Cities Commerce Corporation
Internet Consulting Services
(Notice ... we are no longer offering consulting services but leave this page on the web for people to self-consult using the tutorial below)
And Now For:
The Cities Commerce Corporation Web Business Development Tutorial Series
Presented by Cities Commerce
Here is the index for a series of articles prepared by Cities Commerce Corporation Consulting on the subject of starting and/or developing a commercial web site:
Designing and Building a Web Site
Improve Your Search Engine Position
Manual Vs automatic search engine registration
Presented by Cities Commerce
The Internet is the vast network of all computers in the world that are connected to send data to each other using the "Internet Protocol", a set of communication standards that allows computers from different manufacturers and running different software to communicate data to each other. For example, a Sun workstation computer in New York running the Unix operating system can communicate with an IBM PC in Tokyo running Windows 98. The speed of the Internet allows near-instantaneous communications anywhere in the world.
Locally, computers may be connected to the Internet by a dial-up modem and an account with an internet service provider. They may also be connected to the television cable using what is called a cable modem. For greater speed than typical dial-up modem, there is the ISDN line, an upgraded digital telephone line, or the new DSL lines, another form of digital telephone line upgrade. Going a step further, computers may be connected to the internet by a high-speed local area network that connects a number of local computers, and a server that connects these to the internet.
People use the Internet for sending e-mail. They also use it for viewing and interacting with web sites. Web sites are built for a variety of social, educational and commercial purposes. They are installed on a computer that is connected to the Internet. This computer is often called the web site host server. People access and interact with the web site using software on their local computer. This software is called a web browser.
What the Internet is and what it isn't:
The Internet is a new medium of communication that breaks down geographic barriers. The Internet allows communication between all points on the Earth as quickly and easily as across the street. What's more, this form of communication is digital. This allows documents, images and typewritten commands to pass easily from computer to computer.
The Internet is not a place to make a fast buck. As with any business, building an Internet business takes considerable investments in time and capital. Long, hard work is the rule and profitable returns require appropriate investments. The Internet is not a place where posting a web page and going away can be expected to yield anything.
Despite the press coverage and the skyrocket Internet stocks on Wall Street, the Internet is still in its infancy. The Internet is a place where forward-thinking companies can establish themselves today, to capture a place in Cyberspace for tomorrow.
Presented by Cities Commerce
Are you looking for an internet business opportunity ? Are you trying to develop an internet business plan, or expand an existing business ? If you have an internet business idea and want to know how to start an internet business, this tutorial will help you in starting your web business. Whether you are just starting an internet business or you are an experienced web business builder, this tutorial will give you new ideas for your internet business strategy.
This tutorial applies primarily to commercial web sites. Typical commercial web sites have any or all of the following objectives:
1. Give customers on line access to their commercial account.
2. Allow customers to make purchases on line
3. Advertise and promote the business
4. Provide Company information to customers.
Here is an outline of the steps you will need to take to start a web business:
1. Establish your Internet business objectives
2. Select an available URL (web name), and register it
3. Select a host server
4. Decide on a publishing approach
5. Design the web site
6. Make the web pages
7. Promote the web site and certain individual pages
8. Analyze the site traffic
9. Read newsletters and participate in forums to learn ways to improve your Internet business.
To start an internet business, the objectives must be firmly established. That way, the site can be designed around the objectives. Your web business may be an entirely fresh start-up business. More likely, though, it will be a business whose purpose is to expand an existing business utilizing the Internet.
You must select a name (URL) for your web site. Several free sites are available to tell you if your selection is available. Since these sites may change, they are not listed in this tutorial, but you may e-mail consultant@citiescommerce.com for a referral that is current. If you are a commercial site, a .com URL is recommended. Once you have selected a URL, you must register it. Cities Commerce will also refer you to current registration sites upon request. Often times, hosting sites offer to register the URL for free or for a small service fee. Be aware you will get charged a registration fee by Internic no matter who registers you. Make sure the agent used to register you uses your addresses, not theirs, for the registration. Otherwise you will have trouble when it comes time to re-register. You will have to go back to that agent.
Next, you need to select a host server. This could be one of your own computers if your web presence is expected to be substantial or you have existing servers on the Internet. If you are serious about starting a web business but don't have your own servers, there are a number of good commercial host servers where you may rent bandwidth and memory for monthly fees in the $20 to $40 range. Cities Commerce can make referrals to commercial web site hosting services upon request.
There are also "free" hosting sites or web site server space offered in conjunction with dial-up Internet service providers. These are fine for personal web pages, but are not recommended for serious commercial activity. You'll probably get what you pay for with the free packages. This may include restrictions on commercial activity and severe site loading during peak times, when you most want to 'open for business'. Also, be sure the host you are selecting is compatible with your publishing approach. For instance, sites planning to publish with Microsoft Front Page products need a web host server that has the Front Page extensions installed.
The next step is to determine how you want to publish the web pages. Many developers will want to write all their own code on a local computer and upload it to the server using a transfer means called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Others will want to develop on a local computer and use comprehensive web publishing tools such as Microsoft's Front Page products. Still others will want to develop right on the host server.
The web site will be designed around the established objectives. The planning process for a web site is much like the planning process to build a new building, a new community, or even a new city. Careful strategic planning and ifrastructure integration is essential and will allow one to build an effective web site that will last well into the future. It is very advisable to consult with people who have experience in building web sites before you begin yours. If your goal is a commercial website for a significant number of concepts of products, it is best to seek the guidance of an internet business consultant that has already built a substantial web site, such as Cities Commerce Corporation.
If careful planning has taken place in the formative stages of building the web business, the process of making the web pages will flow smoothly. Effective commercial web pages will include many facets, such as an appropriate file name, keywords, meta tags, conformance to a site theme, alt tags, content, advertisements, contact information, referral links, index links, disclaimers, copyright statements and tracking code.
Pages, especially commercial pages, must be promoted to serve their function. Typical means of promotion are search engines (both free and pay-for-performance), announcements at newsgroups and forums, banner exchange programs, reciprocal links, newsletters and paid advertising.
Designing and Building a Web Site
Presented by Cities Commerce
Are you interested in designing a web site and building a web site ? This tutorial will help your create your own web site, or to communicate better with your web site designer. This tutorial will focus on commercial web site creation.
To begin with, it is essential that suitable time and expense is allocated for the planning stages of a commercial web site. Use this period to plan a strong and functional infrastructure and you will avoid costly re-designs in the future.
Pick a "master theme" for your the pages in your site. Components of the master theme include font size and type, foreground color, background color and patterns. If you will use menus to link pages, they should be located in the same place on each page. The left margin is a common place to place menus. By developing and implementing a master theme, the viewer will find continuity, familiarity and "oneness" from page to page, creating an awareness of the boundaries of your site.
Plan a sort of 'road map' for the pages of your site, making it easy and intuitive for a visitor to tour your site and easily find your offerings. If your site will be large, consider planning a site search engine to be installed on key pages.
Try to avoid using frames in your web site design. Frames create complications for search engine recognition.
Graphics are often used on web pages to add interest to a page or convey information quickly. But graphics, especially images, are memory-hungry. Memory-hungry graphics can delay the browser loading of your page to the point that many viewers will back away. Therefore, do not plan a lot of graphics and images in your site theme.
Plan your home page. Your home page is at the top of the heirarchy for your URL. It will have special significance to your visitors and search engines alike. The home page should offer an overview of your entire site as well as links to the rest of the site. If possible, it should contain content of enough interest and usefulness that visitors bookmark the page for future reference.
Plan your subpages. Specify the types of pages you will have in your site. These can be general information pages such as site news, link pages, and faq (frequently asked questions) pages, entertainment or freebie pages designed to help attract visitors to your site, advertising and 'point of sale' pages designed for making sales and 'doorway' pages designed to attract visitors via search engines.
Be sure to plan for some links pages. There are two main varieties of link pages. 'Reciprocal links' are the most important and are used to exchange traffic with complimentary sites. As a site evolves, these can become an important source of free targeted traffic. Reciprocal links should be easily accessible from the rest of the site, so that visitors can move on to a related site when they are finished at yours. For your reciprocal links to survive in the long run, they must be providing a fair source of exchange traffic with the partner site. 'Other links' need not be easily accessible from the rest of the site. While an occasional exchange of site traffic may occur with 'other links', traffic exchange is not their main purpose. Their main purpose is to improve the link popularity for your site. Many search engines are boosting the relavance of sites according to the number of links they have.
Plan an easy means for visitors to provide feedback from your site visitors. Their feedback will be an important souce of ideas for site improvement. Providing a hyperlink to a feedback form on each page is a common way to do this.
Plan your disclaimers. These should be prescribed by your legal counsel.
Plan on having a forum that relates to your business if you are ready to spend a few moments each day moderating it.
Don't mix adult content with general commercial content. This can get you in trouble with those search engines that require you to identify whether or not your site is an adult site. If your site has any adult content, then it is an adult site. If you plan on having minors visit your site, you should not have any adult content on your site, or even links to sites with adult content. If you do, you may run into difficulties with commercial partners that will ask you to certify that you have neither adult content nor links to sites with adult content.
Store front packages. There are a variety of commercial secure-ordering store front packages availble. If you plan to offer merchandise for sale directly from your web site, and take credit card orders online, then you should review these packages.
Be sure to review other web sites to get some ideas for your site design. Review your competitor's site and analyze what they are up to. Include their search engine rankings in your analysis, and how they get those rankings. This will provide valuable input to your strategic site design plan.Every page on your site should have a link from your home page. On small sites, these can be direct links from the home page. On larger sites, there can be one link on the home page to a site index page. The site index page will, in turn, have links to all the other pages.
Minimize the nesting depth of subpages. Ideally, every subpage on the site would be one level below the home page. This may not be feasible for a number of reasons. Make every attempt possible not to nest pages more than two levels beneith the home page. One reason for this is that many search engines will not dig deep when indexing the site. Another reason is that deep nesting creates a site that is more difficult and time consuming to navigate.
Presented by Cities Commerce
Designing a web page :
Are you interested in creating a web page ? This web page design tutorial will help tell you how to make a web page. Once you know how to build a web page, you can make your own web page or be able to communicate your ideas to a web page creator.
On the surface, a web page may look simple. Indeed, many are. But a professional web page has many facets to it, some which are not apparent to the casual viewer. We will discuss the components of a web page in this web page design tutorial.
URL filename:
It will help boost search engine recognition if a keyword is included in the URL (World Wide Web Title) of the web page. When selecting a title, an important keyword should be incorporated.
Keywords:
Keywords will influence the design of a web page. Search engines use these keywords in ranking the page. High ranking pages list at the top of the search engine results page, thereby delivering more visitors to high-ranking pages.
Picking keywords is somewhat of an art. Pick a highly popular keyword(s) and the competition for the top rankings will be intense. Millions of pages can be competing for a popular keyword. The result is that most pages will rank too low to draw anything more than a random visitor. Pick a very unpopular keyword(s) and no one will interested enough to type that keyword into the search engine window. Again, there will be no significant traffic, even though the page may rank number one on the search engine results page. With experience, you can pick keywords that are somewhere between the extremes and expect these keywords to generate traffic from the search engines.
Focus adds yet another facet to keyword selection. Popular keywords may lack focus and send untargeted visitors to the web site. While the hit counter numbers may be exciting, the page performance will not be. If people aren't finding what they want at the page, they quickly move on. If your site sells freight cars and someone wanting to buy an automobile types the word "cars" into a search engine and is led to your site, the effort is wasted. It makes much more sense to use focused keywords or phrases in designing your web page. Focused keywords are usually much less competitive than the unfocussed ones, making it easier to get a high search engine ranking. The page won't draw as much traffic, but there's only so many people on the web wanting to buy freight cars. You can wave shiny new freight cars in front of auto shoppers all day long and you'll not sell single freight car. There aren't many freight car buyers out there and you want those few to come to YOUR site. Freight car buyers will quickly learn they need to type the phrase "freight cars", or even "buy freight cars", to find someone selling freight cars. Make those your keywords!
Meta tags:
Meta tags are written in the page source code. The source code is not visible to the casual viewer. Meta tags are read by search engine spider programs that index the page. They help summarize the page content for the spider. The most popular meta tags are the title meta tag, the description meta tag and the keyword meta tag.
For example, the title meta tag could be:AAA Steel - we sell sturdy freight cars
The description meta tag could be:
Looking for the most affordable freight cars? Buy your freight cars at AAA Steel ..... Brand new box cars in stock for immediate delivery.
The keyword meta tag could be:
freight cars, box cars, buy freight cars, shiny freight cars, new freight cars
The Title and description met tags are normally displayed on the search engine results listing. The description meta tag, especially, should be attractive to human viewers as well as search engine spiders. The description meta tag needs to convince the viewer to click on your link rather than the ones next to it.
Artistic design:
It's easy to put up a page of text and call it a web site. It's much more difficult to make a page that is visually artistic and exciting. That's where graphic designers are needed. Not only must the text and graphics be suitably artistic, but the graphics must be very frugal users of digital memory. Large, complex images can be so slow to load into the local browser that the viewer will get tired of waiting and cancel the page.
Have your images enhanced by a graphics designer who can crop or reduce the image size and "flatten" the color depth to reduce the memory size of images, usually without a noticeable sacrifice in image quality. For example, the image of the City of Philadelphia at http://www.citiescommerce.com/e-commer1.htm was reduced from 35 KB originally to 23 KB in size. Image size reductions of 25% to 50% can often be achieved by a professional.
The artistic design of the web pages should be consistent from page to page, such that they all conform to an artistic theme that provides continuity throughout the site.
Alt tags:
Use alt tags in the HTML code to give a title to the image. An alt tag gives a title to the image and that title will be displayed in lieu of the image while it is loading. This will give the viewer some idea of what is loading, so he/she can decide if they want to wait for it. The alt tag title should be chosen not only to suggest to the viewer the content of the image that is loading, but to convey an important keyword to the search engine that will be reading the image alt tags as part of its algorithm to decipher the page's content.
Content:
Content is king! Web pages must have content. That's what site visitors are after ... content! Content can be in many forms, including the following:
Information
Entertainment
Product information
Commerce, such as order taking
References, especially hyperlinks
Keywords in content
Not only must effective pages have content, they must have keywords that help express the content. Search engines will be looking for keywords. They need to find appropriate keywords or else the page may be incorrectly categorized. Keywords in meta tags are discussed above. These same keywords need to show up in the body of the page. Some search engine spiders look mainly at the meta tags. Others look mainly at the body of the page. Others look at both.
Page Access:
The design of a web page will be influenced by the desired flow of traffic to and from the web page. Pages that are intended for entry access to the web site should be designed for high recognition by the search engines. Pages whose entry will be directed from other pages within the site, or links from other web sites, will not be as dependent on search engine ranking and may be designed with less regard to search engine recognition. However, when possible, all pages should be designed for search engine recognition to improve the opportunity for traffic.
Advertisements:
Many web pages, especially the commercial ones, incorporate advertisements. Banner advertisements are typical. The placement of these banner ads must be considered in the page design. The top left portion of the web page is prime real estate. That's where most viewers look first. An add placed there will get instant attention. Unfortunately, it will also draw the viewer away from the rest of the page. In my opinion, the best place for banner ads is at the bottom of the page. Then the viewer has had a chance to consume the contents of the page before he is distracted by the banner ad. The viewer is more willing to entertain a banner ad, now that he has reviewed the page he came to see. I'm sure this viewpoint will be challenged by some of the banner advertising agents who believe the top left is prime real estate for even the most annoying banner ad.
Contact and feedback information:
It should be easy for web page visitors to contact the company. They must not have to dig around your site to find a contact. An effective means of providing contact is to place an e-mail hyperlink at the bottom of each web page. An occasional visitor will e-mail valuable feedback to the webmaster with suggestions for improvement.
Index links:
Every web page should be linked to an index page on the site. The index page can be the home page, or it can be a separate page linked to the home page. The purpose of this linkage is to maximize the likelihood that a search engine visiting the site will find all the pages in the site. Some search engines start at the home page. They can only find other pages by following links. That's the reason for having an index page. You can also place a link to your index page on the bottom of every page on your site. If a search engine spider arrives at any page from an outside link, it will quickly find the index page that will allow it to index the entire site.
Disclaimers:
Disclaimers are necessary and appropriate for many professional web pages. They should be placed in readable text at the bottom of the page.
Copyright statement:
Unless you want to give people free reign to copy you page, a copyright notice should be placed at the bottom of each page. If the page material is copyright sensitive, an attorney should be consulted and more extensive copyright design should be incorporated in the page.
Tracking code:
Tracking code is essential on commercial sites, especially those with multiple pages. It is essential to tell how many visitors are arriving at each page and where they came from. This allows one to evaluate the effectiveness of their advertising and promotion programs. There are many types of tracking programs available and they are free or modestly priced.
Browser loading speed:
Your pages must load fast on a 56K dial-up account. Otherwise, your hard-earned visitors will go away without ever seeing what your site has to offer. Complex graphics and images must be used sparingly.
For the best performance, typical web pages should be less than 24 KB in size. A page with real special content that the user will wait for could be larger than 24 KB in size. Above 24K, you're probably losing impatient visitors, especially during peak traffic times, which I will venture to say is from around 4:00 PM EST to 10:00 PM EST, when servers and the Internet itself are often loaded down with traffic.
Presented by Cities Commerce
Content is king! Take a few moments and do a web content analysis and ask yourself if your Internet website content is providing enough value to your visitors. If you aren't sure, ask a friend to be a content advisor, or hire a professional.
Content is what draws visitors to your web site, keeps them there and leads them to purchasing your products. Content can include information about your products as well as information related to your product. It can include tutorials that provide information that educates your visitors enough to evaluate and choose your products. Content attracts quality visitors and helps turn them into buyers. Content can be some form of entertainment that will bring visitors to your site and have them return. Content can come in many forms, but it must be of value to the visitors. Otherwise, they will quickly leave your site and not come back.
The series of tutorials on this site are an example of content. People will visit the site to learn from the tutorials. Some of them will bookmark the pages for future reference. Some of them will make a purchase or make personal contact that can lead to a purchase while at this site reading the tutorials.
This brings us to the issue of spamming. You can serve up enough spam to bring a million visitors to your site but you won't make a single dime if there's no content on your site.
Smart people build content on their site, then use professional techniques to bring a few quality (targeted) visitors to their site. You don't need a top rank with a general keyword to bring quality visitors to your site. You need a top rank with a very specific keyword phrase to bring quality visitors to your site.
Presented by Cities Commerce
Do you know how to advertise on the internet? This tutorial discusses many of the ways that you can advertise and promote your site online.
The best web site ever designed is of little use if people don't know about it or aren't directed to it. Sites placed on the Internet without promotion are very likely to draw almost no visitors at all. You must promote your website. There are many forms of advertisement and promotion. Certain types are more suited for one type of web business than another. In this tutorial, we cover the basic ones that most sites will use.
Announcements on relevant newsgroups and forums:
There are a great number of newsgroups and forums on the internet, and they usually specialize on a focused topic. A fundamental way to promote your site is to announce a new site in an appropriate way. An announcement that is interpreted as overt advertising or "spam" may cause more harm than good. Therefore, one should be sure to have a reasonable knowledge of the rules and culture at the newsgroup or forum before making a commercial or new site announcement.
Pay-for-performance search engines:
Pay-for-performance search engines can bring substantial traffic to a new site, and they can do it nearly instantaneously. It can be valuable to bring traffic quickly to a new web site so that analysis of the effectiveness of the site design and content can begin. While it may cost money to jump-start a web site with a pay-for-performance engine, it may be very justified to get a new web site tuned with real traffic months sooner than would happen waiting for free search engines, reciprocal links and other means of promotion to kick in. One might even find that the value of visitors from the pay search engine is great enough to turn a commercial profit from this source alone.
Selection of keywords is an art at the pay search engines, just as it is with the free search engines. Selection of an unfocussed but highly popular keyword can bring lots of expensive traffic. Selection of unpopular but highly focussed keywords may bring cheap traffic, but very little of it. There's a balance somewhere in between that needs to be found.
GoTo and Search Hound are two noteworthy pay-for-performance search engines. GoTo is the oldest and largest. It can provide the most traffic but will cost the most money per visitor. Search Hound is new and smaller. It will provide less traffic but will also cost less per visitor.
GoTo offers a search term suggestion tool. This tool lists the popularity of keywords and keyword phrases for the prior month. The popularity of keywords should be relatively independent of the search engines, so keywords selected for GoTo can be used on other search engines.
Free search engines:
The top free US search engines are currently (not in order of importance):
Alta Vista
Infoseek
Excite
HotBot
AOL Search
Northern Light
MSN
Lycos
Webcrawler
Unlike the pay-for-performance search engines, pages must be carefully prepared in order to obtain a position on the first few result pages for these search engines. It can be extremely difficult to get a high ranking on pages that contain popular content because of the stiff competition for popular keyword ranking.
Even pages designed to rank high may not be registered for weeks or months after submitting them to the search engines.
Other problems with the free search engines include getting out-ranked by spammers and getting low rankings due to unpredictable or changing search engine algorithms.
Code theft for high ranking pages is yet another problem, leading some people to use a technique called cloaking to hide their code from the cyber thieves. Cloaking is a controversial issue because it also gives the user the opportunity to spoof the search engines and serve them spam without the general public knowing.
Despite the problems with the free search engines, they can provide a fair amount of targeted traffic, but the cost will be far from free if one places value on the time it takes to prepare and register pages for a chance at a decent ranking.
Reciprocal links:
Reciprocal links are links that are exchanged with complementary sites. These can be a powerhouse for targeted traffic but they do not usually do not develop quickly. Always be on the lookout for reciprocal link opportunities. When you see one, e-mail the site webmaster and propose exchanging links.
Popularity links:
Popularity links are links whose main purpose is a ranking boost with search engines. Some search engines improve the ranking of sites that have many links to them. Exchanging links with sites of unrelated content and using an obscure "popularity links page" to do the job may help improve the site's ranking. Popularity ranking is a relatively new scheme for the search engines and it remains to be seen how effective the popularity links are.
Web rings
Web rings can be a sure source of a small amount of targeted traffic. A web ring operates by linking related sites in a ring fashion. A visitor enters a site, visits the site, then departs on a link to the next site on the ring. This may continue until the visitor has been at every site on the ring. Some web rings are operated professionally while others are operated helter-skelter by amateurs. A well-operated can bring as much traffic as it removes. A poorly-operated ring can just siphon traffic out of your site. It's not a bad idea to join a few web rings that are highly relevant to your site, but monitor them closely in the beginning to make sure the exchange of traffic is somewhat equitable.
Write newsletters:
Many web sites offer a daily, weekly or monthly newsletter on subjects pertaining to their site content. This is a recognized way of keeping interested site visitors informed about new products or new additions to the web site, and helps keep them returning. There are many excellent sites on the web providing information on starting and maintaining newsletters.
Banner exchange programs:
Banner exchange programs operate by showing banner ads on your web site. In exchange, your banner ad is shown on another web site. LinkExchange has been used by Cities Commerce with good success, as far as banner exchange programs go. Link Exchange is typical in providing you with one banner ad showing for every two shown on your site.
Many people are questioning the value of banner exchange programs. A decent banner may only bring one visitor to your site for every 200 showings. This would take 400 showings of someone else's banner on your site. With statistics like this, it becomes questionable whether or not the banner ad programs are worth the effort.
Paid advertising:
Paid advertising is available in many forms on the internet. You may pay someone to permanently display your banner ad on their site. You may pay to have your site listed in a well-established directory, especially one that is highly relevant to your products. You may pay for a listing in an electronic periodical called an e-zine. Larger businesses may decide to set up affiliate partner programs, which effectively pays other sites a commission for advertising for you on their site.
A unique form of advertising that involves printing a copy of your web site on business cards and post cards is offered by WebCARDS, an affiliate partner of Cities Commerce.
You may even wish to go outside the Internet and advertise your site with conventional means like radio, newspapers and magazines or even television.
Still some other Internet promotional methods include:
Write and distribute e-books
Writing and distributing electronic newsletters
Submit articles to e-zines
Advertising with op-in e-mail
Some people engage in spamming techniques such as bulk and unsolicited e-mail and off-subject or excessive cross-posting to the newsgroups. These are considered very unprofessional ways of promoting your site or your pages. Cities Commerce does not engage in these forms promotion. As such, Cities Commerce is not in a position not discuss these techniques or their consequences in this tutorial.
Improve your search engine position
Presented by Cities Commerce
Improve your search engine position with your next search engine registration. Read this tutorial on search engine optimization and your site's search engine rankings should improve. Watch your search engine placement climb. Get a great search engine listing. This tutorial discusses how to prepare your page for search engine submission. You'll learn the use of keywords and the common meta tags, specifically the title, description and keyword meta tags, and the use of keywords in the page body, in regard to search engine positioning.
Meta tags:
To be prepared to submit to many of the search engines, meta tags must be placed in heading of the HTML source code. For examples, use your browser to view the source code of this page.
After designing a page, decide upon and list the keywords and phases that should be used to attract the search engines. Naturally, the keywords and phrases should reflect the content of the page as accurately as possible. That's because you want to attract people that are specifically looking for what you have to offer. It would be okay to pull in untargeted sightseers except for the fact that you dilute the focus of your page by trying to pull in the general public. Pick one of the words or phrases that best describes your page and call that your focus keyword or phrase. Single keywords are the most competitive and least targeted, so try not to pick a single keyword as the focus of your page. It is best to focus on a two or three work phrase.
The title meta tag will be displayed by search engines as the title of your page. It will also help some search engines figure out what your site is about. It's important to have your focus keyword or phrase incorporated in the meta tag title of your page.
The description meta tag is also displayed by some search engines. Some search engines also look at the description meta tag to figure out what the site is about. So here again, it's important to have your focus keyword or phrase incorporated in the description meta tag. But there's one more facet to designing the description meta tag. Since this is what search engine viewers will see when deciding whether or not to click on it and visit your site, it needs to have impact. It needs to be a "killer ad". Without impact, the viewer is more likely to select the competition that surrounds you on the search engine results. Rather than 'Joe's freight cars' as a description, consider something like 'Buy the sleekest, strongest, most affordable freight cars in America, here... in stock now for immediate delivery'. This is definitely the place to puff your wares!
The keyword meta tags are used by some search engines to further determine what you site is all about. All search engines are not going to look at these meta tags and all the ones that do are not going to look at them the same way. You'll find a tremendous amount of controversy about the 'right' way to present keyword meta tags. You'll find as many approaches as there are articles. Feel free to experiment. Feel free to listen to the approach of others.
Here's one approach to presenting the keyword meta tags:
Use commas to separate the phrases.
Use phrases consisting of two to three words, but do not rule out four if it was an important phrase.
Never repeat a keyword by itself, but do allow repetition as part of phases. Do not repeat phrases, either.
Make sure your best keyword or phrase, which is also included the title and description meta tag, is included in the keyword meta tags, usually as the first element.
Use only lower case letters, regardless of whether or not this is correct English.
Try to limit the total word count to 15 or 20 words, but this is not a hard rule.
List a range of keywords and phrases, from popular single keywords to unpopular but highly targeted phrases.
Here's what to expect: Some pages will rank well, some not so well. Some will rank good on one search engine and poorly on another. The pages with the highest content will probably tend to fare the best by a significant margin.
Here's an example of meta tag usage. Let's say you picked the keyword phrase 'affordable freight cars' as your page focus, the title meta tag could be:
AAA Steel - we sell affordable freight cars
The description meta tag could be:
Buy the sleekest, strongest, most affordable freight cars in America, here... in stock for immediate delivery now!
The keyword meta tag could be:
freight cars,affordable freight cars, buy freight cars,new freight cars, in stock freight cars
Keywords in the page body:
After including the keywords in your meta tags, make sure they are included in the body. The first thing in the body is usually the title of the page and this should be the same title used in the title meta tag. Then add an introductory paragraph that summarizes the page contents. This paragraph should include the focus keyword or phrase and as many of the other selected keywords as possible.
If you have images on your page, include an appropriate keyword in the image alt tag (review HTML as it pertains to images if you need more information on image alt tags).
Beyond the body title and summary paragraph, let the page to be on it's own. Don't make any more attempts to highlight the chosen keywords. If they are repeated in the rest of the body, that's fine. If not, that's fine too.
Customizing for each search engine:
People looking for the ultimate in search engine traffic, and having the ultimate in time and money to spend, can make a custom search-engine-specific gateway page for every search engine and every page.
This can lead to a great number of gateway pages and a great maintenance cost.
Manual Vs automatic search engine registration
Presented by Cities Commerce
It's advisable to use manual search engine registration for your web pages, at least for the top search engines. Registering your site with search engines is far too important to leave to chance. By doing manual registrations, you go directly to each search engine site and register your web site. Then you know it was done and it was done correctly. Cities Commerce offers a site for free search engine registration. This is a multiple search engine registration service. You register your pages manually... that means you control and know the process! Read on........
Sometimes, search engines are not accepting site registrations, due to system maintenance, upgrading, etc. Sometimes the Internet or the servers are bogged down and the registration request times out. If submitting manually, you are usually given a message that the registration was not accepted. You can keep a record and try at a later date. It is not likely an automatic search engine registration service will recognize registration failures and resubmit your site at a later date. For example, Infoseek is often does not accept registrations on weekends due to system maintenance. At the time of this writing, AOL Netfind is not accepting registrations while they are changing over to the Inktomi database. MSN only accepts one site registration per day from each URL, and it will tell you when it rejects a second submission. Infoseek has a daily limit on the number of registrations it will take from your URL, and advises you of this on it's manual registration page.
If you keep resubmitting the same pages with an automatic shotgun approach, to increase your chances of getting the registration through, you may be penalized for spamming.
New search engines are arriving on the scene. You have to ask if the automatic service keeps up with these, especially if it's a free one that is not well maintained.
The really unfortunate thing about automatic registrations that don't work is that it may take weeks or even months to learn if the freebie was actually a scam and didn't register you as expected. Weeks or months of lost search engine referrals can translate into big losses for your web site or business.
Many people do not want to make manual search engine registrations because they don't know how to or they don't know where to go. They don't want to spend days or weeks searching through web sites looking for the place to submit their site. Cities Commerce Corporation has established a free multiple search engine registration service at http://www.citiescommerce.com/submit.htm that makes manual registrations quick and painless.
If you have multiple pages to register, you should start with your home page and submit it to everything first. That gets your home page into the search engine spiders' queues. When the spider goes to work, it might dig down into your site and register the other pages. But go ahead and submit the other pages next, just in case the spider doesn't dig in. Keep a record of the pages you submit and the engines submitted to. Begin checking a few days later to see if the pages were indexed. Pages that have not been indexed in a month or so should be registered again.
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