ForumsInternet/eCommerce

"Steering web traffic to your site requires some thought and planning,"
says New York-based computer and network consultant Kevin Freeman.
"First, you need to understand how people actually find web sites on
the World Wide Web." Freeman says that most website traffic is
generated by search engines like Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Ask and the
now household name, Google. "People begin looking for a product or
service by throwing the product name or a few descriptive phrases into
a search engine and seeing what comes up," he explains. Most of the
time, for any product or service search, the first results the search
engine returns will be ecommerce websites. Depending on the product or
service, there may be hundreds or thousands of such online vendors
willing to sell their products to the first consumer who clicks through
to their site.

That means that in order for your website to stand out among the legion
of possibilities that any of the major search engines are apt to turn
up, you need to try and get your website somewhere near the top of the
listings. "People are much more likely to click on the first dozen or
so sites the search engine provides them," Freeman says. Any shopping
decision they make will likely be made on one of those websites. If
your site is the eightieth or hundredth site listed, potential
consumers are much less likely to ever click on your link.

So, to improve your website's chance of landing relatively close to the
top in any search engine's listings, here are a few tips.

Keywords
Develop strong keywords and key phrases that accurately describe your
business and repeat these words and phrases all over your website.
Search engines deploy specialized programs called spiders that "crawl"
through the web, scanning millions of web sites a day, and indexing
them based on certain criteria, including words and phrases that appear
often on their web pages. If your business caters to a specific city or
region, make sure the name of your area of operation appears repeatedly
too. Putting your keywords near the top of your websites' pages is
important, since search engine indexing programs give priority to
content at the top of the page. Search engine giant Google offers a
free online tool that helps web site builders determine which keywords
to use on their website
(*adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal*).

Getting Meta
Meta tags are short bits of text that are encoded into a web page in
the HTML language that computers use to create and read documents on
the web. Meta tags provide a description of the web page's content that
can usually only be seen by search engines. In the early days of the
web, most meta tags consisted solely of keywords and phrases; however,
since the beginning of the decade most search engines have moved away
from simple meta tag keywords for indexing since the method is
considered unreliable and open to misuse by spamming websites. Many
search engines now favor Meta tag descriptions. A meta tag description
is a short piece of text describing - as concisely and accurately as
possible - the web page's content. Meta tag descriptions should be no
longer than 200 characters of plain text.

You can enter meta tag information in the HTML framework of your web
pages using any one of several available website creation programs. In
the event that your web-hosting company (which maintains your website
on its servers) has created your website for you, simply inquire what
meta tags have been added into the website's pages and add any
descriptive meta tags you think are necessary.

Update Your Site Often
A number of search engines periodically re-index websites in their
directories based on the number of changes they notice when they scan
the websites. A frequently updated website will be considered more
"current" than one less often updated and will receive a higher ranking
in the search engines results.

Keep It Easy
It should be easy for customers to view your website. It should also be
easy for the spider programs that search engines use to scan websites.
Some of today's flashier website display technologies, like JavaScript
and Macromedia Flash, may add visual interest to your website, but only
if potential customers have the correct plug-ins for these subprograms
already installed in their web browsers. "Nothing will stop a potential
customer from looking at your website faster than getting an error
message saying they need to install something in order to view it,"
Freeman says. Worse, search engine spiders usually scan websites in
text format, which means that they are unable to read data contained in
JavaScript or Flash. If they can't read it, it doesn't get indexed.

Additionally, some search engine spiders have trouble reading websites
that use frames. Frames are a way to divide a webpage so that multiple
documents can be displayed simultaneously. Search engines including
Excite, Hotbot, and Alta Vista will not fully index frame-laden
websites, thus reducing your website's chances of appearing on their
search results.

In order to see if search engine spiders can fully read your website,
you can examine it they way they see it - in text format - using a free
text-based web browser like Lynx (http://lynx.isc.org/).

Submitting Your Site
In addition to loading your site with keywords and adjusting your HTML
meta tags, you can also submit your website directly to search engines
for their consideration. All of the major search engines provide a
submissions process for website owners, which usually involves filling
out and submitting an online form in which you provide your website's
URL and various kinds of descriptive information. Resubmitting your
website on a periodic basis - say, every few months - can help increase
your ranking. There are also a number of web-businesses that promise to
submit your website to a variety of search engines for free, or for a
price. Paid web engine submission services can cover a larger number of
search engines via an automated process.

Paying for Attention
Many search engines - who are always looking for revenue, just like
everyone else - will offer preferential search results positions to
websites that pay for it. Depending on the search engine, there are
several levels of placement offered, with increasing fees for better
search results placement.

Get Linked
Among the things search engine spiders take into consideration when
indexing websites is the number of times a particular website is linked
to by other websites, especially high-traffic websites. In short, the
more people, organizations or other businesses who link to your website
on their websites, the higher your ranking will be with search engines.
You can increase you website's number of incoming links through a
variety of methods. Involve your business in local civic or charitable
events. The websites for these organizations or events will likely list
your business as a contributor or sponsor and provide a link to your
website. Make sure your business's website is listed in professional or
industry organization online directories or the local chamber of
commerce website. Locate other businesses - presumably non-competing
businesses - with which you can trade links, or try a site like
LinkExchange (www.linkexchanged.com/) that will help you find websites
willing to link to your own.

Chris Freeburn is an associate editor/writer for Priority magazine.