Internet and Technology

Article by Josh Nowell

Heretofore, I have simply discussed just enough (I am nowhere near thorough analysis of disruptive technologies or the sustainers of music editors and voice changers and inexpensive bandwidth) to facilitate the understanding that technology indeed evolves in waves of disruption.

Ever since getting accustomed to, I have always believed that there truly exist Clay Christensen disruptive technologies (the explanatory first three parts could have been excluded). What is more of my concern is how people embrace disruptive technologies, and how and to what extent these technologies transform the corporate and social world.

Disruptive technologies change the way people go about doing their businesses. Then what happens after the change, and before the next wave of disruption? Napster caused Sony BMG and Universal to revamp their distribution models. But the Napster impact did not stop there; people of non-disruptee industries also learned to make use of file-swapping technologies. Lotus Notes inventor Ray Ozzie’s Groove Networks, for example, let users share work instead of only MP3 music like Napster.

Such is how disruptive technologies can be good: it stimulates corporate improvement to lower costs and speed up business cycles by allowing fast and easy exchange of information. Take General Motors’ own version of Napster, eViz, for instance. GM engineers could now share work with their partners beyond the GM firewall. This effectively lowers barriers to working with the automaker, and expands the supply chain. In Nick Andreou’s, vice president in charge of GM Engineering’s collaboration strategy, words, “There are service providers everywhere.” GM could thus take on more projects, since each costs less due to the company’s high access to the global supply market.

IBM has also established a similar network called e-Workplace, an electronic protocol that manages meetings, synergetic web sites and instant messaging applets. The computer giant saves up to $ 60 million a year, according to its marketing manager, Gregg Cherbonneau, who wants to expand the sale of these services worldwide. Well, disruptive technologies are not exactly as they sound; they can be rewarding, very rewarding, if you know how to “tame” them to fit your purposes. However, despite the huge financial incentives of increasing adaptation and utility of new technologies, the transformation of the corporate world does face considerable cultural obstacles. Like previous forms of knowledge management, these “e-collaboration” efforts face some big cultural barriers. Partners and customers control a lot of access to the internal processes of their collaborators. Too much transparency can be uncomfortable. Indeed, there are immense limitations, beyond cultural, to the disruptive technology-driven transformation of the corporate world. Some lie inherently in the disruptive technologies themselves. As these emerging technologies are new, there might not be sufficient support platform for them to thrive. Consequently, they might go into oblivion before their full potential realized. Just imagine how far VoIP could go without inexpensive broadband connection. The sustainers the like of music editors and networked computers to Napster, voice changers and affordable bandwidth to Skype or Yahoo! Messenger are not always immediately available to feed the growth of disruptive technologies.

In addition, legality also poses barriers to the application of disruptive technologies. Well, this is not a kind of limitation of technology, but of society yet to accommodate its form. The battle against Napster by the Recording Industry Association of America spawned several undesirable proposals to curb the Napster impact, of which one was the VeriSign-like peer identity protocol, a work of the Public Key Infrastructures. It was undesirable because it excluded users who could not or would not participate, removing altogether the freedom Napster brought to Net surfers.

Admittedly, if one looks at the above-mentioned legal limitation, it might be argued that that was necessary against illegal use of intellectual property, and that it was the way Napster was used that made it wrong (not the technology itself). That is cool, as I also acknowledge the fact that men do apply technology in ways not too right. This is especially relevant to disruptive technologies, as they are new, and there are yet any guidelines on proper utility.

Disruptive technologies could truly transform the work of men tremendously. Disruptive technologies also have their own limitations to address, both in and of itself. “Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other,” C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971. With that quote, I would like to end this series on Disruptive Technologies.

About the Author:

Josh Nowell is a Media Morpher writer who specializes in technology research. This article is the second in the 4-part series on Disruptive Technologies of his.

He could be contacted at media@audio4fun.com.

Article by Paul Capicik

There are only a few different types of broadband connections. And it’s usually not hard to choose which type of broadband connections to go for – your choice will probably depend mostly on where you live. Most people will choose a broadband connection depending on cost or speed, and what Broadband Provider offers are available.

The majority of the U.K, who have broadband, has chosen an ADSL connection for Broadband as it’s widely available and easy to set up. Cable might be another option if it’s available in your area. Which begs the question: ADSL or Cable? The reality is, one isn’t better than another and it really depends more on where you live and how good the supplier is. So, your choice will probably be based on the deal offered and what the broadband provider provides with there service.

The main types of broadband Internet connection are:

ADSL – Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

ADSL coverage is available to the majority of the UK population. As such, it is the most likely choice unless you happen to live somewhere remote, or in an area where cable is available.

ADSL broadband is received through your existing BT telephone line, using a special modem or router. There is no need to have an additional telephone line installed and you will still be able to make and receive calls whilst surfing the web. Although you must have a BT telephone line, there are many ADSL broadband providers to choose from, each offering a selection of different deals.

When you have an ADSL connection it is necessary to fit small devices called microfilters to all your telephone sockets. You need to plug them in to prevent the ADSL signal from interfering with your voice calls. Typically your ISP will provide you one or two microfilters and, if you need any more they only cost a few pounds.

Cable

If you already have cable TV, or if you live in an area served by a cable operator, then a broadband cable Internet connection may be an option for you. A cable Internet connection requires a special modem, which is connected to your cable along with your cable TV box (if you have one). Most cable companies offer packages that include telephone and TV channels as well as a broadband Internet connection.

As with ADSL, cable Internet providers usually offer several types of broadband deals for different requirements.

Wireless

In some of the more remote or rural areas of the UK, ADSL and Cable Internet connections may not be available. Increasingly in these areas, smaller broadband providers are providing local coverage using wireless technology.

For a wireless broadband connection, a small antenna is installed on the outside of your house, like a TV aerial, and this sends signals to a connection point on the inside, which is connected to your computer. No telephone line of any kind is required. Another option is buying a wireless router.

Satellite

Satellite is generally seen as a last resort for people who live in remote areas and cannot receive any other form of broadband Internet. It is available throughout the UK and requires the installation of a special satellite dish.

There are two types of satellite connection.

The first type is a one-way connection, where you will be able to receive data (view web pages), but can only send data (if for example you want to send an email) by using a dial-up modem through a telephone line.

Two-way services, where data is both sent and received through the satellite dish, are also available, although these tend to be quite expensive to install – with an additional monthly subscription.

Blogging is the latest craze in Internet marketing and SEO circles. User generated content now rules. This article gives six good reasons that you should consider blogging as part of your online marketing efforts.The rise and rise of blogging as part of the web 2.0 phenomenon has taken the Internet by storm. Savvy web marketers are now using Blogs as an additional weapon to generate leads, add credibility and improve their search engine rankings. For more detail go to: www.greatblogbox.com.Here are six reasons why you should consider blogging.Blogging is great fun! Yes, blogging can be great fun. Just open you posting window and go for it without the restrictions of corporate style guides and other impediments to creativity . Got something to say? Just say it. The other fun aspect of blogging is that people can post comments about your blog posts. You posts plus reader comments all become valuable food for the search engines.Blogging is cheap. The most powerful blogging systems are free. Word press seems to be the blogging standard and now comes standard with many cheap web hosting packages. For less than $100 per year anyone can get their own domain with blogging included.I wouldn’t use one of the free blogging services unless you are really desperate. You can’t be sure if they will always remain free and your posts will be building up someone else’ asset rather than your own.Blogging is fast and easy. If you can use notepad you can blog. The user interface is very intuitive and allows you to add and edit text, pictures, and videos, whatever you want. Want to change the look and layout of your blog? There are literally hundreds of themes available that take less than a minute to upload and install.Blogging gives you products and services personality. People like to do business with people they like. By blogging you show your target market that there is a real person behind the company you represent. By reading you blog posts that get an idea of what you’re all about – warts and all. The personal aspect of blogging is one of its most powerful characteristics.Your blog becomes another Internet asset. For more help visit to: www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com. Some blog sites get thousands and thousands of readers each day. This traffic can be converted to hard, cold cash through Google Adsense advertising, affiliate programs and straight advertising space sale. Once you blog increases it’s Google Page Rank, you also get the benefit of linking out from your blog site to other web sites you want to promote.Search engines just love Blogs. It is said in many SEO forums that Google staff are great bloggers and subsequently Google spiders and indexes Blogs more frequently that normal web sites. This may just be a rumor, but I have found it to be true in my case. If you blog every day there’s a good chance Google and the other major search engines will spider your blog every day looking for that new content.Convinced? Give blogging a try. There are stacks of free resources listed in article directories like this one that will help you get into blogging.www.blog-link-generator.comwww.instant-blog-and-ping.com

Althoug MSN is lagging behind both Yahoo and Google when it comes to the ways you can get your site indexed, it is still one of the top three search engines, and it should not be ignored.

MSN offers you two different ways to get your site indexed, and you should submit to both. However, before you do that, make sure that you have optimized your website first.

You can get more information on optimizing your site for MSN, as well as tips on search engine optimization, here:

http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm

The tips that you will find here basically apply to optimizing your site for any search engine, but they are definitely worth the read so that you focus your search engine optimization efforts in a way that will get your site indexed.

As I mentioned before, there are two ways to get indexed by MSN. The first involves submitting to the Intomi index. The Intomi index actually powers the MSN search.

Inktomi is now also part of Yahoo. However, you should still submit your site here. This will allow you to get indexed by hundreds of sites if your site is accepted.

http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

You will need to use a valid email address for your site. Make sure that you use an email account that you actually use so that if there is a problem, you can promptly fix it. You may also need to confirm your submission.

Keep in mind that there are no guarantees on turnaround, and there are also no guarantees that your site will be accepted.

The second part of submitting to MSN is actually submitting to the MSN spider. Rob Benwell, of “Blogging to the Bank” fame, said that he used MSN for his searches when looking for niches, because MSN updates more quickly than either Yahoo or Google, and this was why he used MSN to test his results.

This may be good advice. However, I believe that you should submit manually to MSN for the following reason: this is the number two website on the internet. It gets an enormous amount of traffic, and the traffic that this site brings you can help you with both your rankings, as well as being found by searchers.

ComScore Networworks reports that 48 percent of MSN searchers are more likely to buy, whereas Google searchers are 42 percent likely to buy. Yahoo users are 41 percent more likely to buy. Although these statistics were released in 2005, you can get more information from this site on demographic buying habits of searchers: http://www.comscore.com/

Now, you can use the link below to submit directly to the MSN spider:

http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

A word of caution here: when submitting to MSN, make sure that you understand the characters in the verification image on this page. You must type them exactly as you see them, or your site won’t get submitted.

If your submission is successful, you will see a message that tells you your submission is successful and will ask you if you want to submit another site.

Once you have MSN crawling your site, you shouldn’t have to resubmit.

If you follow these steps carefully, you should have no trouble getting your site accepted. Create great content, build links back to your site, and target the correct keywords, and you can get very high rankings.

Search Engine Optimization Demystified

In the second part of the series Search Engine Optimization Demystified – Part Two, we looked at how the search engines see your web site. We went through ranking, indexing and the rules to follow to get the best results for excellent natural search engine results.

In this, the third article in this series I will explain how search engines can be prevented from ever getting to your site and how they can be restricted from parts of your web site through bad web development practices. This results in poor search engine ranking and low natural search traffic levels.

We added this Meta tag to the code of his site: It does what it looks like it does; it instructs the search engine \”robots\” not to index this page or follow the links from it.

Now before you get paranoid – I have never seen this done maliciously, but if you have a robots meta tag on your site it should say: Since search engines assume this to be the default setting, it is not really necessary to have this tag on your site.

There are also meta tags that can tell the search engines what kind of content to expect on this web site. This may reduce traffic intentionally, for instance: < META NAME =\"AUDIENCE\" CONTENT=\"ADULT\">This tag is used by search engines to filter search results for people who set their search preferences to exclude explicit content.

You can see the META tags that have been used on your web site by looking at the source code of the site through your browser. For example, with Internet Explorer choose \”Source\” from the \”View\” menu. The meta tags will be in the top part of the file between the tags – if you hit the tag you\’ve gone too far.

The first page of the site is the most heavily weighted page by search engines. Weighting is done according to various factors, including the amount of relevant text on the page. Since the first page of a frame set is just a set of code instructions to the browser on how to find and use the files for the next page, what a frame set does is to \”demote\” all of the pages in a site to one level down in the page hierarchy. Search engines use the page hierarchy to determine the importance of the page within your web site. If your first page has no content on it, it will rank poorly, and if all other pages are secondary to the first page they will be ranked even lower.

A typical frame set page looks something like this in the code view:                   As you can see there is absolutely nothing in the way of actual words in the page that may be indexed by the search engines. You can understand now why utilizing a frame set would depress your search engine rankings.

In addition, search engines like to follow a nice set of hierarchical links in order to index the content of the site. While your menu with all of your links may be contained in frame1.html in the code view above, you are making the search engine go that extra step to find that menu. As we already mentioned, this is effectively how the frame set knocks everything down one level and makes the search engine jump through an extra hoop to get to your content. Search engines expect us as site owners to jump through extra hoops to appease them – they don\’t like it at all when the tables are turned and will rank your site accordingly.

Search engines cannot read images or text written on images. They cannot read text inside of Flash movies or understand voiceover commentary from a video. Pdfs are often encoded as jpeg images and cannot be read by search engines when saved in this format. Search engines can only read text contained in HTML and in meta tags (which are specifically written for search engines).

One common misuse of Flash is the \”Splash\” or \”Landing\” page. This is a page that is just a picture or movie with only an \”Enter Here\” link on it. Since search engines cannot read the content of an image or Flash movie, this page looks blank to them. If the \”Enter Here\” link is also coded inside the Flash movie the search engines cannot see the link and will not be able to get to any of the pages inside your site regardless of whether they employ Flash or HTML.

Some web sites are written entirely in Flash and are not accessible to search engines as is. There are a few ways around the Flash barrier, like creating an HTML version of the site with meta tags and using additional navigation links in HTML. But why place a barrier to search engines on your site in the first place? We recommend using Flash for decorative purposes. We recommend that it only be used in such a way that if it were removed, search engines would still have everything necessary to index the site correctly.

To test your site\’s accessibility to search engines check if you can copy and paste the text from the web browser to your text editor. If the text is written in HTML you will be able to do this. If you can\’t, it is likely that search engines will not be able to read this text. A site done entirely in Flash or with images is usually the result of a company web development effort driven primarily by graphic design personnel with little or no input from web development professionals. If you are developing a website for business rather than for a movie, an event, or an art exhibit, you are better off listening to the advice of web development professionals who are trained in SEO concepts for maximum ROI through better search engine placement.

Search engines cannot read text embedded in JavaScript or any other scripting language that requires the user to do something (like choose from a drop down list of options) to get to new content. Therefore, most of the drop-down type navigation bars you see at the top of web sites are actually barriers to search engines. Unless a search engine spider sees an actual coded link you will lose them. This is actually the most common barrier we will see on a website because inexperienced web design personnel are unaware of the fact that search engines cannot read scripted menus.

As an aside, javascript drop down menus are usually also less human user-friendly due to the fact that they difficult to manually operate, and they provide no navigational reference point since the drop down \’snaps back up\’ disappearing as soon as it is clicked. While there are again various methods to \”get around\” this obstacle, these are stop-gap measures that can and should be avoided.

By Candace Carter, Back2Front – The Web Site People. December 2009

www.back2front.ca

3. Other Google AdWords Strategies

     Google AdWords Ad Positioning

    Although the profit margin on the product or service offered is a large factor, tests have proved that the first ad position on the first page is, generally, not the most profitable. Yes, it gets the most clicks, but it’s often a spontaneous action by the surfer before studying the ad. Sometimes the surfer is merely browsing the subject and is not ready to buy (commonly known as “tyre-kickers”).

    Tests show that the further down the page an ad is, or, occasionally, even on the second page, the greater is its conversion rate. The surfer has taken the time to read the ad carefully because he is ready to buy. Furthermore, the clicks are fewer; so, your overall pay-per-click bill is less than for a higher-positioned ad. The downside is that the click-through rate (CTR) of the lower-positioned ads is lower, which affects your Quality Score adversely and raises your cost per click.

    A happy medium is to aim for positions 4 to 6 on Google’s first page. (You can use the “Show Estimated Ad Position” and “Estimated Avg CPC” columns in the on-line Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine the cost-per-click to bid for each of of your exact match keyword phrases, and then you can set those bids accordingly. These figures can, however, be notoriously inaccurate. Always check your keyword phrases’ positions afterwards in the ‘Avg Pos’ column on the Ad Group’s ‘Keywords’ index tab or by testing with a search on the main keyword phrases.)

    “Google Search” ads, “Content Network” ads, “Search Network”/”Search Partners” ads, “Placement” ads

    You can specify different maximum bid amounts for these various types of advertising. Because the quality of their traffic tends to be lower, bids for the Content Network (“entire network” option) and Search Network (Search Partners) (see Tactics > Search Network) should be kept lower and be more tightly controlled than those for Google Search traffic and the Content Network (“Placement ads” option). In the early stages of a new Google AdWords campaign, it is advisable to go with only Google Search traffic and switch other options off, to help you to control costs. Once you’ve discovered the keywords that produce the highest return on investment (ROI), you can enable other options for those keywords to see what results they produce.

    If you find that a Google Search traffic campaign is too competitive, don’t just abandon Google AdWords altogether; try a Content Network Placement ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads), bidding either CPC or CPM (q.v.).

    Testing and Tracking

    Ad Variations

    Despite what you may think of your copywriting prowess, you will not write the perfect ad at the first attempt. You may need ten attempts before you find the best formula. Although you may hazard a reasonable guess at the advertisement text that would attract visitors, the ONLY way to KNOW what ad text achieves the highest click-through rate (CTR) is split-test two ads simultaneously.

    Although changing just a single word can make a difference, do not split-test two ads that resemble each other that closely; Split-test two radically different ads. (Switch off Google’s option to show the better-performing ad more often than the other, as that would distort the test results.) After between 20 and 50 clicks it should become apparent which of the two ads is out-performing the other. Then replace the inferior ad with another and split-test again. Repeat this process again and again, each time reducing the textual differences between the two ads until you arrive at the one that performs best of all.

    To track the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page, click on the Campaign name; click on the Ad Group name; click the ‘Ad Variations’ index tab; check the ‘CTR’ column.

    Always keep all the Ad Variations that you create, to check that you don’t repeat any inadvertently.

    Landing Pages

    Split-test your landing pages in a similar way, to discover which style, layout, text, call to action, etc. achieves the highest conversion rate. To track the conversion rates of your web pages for various keywords, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page and click on the ‘Conversion Tracking’ item on the ‘Campaign Management’ index tab.

    Always save all the landing pages that you create, to check that you don’t repeat any inadvertently.

    Keywords

    After a new campaign has been running for about a month, check the click-through rate (CTR) of all the keyword phrases in each Ad Group on its ‘Keywords’ index tab. Click the ‘CTR’ column header to sort the keyword phrases, mark the checkbox of all keyword phrases with a CTR of less than 0.5% and either ‘Pause’ or ‘Delete’ them. (If you have many keywords, it’d probably be quicker to do this in your specialist AdWords software tool and upload the keyword list to your Google AdWords campaign again.)

    0.5% is considered the benchmark of a poorly performing keyword. Such keywords cause your ad to be displayed but, for some reason, the people using the keyword in their search terms don’t connect it mentally with your ad, and don’t click on it. If several keywords have a low click-through rate (CTR), the overall click-through rate (CTR) of your whole Ad Group is reduced and its Quality Score will be affected adversely. Eventually, this Ad Group’s lower Quality Score will also affect the Quality Score of your entire Google AdWords campaign.

    This check should be performed weekly thereafter.

    If you really want to use those poorly performing keywords, remove them from the Ad Group and create a new Ad Group for them, or even a new campaign, so that they don’t affect your overall Quality Score.

    The Bottom Line

    Great importance is attached to the click-through rate (CTR), but, to put it in perspective, it is only a means to an end. A high click-through rate (CTR) does not make you a millionaire in itself; It’s revenue that counts. Your revenue is determined by the successful interaction between keywords, Ad Variation and landing page, all three working in harmony together.

    Maximum CPC Bid

    Don’t be afraid to bid higher than necessary for keywords in a new Google AdWords campaign during the first few days. This will establish your campaign with Google and, as your click-through rate (CTR) rises, your maximum CPC bid amount to achieve the same ad position will fall dramatically. Then you lower your bids and check again the next day. Repeat this process until your bids are minimized. You do this for all the keyword phrases in the Ad Group. If there are too many keywords to deal with manually, invest in specialist software to calculate the bids for you.

      CPC or CPM?

     Google ‘Content Network’ advertising (see Tactics > Content Network) gives you the option to specify your keywords’ maximum bids as cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) (“M” is the Roman numeral for 1,000, “mille” in Latin). CPM can be useful if the Quality Score is low or the cost per click (CPC) is high. If you opt to pay for impressions rather than for clicks, Google couldn’t care less about Quality Score or click-through rate (CTR) or even relevance; You simply pay each time your ad appears. Of course, it’s still in your interest to ensure that you follow the advice about relevance already given.

    It’s your responsibility to track the performance of your CPM ads, because Google doesn’t do it for you. Obviously, you won’t want to keep paying for ads that don’t convert. Moreover, you’ll still have to bid high enough to get your ad to be displayed in the desired position within an ad unit on an AdSense publisher’s web page, or even at all, and that cost could be quite high on a good-quality, popular web site that you choose for a ‘Placement’ ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads).

     Keywords

    Unless you have a six-figure annual budget and would be happy with a mere 10% return on investment (ROI), don’t bother bidding for popular 1-word keywords, such as “mortgage”. The competition for most single-word keywords is fierce, unless the niche is very esoteric. Moreover, searches on single words are made most frequently by people who are simply not ready to spend their money; they are merely investigating the market, gathering information; in other words, they are “tyre-kickers”. 1-word keywords would probably bankrupt you very quickly.

    2-word keywords are a better bet, but they can still command a high cost per click in competitive markets, surfers who search on them may still not be ready to buy, although they’re getting there.

    Keyword phrases of three words and up are known as “long-tail” keywords. (Note that the word “keyword” in pay-per-click advertising can mean a phrase of more than one actual word, e.g., “New York”. A “keyword phrase” consists of more than one “keyword”.)

    3-word keyword phrases have the highest conversion rate, according to tests. People who type three words as a search term have usually done their investigations, know exactly what they want, and are now ready to buy.

    4-word keyword phrases fare slightly less well, perhaps because the searcher may indeed be ready to buy, but is comparing prices for a very specific item, or is doing some academic research.

    Don’t understimate the power of negative keywords! If you sell tulips, you don’t want your ad to appear when someone searches on the term “grow tulips”. Although they may not click on your ad, it’d be an unnecessary impression, and its click-through rate (CTR) would suffer. Specify “grow” as a negative keyword. (Of course, if your Ad Group contains only exact match keyword phrases, there’s no point in specifying negative keywords.)

     Landing Page

    Relevance is covered above, and is by far the most important attribute of a landing page. Here is some advice about other ways to encourage Google to enhance your Ad Group’s Quality Score.

    Google values “real” web sites more highly than mere single-page “mini-sites”. The robot checks for links to other web pages, particularly a ’site map’ page and ‘privacy policy’ and ‘contact us’ pages. A ‘terms of use’ and an ‘about us’ page may also help. Hyphenate these page names as the file names, e.g., ‘privacy-policy.html’. Place the links to these pages at the very bottom of your landing page, in the footer, using as small a font as a human would consider reasonable. You want to reduce the risk as much as possible that your visitor will click away from your landing page.

    Minimize the landing page’s load time. It is believed that Google uses this as an element in its Quality Score algorithm. Keep images and JavaScript to a minimum. They weigh the page down. (Google cannot follow JavaScript links anyway.)

     How to Attract Visitors

    What makes a person click on your ad instead of someone else’s? The answer is the same as to the question why a person clicks the ‘Buy’ button on your sales page: good copywriting. That’s a separate subject, but, suffice it to say here that your ad must be not only relevant, but also compelling. Imagine that you are the searcher, looking to buy a product or service like yours. Look at other ads offering something similar. What attracts you to one and not another? Ask your friends and colleagues what they think.

    You have only a 25-character headline and two description lines of 35 characters each. Don’t squander them on waffling about your company. The consumer couldn’t care less about you or your company. The consumer has a problem to be solved, a need to be satisfied, a desire to be fulfilled. So, mention the problem, the need, the desire. And, most important, tell the consumer that the solution, what he needs, what he wants is only a click away. Tell him to “Get Help Now” or to “Find It Here”. That’s the ‘call to action’.

How do the search engines find web sites? Do they wait for you to submit your site? Not any more. Usually search engines index a site whether it is formally submitted or not. Search engines use automated software robots called crawlers or spiders that move through the world wide web following the hyperlinks, from page to page and site to site, recording what they find as they go. They do this continually, checking back with sites already listed to see if they still exist, to find new pages, and to check for new content.

This means that if your web site is linked to from another web site that is already indexed, your site will be indexed on the next pass of the robot! If all of your web site pages are linked properly to each other, they will be indexed as well. In addition, many search engines actually share the same data! So if you get listed on one of them you will eventually be listed on the rest.

The only time you will need to submit your new site is if there is no link from any other web site to yours. At Back2Front, we take care of this for you; however, if you would like to link your site, you can submit your URL here: www.google.ca/addurl/

If you are in a niche market that has its own search engines, like genealogical web sites for example, it is worth submitting your site to specialist search engines, which may not share data with the larger, more general search engines.

So what about the SEO companies that will submit your site to thousands of search engines every month for a year for $375? This service is not only unnecessary, but also may be harmful to your search engine ranking. These companies use robots to submit your site to a list of search engines repeatedly. Most search engine software can detect excessive automated submissions and may actually penalize sites that are submitted multiple times and rank them lower or even black list them.

Of course getting indexed is only half the battle. You need to be listed, but you also need to be well ranked. Ranking a web site is a way of assigning it priority over other sites with similar content. The exact ranking algorithm used by search engine companies is a closely guarded secret. But they do make public the criteria that the calculations are based on and provide basic guidelines to web site designers for successful search engine optimization.

 

So there you go, there really are no tricks, the rules are straightforward – no more mystery. If your site takes into account all of the above, your site will be well optimized for search engines.

However, there are some Roadblocks to Search Engines that will prevent the search engines from crawling and indexing your site properly that you need to make sure your web site does not have. I will deal with these in the next instalment of Search Engines Demystified.. stay tuned.

by Candace Carter, Back2Front-The Web Site People, 2009

www.back2front.ca