top 10, I'm never going to get there, right? Wrong! In fact, so many people make this assumption that they don't even try to improve their positions in the first place. Or, most try and tackle the process by hand and fail miserably. This leaves a wonderful opportunity for those who really want to succeed, and who are savvy enough to use the latest tools.

We've also found that over half the people out there don't even know they need to submit their site, or if they know enough to submit, don't even realize there's more they should be doing. Therefore, of the millions of Web sites out there, only a fraction of them are even trying to compete for those top positions.

In addition, there are not just 10 or 20 slots everyone is competing for as some people assume at first. Millions of different searches are being conducted everyday. Target multiple keywords and PHRASES that apply to your Web site's content. You might find some words less competitive than others and achieve top rankings quickly. Simply carve out a niche for yourself to greatly improve the odds of your success. This is basic "Marketing 101".

For example, if you are in the competitive category of "travel" and find it too difficult to obtain a high ranking on the word "travel", then create pages that describe in detail one particular destination or activity. Perhaps create a great page discussing "sailing in the Caribbean". Most people try to be specific in their searches today, because they know if they don't, they will get back thousands of pages that they aren't interested in. Take advantage of that bit of knowledge.

Many of you may have submitted to the search engines, hoping for thousands of new visitors to begin flooding into your site. If you have been disappointed when they didn't, then you have just stumbled across one of the biggest myths on the Internet. Submitting alone is not enough. You must rank in the top 10 to 30 matches to be found on the search engines. To do that requires the creation of pages that appeal to each search engine's preferences. These pages are often called doorway pages, gateway pages, or bridge pages since they act as a doorway or alternate entrance to your Web site.

The reason you must optimize multiple pages is simple. No single page can rank well for all engines. For example, if AltaVista likes to see 400 words on a top ranking page this month, and Infoseek likes 800 words, the same page will not rank well on both engines. Therefore, the need to create doorway pages that are custom-tailored to each search engine, and set of keywords you wish to target becomes necessary.

So you've submitted to the search engines, but you're still waiting for that traffic to start flooding in, aren't you? Unless you know how to create pages that target specific keywords, you may be in for a long wait. There are so many pages on the Web now that if you just submit your URL to the engines, you will likely be thrown into the middle of a very large search list for just about any keyword you try to search on.

But I have good news! Increasing traffic to your Web site using "DOORWAY PAGES" is quite simple and is very effective. Some people who are more advanced may already know about this, but for the newer businesses, it is incredibly important to understand how they work, and how to utilize them on your page.

The secret is NOT simply making use of Meta Tags (although, they can help) or trying to include every keyword under the sun on your home page.

The secret is to create very FOCUSED pages, commonly called "doorway pages." That's because you create these pages to act as doorways to your site. The more doorways you create, the more traffic you're likely to bring in. You have to remember that some directory-oriented engines like Yahoo normally accept only a single URL submission or doorway page per Web site. However, most search engines will accept as many pages as you wish to submit.

This means that for most of the others you can customize as many doorway pages as you have keywords, so long as each page contains different content. It is common to develop one customized doorway page for every important keyword you have. Some people, like Connie (whose testimonial is listed below), have used literally dozens of doorway pages, each one working to get a higher ranking in a particular search engine for a particular keyword.

Am I advocating that you create dozens of duplicate pages and "spam" the search engines? Of course not! What I am saying is that if you want to be seen when people do a search for, say, "Los Angeles real estate", you must create a page that specifically repeats that phrase multiple times and has content specifically geared toward that theme.

Follow these general steps as a rule of thumb:

1. Repeat your keyword phrase in the title tag (the MOST important thing you can do!), repeat it in the meta keyword tag. Also use it in your Meta Description tag.
2. You should repeat your targeted phrase, or small variations of it, in a heading tag like <H1>Los Angeles Real Estate: Complete Listings Found Here!</H1> at the top of the page.
3. Repeat it again in the first paragraph of the page, trying to use it naturally in at least two or three sentences near the top.
4. Include the keyword phrase within one or more hyper links.
5. If you include a graphic, repeat the keyword in the ALT IMG tag. This tag displays text to the user if they have graphics turned off and is also indexed into the keyword list by many of the big search engines. This is because we've found that some search engines include words they find in the ALT IMG tag as part of their relevancy scoring system.

On some engines, a short, one paragraph page will often rank higher than a long, wordy page even though the longer page may include the phrase MORE times. That's because many search engines divide the number of keywords by the number of total words on the page to score the page for "relevancy." Therefore, it's often the concentration of that phrase/keyword that matters more than the sheer frequency. Search engines will then take this score and add additional weight to keywords found in the title tag, heading tags, and the first 200 or so words of the page. (All words are generally indexed, but those near the top will carry the most "weight"). Try both a long and short page and see how you do, since sometimes a longer page may do better for certain engines.

Use your keyword early on: With most engines, having your best keyword at the BEGINNING of your title tag will raise your rank considerably over simply putting the keyword in the middle or the end of the title. The same general rule applies to the location of the keyword in the content of the page, the sooner in the page it appears, the better. This is called the "relevance" or "prominence" score for the keyword.

Problem with Doorways:

Unfortunately, the search engines do not publish many details on exactly how many keywords they like to see, and where they want to see them. Therefore, most people will find the quest of achieving a top 10 position a time-consuming one to do by hand.

Luckily, there's a product available called WebPosition Gold that takes all the work out of search engine marketing. It not only generates doorway pages and submits them, but it also has a Page Critic feature which analyzes your pages and gives you plain-English advice on what to change to make them rank in the top 10 for each major search engine.

Another feature is that Web Position has the ability to create reports with an unlimited number of keywords and phrases. This is an important factor when posting your page to the search engine as many people use different terms to search for the same product or service. Lets take buying a car as an example...one person might do a search for "car buying" while someone else will use "automotive sales". These two people are looking for the same thing, but are going about it two different ways. If you don't pay attention to this, you will lose sales! You also have the ability to track what your competitors are doing. This is a topic I discuss in my Internet Marketing Course, and is something you simply cannot ignore. If you don't know what your competition is doing, how can you ever soar past them? The answer is simple, you cannot. Therefore you need some insider information on what they are doing to get ranked higher, or how they come up when you search for the most popular keywords used for your product, information that Web Position can quickly and easily provide for you.

I have also mentioned in both the course and in my newsletters that the automation of your business is essential to your success, and if you cannot automate, your business will be unable to grow. The features in Web Position allow you to spend more time making your business grow, rather than spending it on keeping yourself in business! Features such as the generation of a detailed report consisting of all visitors that came to your site (something that was once only offered by log programs such as Web Trends), the ability to save hours... even days of time by simplifying the multitude of tasks that are involved with proper search engine placement, and most of all, you have the ability to create an infinite number of "doorway pages" in almost no time at all! Web Position gives you the ability to automatically generate these pages without having to spend hours upon hours coding the HTML by hand. This is crucial to have as there are at least 20 main search engines that you simply must list your site with if you ever want your traffic to explode.

If you want more information on WebPosition and how it can help you explode your traffic and saled, go to http://www.marketingtips.com/webposition.html

Here is a perfect example of the power and profit potential of using Web Position to create and manage your doorway pages:

Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 12:06:23 -0500
From: Conikds@aol.com

I don't know if you remember me, but I sent you my "testimonial" to doorway pages last fall. I had just put my children's clothing store on the web a year earlier, and was not getting satisfactory results. I just wasn't being "found". After purchasing your WebPosition, & learning about doorway pages, and submitting about 30 of them, my hits started soaring. Well, 6 months later, the hits just keep increasing! (and the sales!) We literally went from an average of selling $100 per month on-line to $10,000 per month, just by the implementation of these doorway pages!

Now our sales are even higher, & growing everyday, requiring new phone lines,computers, & personnel to handle all the orders! I am NOT complaining! This is wonderful, & has been such a fantastic boost to my actual walk-in store! I have even been tempted to close my store-front, stop paying high overhead, & just do business on-line! The customers have become faithful return customers, and are telling all their friends as well. But the biggest reason for the great boost in on-line sales has been the creation of those wonderful "doorway pages", that I never even knew existed prior to purchasing the Web Position software.

Thank you AGAIN for a superb product, that is both informative, yet written in an easy to understand format, that can be immediately helpful.

With MANY thanks, Connie Todd

P.S. I have included links to my home page & to some doorway pages, so if you want to use this in your next newsletter people can see immediately how the doorway pages look.

http://www.connieskids.com/
http://www.connieskids.com/ChristeningGowns.html
http://www.connieskids.com/FlowerGirl.html
http://www.connieskids.com/Ruth.html

Can you now see the extreme power of doorway pages? Connie is now making over 100 times what she initial made by simply setting up and utilizing doorway pages.

This only touches the surface on the importance of proper search engine placement and monitoring. If you were to do it by hand, it could literally take up hours upon hours of your day if you are really serious about your placement on the engines. However with a program like Web Position, it takes minutes, if that!

I could go on for days about how important search engine placement is, and how important it is to properly monitor your position and make sure you don't slip even an inch, but Web Position speaks for itself. It is simply the best, and if you buy the program and feel that it hasn't lived up to your expectations, or that it was not worth the purchase price and didn't launch your search engine results into high gear, you can return it for a full refund. You can also be assured that if you have any problems, you will get assistance! First Place Software (The manufacturers of Web Position) offers free lifetime support, this means full technical support, updates (you will receive automatic updates to the software program the second they are released, for free!), information, and general guidance on how to use the program. This is something that other companies charge in upwards of $100/hour for!

The simple fact is this: If you want to see your site succeed, you need Web Position. And as you know, I stand behind every piece of software I recommend, and I only recommend programs that are worth every penny. So if you want more information on Web Position and how you can get it, go to http://www.marketingtips.com/webposition.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly successful online businesses that attract more than 1.8 million visitors per month and generate over $6.6 million each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling Internet Marketing course online. To check out his site that's JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and grow your very own profitable Internet business, I highly recommend visiting http://www.marketingtips.com/tipsltr.html This guy really knows what he's talking about!