Web Site Promotion
Over 80% of visitors arrive via a search engine
There is no guaranteed method of quickly improving the performance of a web site; without doubt, there is no replacement for hard work and attention. A site's age and frequency of updates is significant, as is the number of other sites linking to it.
The number of visitors to your site should only be regarded as a general measure of its success. Quality traffic and positive results in terms of potential client contact should be valued above traffic quantity. Thousands of visitors per day would not profit your business if they were searching for a different subject matter. In fact, it could be detrimental as it would use more of the allotted bandwidth from your web hosting company and possibly create a situation where it became necessary to increase this and, therefore, your costs. Properly targeted traffic is always of more benefit.
There are two distinct types of search engine: Indexes (such as Yahoo!) which maintain a categorised list of websites, and Search Engines (such as Google) which use a piece of software known as a "Spider" to roam the web looking for pages to catalogue.
Our submission services
We offer three types of web site promotion service; Automated, manual and paid inclusion.
Search engines listed in our "Automated submissions" category are those to which a web site address can be submitted without the need to visit their pages directly. These are repeated every 45 days for a year.
Manual submissions are performed by visiting each index in turn and completing their required submission forms. These either require the entry of a code word (to prevent automation) or where the correct category must be open before the submission can take place.
Paid inclusion contains a set of search engines which will not list a web site address without charging. These search engines frequently rank the results dependant upon the amount which has been paid for submission.
It can be weeks or even months before your Web site is fully indexed by some search engines. Fortunately, several of them now offer paid Express Submissions which guarantee your pages will be indexed in one week or less.
Some, such as The Open Directory, are maintained by volunteers and it can be several weeks before your submission is reviewed and included. If the category you wish to submit to doesn't currently have an editor, the process won't continue until someone volunteers.
Proof of submissions
This are provided in two ways:
- The automated submissions are collated as a report which lists dates, successes and failures. Reasons for any failure are stated; generally these are due to unresponsive servers or limiting criteria (e.g. certain search engines will only accept submissions from their own country).
- Print-outs of the search engine's "URL accepted" page would be provided after completion.
Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation can be defined as making your pages "search-engine efficient", but they must also be carefully written in order to make them "reader-friendly".
The content of your pages and how you describe your business is important, but you also need to think about keyphrases.
The easiest way to do this is to ask yourself "what would someone type into a search engine when they are looking for a site like mine?" If your business is geographically restricted, then your keyphrases should reflect this. For example, if you are a fishing boat hire company in Fife, Scotland, then the keyphrase "boat hire" is not particularly useful; instead, the more specific phrase "boat hire in Fife Scotland" is nearer the mark.
You can also get a good idea of which keyphrases work well by searching for them and examining the pages that rank highly.