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WebProNews October 6th, 2000 Issue http://www.WebProNews.com
Be Found Part 2In my first "Be Found" article for WebProNews ( http://www.satcure.co.uk/befound.htm ), I described previously unpublished ways to improve the search engine ranking of your web site. As a result, I was inundated with requests to divulge additional tips on the subject, so here are some more. Linking in As well as factors already mentioned, your web site ranking depends heavily on the number of links to it from other sites. If you already create web sites for others then you can add links from their sites to yours. If you don't offer a web site design service, it's time you did - even if you do most of the work for free - so you can increase the number of links. Each time you register a new site like this, you are effectively re-registering your own. The links can be made invisible if need be. Use my method of creating a single pixel image to match the page background colour. Use this "image" as the link button to your site. Most users won't notice it but the search engines will. Diversify The more pages your web site has, the greater your chance of a high ranking for every possible key word or phrase that is relevant. You can extend this idea by creating web pages for local businesses, schools, scout troops - all within your own web site or sites. Sometimes you can charge a small fee for these and sometimes it will be an act of charity but every page must contain new and different key words and have a link back to your index page. Pretty soon it won't matter what words are used in a search because they will all hit on a page that links directly back to yours! If you want a high volume of hits, this is a way to achieve it. If you want more closely targeted hits, add pages which contain only information relevant to your business. Get outside help Encourage others to add links on their own sites. Point out that, by having a link to a site that is already ranked highly, they can improve the ranking of their own site. It's in your interest to help them get a high ranking so give them some of my tips. Get friends and acquaintances with no web site to add *your* web site URL to their e-mail signatures. How? You create a page for them within your site so they will *want* to put the URL in their messages. Make sure their page contains a link back to your index page. Offer to take family pictures or scan their own photographs to make their web page personal. They could pay you to change it every November and add a Christmas message for their friends around the world. Hey, I think I just hit on a new business! News Groups Apart from e-mail signatures containing your web site URL, your friends should be encouraged to add it to their News Reader signature, too! Many search engines "spider" the News Groups and the presence of your URL can make a big improvement to your ranking with these search engines. Jumble, don't delete As I pointed out previously, once a page has been registered with a search engine it would be foolish to delete it. Lots of people wrote to me in horror because they had done just that. It's not a problem. Simply make a new page with the same file name and put it back. Some search engines recheck pages periodically so it's a good idea to keep the same text content. However, in my case, I decided that I wanted to consolidate information, contained in 30 separate web pages, in order to sell it as a book (I already give away one book for free). The book wouldn't sell if I left the information in full view on the web site and I wondered what to do. No point in having a book if the search engines no longer direct people to it! Luckily, I came across a shareware patch that enabled me to perform an alphabetical sort on all the lines on a page. By doing this I was able to jumble up the sentences so they made no sense but the search engines could still see the same words and phrases there. I added a note with a link on every page to direct the reader to the order form for the book. Duplication If you have permanent access to other web sites as "web master" then you can duplicate some or all of your own web site pages onto each of them, with suitable "invisible" links. You could set up your files as a duplicate stand-alone web site, but this might cause confusion with keeping pages up to date. Sometimes it's better to redirect or link each page to its twin on your real web site. Guest Book I've never been a great fan of guest books but some people are delighted to get their comments published. Just imagine that you've never written to a newspaper or had anything published in your life and, suddenly, you have a paragraph, with your name after it, that is visible to the whole world! Wouldn't you tell all your friends? You bet you would, believe me, and that's good advertising for the web site. Even if you don't use the Guest Book method, you can still publish favourable comments that you receive by e-mail. Ask permission of the writer and tell him/her the URL of the page where you will put the comment.
Be Found Part 1
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