Creating a Search Engine Friendly Site

You’ve given thought to your idea for some time. In the end, you’ve chosen to act upon your dreams, and began the planning process for development of your own online business presence. You have researched potential products, established your domain name, and arranged for, or completed construction of your virtual property. The site includes every feature your potential customers are looking for, is laid out in an efficient and focused manner, and is sure to convert lookers into the all-important buyer. Every conceivable aspect of design, construction, and consumer research is complete, and you are finally ready to launch your creation. Or are you?

With the hard work, and financial investment relative to the building, and establishment of a quality internet property, ensuring its overall popularity on the search engines is key. Without proper planning relative to achieving quality search listings, the launch of any new enterprise can turn into an anticlimactic affair.

Search engines continue to provide a potential wealth of traffic to the online entrepreneur of today – traffic that can make or break the newly launched e-commerce site. Preparing your site to deliver a top ranking search result for specific, targeted keyword(s) is imperative to a lower cost of operation, and a stronger business model.

There are a number of varieties of search engines out there today, each requiring a different approach in achieving a meaningful ranking. The three most common today are:

True Search Engines

These database sites scour the internet based upon both submitted recommendations, and links to new sites found through existing ones, adding properties that meet preset requirements, and categorizing them for future use. The largest example of this type of search engine is Google, the largest internet database anywhere.

Directory Based Search Engines

These portals attempt to provide greater usability and site quality to their visitors by manually reviewing every site submission before including the property in the search results seen by their users. Yahoo is the largest current example of a directory based search engine, with thousands of manually reviewed sites. Many directory operators now charge a fee for submission, to cover the expense associated with the manual review process.

Pay Per Placement Search Engines

These providers have taken a previously frustrating site owner experience, and turned it into a hugely successful enterprise. With the growth of the internet market, submission turnaround time was becoming increasingly slow, a strong negative to the site owner requiring traffic today, not six months from today. The pay per clicks delivered the ability for the newcomer to the market to immediately achieve top ranking on some of the internet’s most traveled sites, through successful keyword bidding. The most popular of these services is GoTo.com, whose top bidded listings are given priority placement on many of the large scale portals, including AOL, MSN, and AltaVista.

Achieving a popular, traffic generating listing within both the true and directory based engines is no simple task. The rules applied either mathematically, or manually in the case of the directories, are complex, and consistently changing. The constant shifts in requirements are applied regularly in an attempt to better filter out abusers of the system, whose sites offer little in the way of true content or quality. This reality has made the required effort on the part of the honest operator far greater than ever before.

Utilizing tools to measure your site’s potential for success within these different environments is an imperative to assuring that you are both successfully listed, and achieving strong search result based traffic numbers as quickly as possible.

With the increased demand for this type of specific and carefully measured targeting within one’s site design, there has been a significant increase in the number of service offerings in this area. The nature of these offerings vary from operations that charge a monthly fee to manage your site’s search engine preparation, and monthly submission, with guaranteed results for specific keywords, to softwares that analyze your site construction based upon the same algorhythyms utilized by the engines themselves to assess overall potential.

In the end, the product you select will depend largely upon the ability of your target market’s search potential to deliver large volumes of traffic if proper placement is achieved. If, however, your market is so niche that you feel the number of searches relative to be too low to justify the expense associated, you may choose to prepare your site on your own, utilizing some of the tools offered by Online for Success. This approach can be far more efficient, and effective, for the internet business owner who wishes to establish their listings within a non-competitive market, or one who simply cannot afford the costs associated with pay for service offerings.

Marketing the Real You

I often wonder how the practice began of pretending to be someone else in order to market your business. You know what I’m talking about — it’s the marketing face, the selling voice, that you often put on in order to attend a networking event or make a sales call. Who taught you to do that? I have a suspicion where we learn this behavior.

Most of us spend a lifetime observing showroom salespeople, product spokespersons in the media, and hucksters on street corners. What we see demonstrated there is artificial enthusiasm, manipulative use of language, feigned interest, and in some cases outright deception.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? So why copy any part of this distasteful way of selling?

Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Perhaps we believe this is the only way we can sell because it’s the only way we know. I’m not accusing anyone of consciously deceiving prospective clients. What I’m suggesting is that what we do unconsciously and automatically is to behave nauthentically around them.

Intuitively, many of us feel as if something is wrong with this way of operating. When we have to sell ourselves, we find it unpleasant, disagreeable, even repulsive. But what if all those negative feelings were simply because we hate the artificiality and manipulation we think must be a part of selling?

Imagine what it would be like to go to a business networking event as yourself. No facade, no pretension, just plain you. When someone asks your reason for coming, you tell them the truth. You don’t have to claim you wanted to hear the speaker (if you didn’t). You can come right out and say, “I’m hoping to make some contacts that will lead to business for me.”

You wouldn’t have to invent reasons to start a conversation. You can walk up to someone who looks interesting and say, “Hi, I haven’t met you yet.” If you’re shy around strangers, you can tell the first person you meet, “I’m sort of a wallflower and feel awkward at events like this. Could you introduce me to some folks?”

Now imagine placing a follow-up call to a prospect where you are completely honest. You could say, “I have some days open on my calendar soon and I’m wondering if this would be a good time for that project we’ve been discussing.” Or, “We haven’t talked in a while and I’d like to find out if you’re still planning to start the new training program this year.”

I see so many professionals and consultants struggle with trying to find an “excuse” to call a prospect. You don’t need some manufactured excuse. You know the reason you’re calling. Most of the time THEY know the reason you’re calling. Just say what it is.

Let’s extend this same principle to making a cold call. Instead of stumbling around awkwardly trying to make a polished — but unnatural — sales approach, imagine yourself saying, “I’m not much of a salesperson, but I’m really good at what I do. Can we have a conversation about what you need and see if I’m the right person for the job?”

If you’ve been working from a cold-calling script that makes you flush and get a tight throat every time you read it, throw it out. Come up with one really good opening line that feels authentic and gets directly to the point. Then decide how you will answer — honestly — some of the typical questions prospects ask you.

My bet is that your calls will immediately get easier. In fact, the more you become honest, direct, and authentic in all of your marketing, the more appealing selling will be to you, the more effortless it will become, and the more success you will ultimately achieve.

Because most business results from building relationships, and how can you develop a relationship with someone when you never reveal who you really are?

Tracking Hits – The Power of Traffic and Stat Analysis

The Power of Traffic Analysis featured traffic analysis tools >>> Here and gone are the days of "build it, and they will come". The internet is now officially awash in competition, and within that air of capitalistic fervor comes inevitable questions about the ability of one’s business to compete. Achieving visitors is no longer enough. One must endeavor to know their visitor, and to know them well indeed. Visitors come and go. Quickly. They’re in. They’re out. And eating up bandwidth as they go. The web is full of visitors – its simply the nature of the beast. Converting these perpetual window shoppers into satisfied customers is an absolute must, and to do so requires that you revisit your project, through the eyes of the beholder. Effecting a well-rounded visitor perspective is a challenge best suited to a rare combination of human behavioral specialist, and number crunching statistician. For those of us not graced with these gifts at birth, there’s market research, and traffic analysis. In the early days of hit tracking, one would simply install a counter within their projects, and proudly display visitor numbers to all who crossed their virtual doorstep. The information provided via these packages was exceedingly simple, and of little long term value. Today’s traffic analysis offers a vastly improved collection of data – information that can be used to understand your project’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the interests of your customer, and the impacts of various promotional efforts on their buying habits. Common types of information available in today’s market include: unique visitors page impressions individual page visit breakdowns traffic analysis over specified periods traffic analysis for individual search engines traffic analysis by keyword, and/or phrase traffic analysis by country, and/or language analysis of common platforms, IE vs Netscape analysis of individual desktop color & size settings analysis of time spent on site by individual visitors analysis of number of pages by individual visitors analysis of visitor pathways through your property Take the time to research the array of services available in today’s market. Then invest some effort into the careful analysis of the numbers these services deliver, because they are more than mere figures, they are clear indicators of your visitor habits. The more clearly you understand those habits, the better able you are to predict their behaviors. Once this is achieved, you can then carefully tailor your property to their needs, a direction that is guaranteed to ultimately serve your own. Here are some samples of available traffic analysis tools to enable your further research: HitsLogster.com Web-Stat.com HitBox.com WebTrends.com Would you like to use this article on your site, or have it emailed to you?   Related Subjects: Add Live Customer Service Search Engine Submission Tips and Tools     back to top