There Are Over 3 Billion Web Pages...Where Is Yours?
By Ann Rusnak

Search engines remain the #1 way people use to
locate you on the Internet. Over the past several
years, search engines have under gone some
major changes. Many of the free ones are gone
and indexing has become more sophisticated.

Yet, our web site has remained in the top ten ranking for
the past 4 years with very little maintenance. I have a
business to run and don't have time to play search engine
ranking games.

First forget trying to trick search engines. This is a big
waste of time. Search engines soon catch on and you'll
lose that ranking or worse yet...get your site banned from
the search engine index.

Secondly, forget about always being #1. Algorithms
constantly change and it can become a full time job
attempting to maintain a number one ranking. We
constantly go from #1 to #10. As long as we stay on the
top ten search results which is the first page of the search
engine, I am happy.

How Did We Do It?

I'm going to share with you the 5 steps and the tools we
used.

Our first site was no where to be found. I did the Meta
tag thing and submitted the site. The ironic thing is I
purchased this new eBook, Make Your Site Sell (MYSS),
and figured I would read it after the site design was done.
Okay, probably not one of my brightest moments.

Now that the site is online doing nothing it was probably
a good time to open that eBook and read it. What an eye
opener. Boy! did I do everything wrong. Think of time I
could have saved if I read it before designing the site.
Lesson...read your eBooks.

Step One - Define Your Target Market.

At least we had done this and included it in the business plan.
If you haven't done this...Do It! http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/Articles/a00137.htm

Step Two - What Words Will They Use To Find You.

You have to think like your target market. Build your key
word/phrase list with words you think they'll use to find you.
This use to be a very time consuming process. Thank goodness,
there are several tools now available to determine keyword
popularity and profitability.

You can optimize your site for a key phrase, but if nobody
is searching it, it doesn't matter where it is ranking. This
happen to one of our clients. His site was optimized for a
keyword phrase. It placed #1 in Google yet he wasn't
getting any traffic etc.

Nobody bothered to check to see if it was viable search phrase.
He knew his market was but didn't think how they would search
to find him. Nobody used his keyword phrase to try to find his
services.

Site Build It has a tool that cuts research time down to
practically nothing. It shows the popularity, profitable
and alternative keyword phrases to use. . http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/build.htm

Overture offers an online popularity search tool at: http://www.Just15Minutes.com/a/13-1.htm. You can use
this to determine how ofter a keyword/phrase is being
searched.

Word Tracker is another great tool for research
keywords/phrases, their popularity and profitability.
If you are not going to use Site Build It, purchase a
subscription to Word Tracker. Google is the #1 Search
Engine followed by Yahoo and their trial version only
gives results for Alta Vista. http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/wordtrack.htm

Step Three - Writing Content Around Those Words/Phrases.

Meta tags don't have importance they did years ago.
Some search engines don't use them. It's too easy to
s~pam the meta tags. Search engines want quality content.
It's quality content that keeps people coming back.

The placement of those key words/phrases is critical to your
ranking. The trick is to write content that includes them in the
right place and have your content still make sense.

"The Nitty Gritty of Writing for Search Engines" is an
excellent manual on how to write your content for placement. http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/nitty.htm. While you
are on the site, sign up for High Rankings Advisor. I have
subscribed to Jill's eZine for several years. Her no nonsense
advice and information is the best for Search Engine
Optimization.

Step Four - Create a Theme Based Search
Engine Friendly Site.

Now is the time to begin creating your site. The biggest
mistake made by many is to design the site than optimize.
I did the same thing. The design of your site plays a role in the placement.

The spiders have to able to read through the code to find
your key words/phrases. They only crawl down so far
before leaving the page.

Try to avoid flash intro pages, fancy navigation menus and heavy graphics. Use external links for java script and style sheets.

We offer a fr~ee eBook "The Complete E-Business Builder...
From Concept to Site to Income." This Action Guide leads you
step by step through an effective and easy-to-understand
site-and-traffic-building process. http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/sbi.htm

Step Five - Submitting Your Site

Double check all links and make sure they are working.

Hand submit your site. Search engines do not like submit
software especially Google.

Follow the directions and guidelines carefully for each search engine.

The Major Search Engines

1. Google - The #1 search engine. http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

2. Yahoo http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

3. MSN http://listings.looksmart.com/home/sbl/index.jhtml

4. AOL http://search.aol.com/aolcom/add.jsp

These two are not search engines but provide results to
other search engines.

Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

Inktomi http://www.positiontech.com/inktomi/searchsubmit.htm

Prove It

Our main keyword phrase - starting an online business.
This is the phrase you used after reading MYSS and doing
research. Within a month our site, began ranking in the top
10 position in Alta Vista, the #1 search engine in 1999. Within
three months, the site was in all the major search engines in
a top ten position.

Several months ago, we notice a decline in traffic. Our
positioning was the same. We did a popularity search for
"online business." It was not being searched as often.
Internet business was being searched more now.

The site has been optimized for the words "staring an
Internet business." Within one week of making this change,
it placed #5 on Google for the new key phrase.

Using the strategies in Nitty Gritty, step 4, it is also placing
in the top ten for "starting an online business."

eBusinessHelpSite is placing in the top ten position for both
"starting an online business" and "starting an Internet business."

We have opted not to pay for inclusion search engines or
pay-per-click search engines. We did pay for Inktomi because
the price is a bargain.

http://www.google.com
http://search.aol.com/aolcom/index.jsp
http://search.yahoo.com/search
http://search.msn.com/

Where do you start?

Download the free eBook "The Complete E-Business Builder...
From Concept to Site to Income." http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/sbi.htm and I highly
recommend you also obtain MYSS 2002. http://www.ebusinesshelpsite.com/al/myss.htm This book is
essential to anybody doing or wanting to do business online. I can attribute at least $10,000 in sales to this book alone.

Designing your site the right way for search engines will not
only save you time in placement management but create lots
of qualified traffic too.

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Ann Rusnak is the 15 Minute Time Coach helping you have a successful business faster using 15 Minute strategies. Receive the fr~ee report "How Leveraging Time Can Increase Your Profits"when you subscribe to Just 15 Minutes. http://www.Just15Minutes.com

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