~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
THE
SEARCH LIGHT
Guiding your web site to the
top of the search engines...
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9
October 2001
Vol 1 Issue # 4
Editor
: Kalena Jordan, CEO, Web Rank Ltd
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Welcome
to the "THE SEARCH LIGHT".
You
are receiving this monthly newsletter because you
are one of our clients, you've
subscribed, requested
a free ranking report via our
site, sent us an FAQ to
be answered or someone has
forwarded it to you.
UNSUBSCRIBE instructions are at
the end of this
newsletter. (Replying to this
email WILL NOT unsubscribe you).
If
you like this newsletter, please forward a copy of it to any
friend or colleague who is
responsible for a web site and
would like to improve their
ranking in the search engines.
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IN THIS ISSUE
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=> Editor’s Message
=> Sponsorship Notice
=> Feature Article – Paid
Submission Round-Up
=> Industry News – Google
gets a Facelift
- GoTo Changes Name to Overture
- Search Engine Tidbits
=> Search Engine FAQ's
– Graphical Home Page
=> Site Spotlight – SECR
Discount Deal Extended
=> Customer Feedback
=>
Subscribe / Unsubscribe information
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EDITOR’S MESSAGE
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Hi
readers!
Can
you believe it is October already? Christmas is zooming up to greet us.
Now is a good time of the year to reflect on the performance of your online
business. Has your web site been attracting plenty of traffic this year so
far?
Or is it a flashing billboard at the end of a dead-end street? If you want to
take advantage of the growing online shopping market in time for Christmas,
you’ll need to take action NOW.
Ensure
that your content is relevant, easy to read and easier to find. Make
sure your products and services are well described, your catalogues are
downloadable and your price list is up to date. Check your site for dead links
and broken images. But most importantly, ensure your site is compatible with
the major search engines.
Are
you targeting the right keywords and phrases in order to capture relevant
traffic? Are your META tags correctly formatted? Have you used search terms
in a natural way throughout your site text? Have you ensured your home page
has some body text to feed those hungry search engine spiders? Don’t put it
off any longer. If you want to make your web site profitable and claim your
share
of the online Christmas shopping rush, get stuck into those web site repairs.
Need help? See last month’s issue for our DIY Search Engine Compatibility
quiz: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_light_issue_3.htm)
Once
the handiwork is done, make sure your newly renovated site is submitted
to all the right engines and directories. Paying extra to have your site
reviewed
and added quickly to the most important search engines and directories can
really pay off in the long run. Implement a pay-per-click keyword bid campaign
and see your site attain Top 3 rankings in some of the world’s most popular
engines
at the same time. Can’t afford it? Think again. After reading this month’s
round-up
of all the best Paid Submission options, you’ll realize you can’t afford
NOT to.
Till
next month…
Kalena
J
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SPONSORSHIP NOTICE
------------------------------------------------------------
Would
you like to get your hands on loads of
free software
downloads, tools and resources
to assist you to market your web site online?
Look no further – we’ve spent weeks searching
the web to come up with a comprehensive list
of resources for the benefit of our readers. The
best thing is they’re all FREE!
Click
Here to check them out:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/free_stuff.htm
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FEATURE ARTICLE
------------------------------------------------------------
Paid
Submission Round-Up
by Kalena Jordan
------------------------------------------------------------
Because
of the global economic slowdown in Tech stocks, the effect of PPC
(Pay Per Click) strategies on the industry and the rise and fall of many
search
engines and directories, there has been an increasing trend away from
“free”
submissions and towards Paid Submissions or Paid Indexing over the past
12-18 months.
Many
of the early search engine/directory icons (InfoSeek, AltaVista, NBCi,
Excite) have been crippled by loss of staff, loss of budget and lack of
quality
results and subsequently toppled by new players within the market (such as
Google). Others have had to implement new products, paid listings and/or
smarter methods to retain their search market share.
The
effects have recently snowballed, with Yahoo, Looksmart (their partners
Excite, MSN, iWon & CNN), AltaVista and Inktomi all introducing compulsory
Paid Submissions or Paid Indexing products in order to survive in a difficult
market in difficult financial times. Is this bad news for web site owners? Not
at all. Unlike the situation a few years ago, now companies that have a search
engine compatible site, a sensible marketing budget and quality content can
obtain high rankings on the major search engines.
Gone
are the days of tweaking your META tags, resubmitting your site
every few days and crossing your fingers. Gone are the days when spammers
would appear at the top of the listings. Now results tend to be more relevant
and
of higher quality because search engines have streamlined their services and
submitters must agree to abide by their rules, as well as open their wallets.
This
month a client asked me to give them a summary of all the search engine
and directory Paid Submission options, a review of GoTo (Overture) PPC options
as well as my recommendations so they could decide whether to set aside some
of their site optimization budget toward these options. The results were
convincing:
paid submission is an extremely viable investment and one of the most
cost-effective
methods of online marketing.
We’ve
decided to give all our clients access to the results of our Paid
Submission research. Because of the length of the article, we have provided
a link to it on our web site, instead of including it within this newsletter:
Link
to Paid Submission Round-Up Article:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/Paid_Submission_Round_Up.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------
The
above article may be re-published as long as the following paragraph
and URL link are included at the end of the article:
Kalena
Jordan, CEO of Web Rank Ltd, was among the first
search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is
well known and respected in her field. For more of her tips
on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit:
www.high-search-engine-ranking.com
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SEARCH ENGINE INDUSTRY NEWS
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Google
Gets a Facelift
If
you’ve been to Google lately, you’ll notice a change to their
usual minimalist home page. New
tabs above the search box
were introduced this week, to give users easier access to unique
search features of the engine.
The
tab menu provides users with faster access to Google’s other
search databases: images, newsgroups and results from Open
Directory.
The
tabs also appear on the Google results page, allowing
searchers to quickly switch between indexes, as desired.
User testing has shown the new tabs to be popular with
surfers.
The
feature is yet another demonstration of the engine’s
unfailing ability to provide searchers with what they really
want. For now, Google continues its reign as the “darling”
of the search engine industry.
More:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/10-google.html
GoTo
Changes Name to Overture
Almost
a year since announcing their intention to change names,
GoTo have now become Overture. The new name was selected,
according to a GoTo source, because:
“…an
overture is an introduction and represents the one billion
targeted introductions we made in the past year between
advertisers and our affiliate partners' consumers”.
Personally,
I think their old name reflected their business of
distributing search results to others in a much more logical way,
but what would I know?
More:
http://www.overture.com/d/specials/welcome.jhtml
Search Engine Tidbits
- FAST
announced a new paid inclusion program that
will be launched this month at its AllTheWeb.com
site. AllTheWeb powers a
significant part of Lycos's
search results. I’ll review the new service next month.
·
AltaVista
has cut 30 percent of its staff and named a
new chief executive officer, James Barnett. Many of
the staff cuts apparently affected the company’s
shopping search division.
- Google
has denied any plans for their own paid
inclusion program, re-stating their in-house opinion
that all non-spamming sites containing quality content
deserve to be indexed
- New
search kid on the block Wisenut has exited beta
mode with what they claim is the largest first build
database in search engine history. It currently stands
at 1,495,332,308 Web pages and counting!
- AskJeeves
has purchased newer search engine Teoma
for an undisclosed sum. Teoma grew out of a research
project at Rutgers University. It is believed AskJeeves
will run Teoma as a stand-alone search engine.
*-----------------HOT TIP------------------*
When purchasing a domain name,
consider buying one that contains
your keywords and phrases. This
should give you a slight relevancy
advantage in the ranking results of
some search engines for those terms.
*-----------------HOT TIP------------------*
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SEARCH ENGINE FAQ'S : Graphical Home Page
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Web
Rank answers your search engine questions.
Please submit your FAQ's
From:
Alicia Everall [email address withheld by request]
I
run a small web design company and our programmers
have spent a lot of time and effort recently re-designing
our home page so that it looks professional and visually
appealing (it’s now entirely graphical with no body text).
But
I have just read that body text is an important factor in
search engine relevancy and that some search engines
can’t read graphics at all. We don’t want to sacrifice our
fantastic new look, so can you please tell me how we can
come up with a compromise so we will still be indexed?
Alicia
~~~~~~~~~~
Kalena's Response ~~~~~~~~~~
Hi
Alicia
You
don’t say whether you are using Flash or flat graphics,
but regardless of which it is, it is very important that your
home page includes SOME body text if you want it indexed.
Otherwise search engine robots have no pointers to your site
content apart from your META tags and will not be able to
adequately compare it with search requests even, if is indexed.
Most
search engines can’t index Flash files at all, so there is
no benefit to using them, except as eye candy. Try to keep
all
graphics to a minimum file size to ensure your pages load
fast and make sure every image has a keyword-filled ALT tag,
because these ARE indexed by search engines.
Use
between 200 and 600 words of body text on your home
page, making sure to include your keywords and phrases
naturally within the copy. This will not only give search engine
robots important data with which to categorize your site, but will
also ensure your site has the best chance of being served up
to searchers of similar content.
Good
luck!
Kalena
Please submit your FAQ.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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SITE SPOTLIGHT: Discount SECR Deal Extended
------------------------------------------------------------
Ever
wondered how compatible your site
is with search engines? Want to optimize
your own site but not sure where to start?
Are
you restricted by a small budget?
For
October only, Web Rank has extended the
discounted price of Search Engine Compatibility
Reports (SECR’s) slashed by 60% down to USD 99!
That’s
right, Just $99! Click Here for info:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/small_business_specials.htm
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CUSTOMER FEEDBACK OF THE MONTH:
------------------------------------------------------------
"On
the whole I am very happy with the majority of our positions…
it's quite hard to keep track of things going on with search engines,
that's why I'm so glad we're working with you on this!”
Sally
Schofield
Winepros International
www.winepros.com.au
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LAST MONTH:
------------------------------------------------------------
Last
month we discussed several important topics including:
- How
Compatible is Your Site With Search Engines?
- Yahoo! Express Submission Price Hike
-
Excite’s Final Curtain Call?
If
you missed these or other key topics, you can find back
issues of The Search Light at:
http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/free_newsletter.htm
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
------------------------------------------------------------
The
information presented in The Search Light has been compiled from
various sources for the benefit of our clients. You should not rely on
the information contained within this newsletter as detailed advice.
No part of this newsletter may be copied without permission from
Web Rank Ltd, the copyright owners 2001.
You may forward this
newsletter, as long as it's kept in its entirety.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Web
Rank Ltd, Search Engine Ranking Specialists
Visit our web sites : www.high-search-engine-ranking.com,
www.webrank.biz
