Search Engines & Your Website

there are three ways visitors will find your site

• from written stationery they see...adverts in appropriate magazines, business cards...etc.
• links from other websites
• and finding you on a search engine

in my view the search engine is actually the most `ethereal` and transient way of all....and whilst it is essential in bringing visitors to your site, it should not be treated as the only way....

even if your site appears in the top 20 listings, there is still no guarantee your site will be clicked on...

also....the competition is always on the move and jostling for greater positioning.

if bringing traffic to your site is to become a campaign then the first thing you will need is good, comprehensive site statistics....you HAVE to know where visitors are coming from, how they got there, what pages they are looking at, what pages they exit the site....and much more can be gleaned from stats.

my suggestions are these :-

1. ...first written material...its pretty much a one off thing....advertisements in appropriate publications etc, and making sure your site address is on every piece of paper to do with your business.
   
   
2. pay attention to reciprocal linking...links form other sites are very important ...for a number of reasons,
   but here are just two :-
   .....if someone is at another site they are already interested in buying your product, that means the number of choices to websites they can click on is less that the `x thousand` results they get from search engines...
   another point worth considering is easily demonstrated like this......
   imagine I put a search into google for your subject.....your site is listed and so are others ....I click on the website next to yours in the listing....
   if YOUR site is has a link from the site I chose to visit....you have a second chance of being visited !
   
   
3. SEO ...don`t get jargonised, it just means Search Engine Optimisation....
   as you may have discovered this is somewhat of a `black art`...what is good for one search engine isn`t good for another.....if you concentrate on getting high in google, does that mean you will miss users who don't search with google ? it is good but not THE only search engine used. others like AltaVista, HotBot/Lycos, AskJeeves, and Yahoo are still very much there.

The algorithms that search engines use to rank a website are constantly changing and are kept secret, and while one has to know the general concepts, if one went with the trend it could be the case that changes are being constantly made to a website just to follow the twists and turns of perceived change in how a search engine indexes your site.

ok...bottom line .....

content is king ! ...it is that simple ....

if a website contains good information and can try to be a resource about its subject, then it will be found and spidered and will be listed accurately by all the search engines.

links and keywords and meta tags, and all those other things yes...but they come after content in my view.

when you go to the cinema to watch a movie...the building has to have seats, and toilets, and sell popcorn, and have blue n purple carpet..and all the things we expect it to have.....
but....we go to see the film !