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| Online Marketing
and Search Engine Optimization |
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the second most common dilemma webmasters face, besides designing
their website, is how to optimize it for the search engines
to improve their ranking and promote it in order to increase
their website traffic. The task may seem almost overwhelming,
but rest assured, it's easier than you think. And you can
achieve excellent site promotion results absolutely FREE with
the easy free online tools and tips contained in this section
of Creating Online. |
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My SEO / Website Promotion Tips
Page contains a list of proven tips and ideas for ways to
promote your site, improve your search engine ranking, and
attract visitors. They are all absolutely free, are very easy
to do, and do not require a significant time investment. I
am here to tell you that you can indeed promote your site
yourself in your spare time very effectively without spending
a penny. I personally have done it and have achieved excellent
results just by using the tips and free online tools I am
sharing with you. |
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| As
a webmaster, you want to know where your traffic is coming
from, so setting up a system to monitor this is in my opinion
absolutely essential to determine which of your site promotion
efforts are working and which are not. On my Website Monitoring
page, you'll find everything from free hit counters, detailed
site stats, and live doorbells to live chat buttons. WIth
these tools you will see the actual search engine results
page that sent your visitors to your site, which keywords
were used to find your site, and your position in the search
engine for those keywords relative to your competitors. Actually
see the links at other sites on which your visitors clicked
to arrive at your site. Learn info about your visitors (browser,
OS, nationality, screen resolution, etc.), which can be extremely
useful when designing. |
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What
is a search engine? A website (such as Google)
with a searchable directory (database, index, list)
of thousands of other sites. People use these search
engines to search for information on the internet. |
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What
are search engine spiders, robots, crawlers, webcrawlers,
knowledge-bots and knowbots, and how do they work?
These are terms used to describe little "programs"
that search engines send out to "crawl"
around the web searching for information found on
websites. They will recrawl the sites that are already
listed in their search engine regularly (maybe once
a week) to update their database. They will also be
instructed by the search engine programmers to go
directly to your site and crawl it for the first time
if you have filled out their AddURL form to list your
site with their search engine. They gather data (information)
from the text in the body of the pages, from the meta
tags in the HTML source code of the pages, and from
the image alt tags on the pages they crawl and feed
it back to the search engines for processing and possible
listing in their index. |
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What does it mean to "AddURL?"
It means filling out a form at a search engine website
to invite their spiders to crawl your site and (hopefully)
list it in their index. The information you will be
asked to submit on the form could include your website
title, website URL, email address, and some keywords. |
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Welcome
to my list of proven tips and ideas for ways to promote your
site, improve your search engine ranking, and attract visitors.
They are all absolutely free, very easy to do, and do not
require a significant time investment. |
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OPTIMIZE
& GET LISTED: First and foremost is to
optimize your website for the search engines and then
list it with them. I suggest that you read three of
my articles, Boost Ranking, Effective Keywords, and
Visitor Trust, which provide some great tips for optimizing
your site prior to submitting it to the search engines.
You should also make use of the free Online Site Promotion
Tools listed on this page. |
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EXCHANGE
LINKS: Getting other sites to link to you increases
your "Site Popularity" in the eyes of the
search engines and may just be the one most significant
factor that will affect your search engine ranking.
Create a Link Partners page at your site and offer to
exchange links with others. Join an online link exchange
program. See my Link Partners page. Or join the best
free Link Exchange Program on the net, which I myself
also use.
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VOLUNTEER:
Join an internet help board to help others in your area
of expertise. This will be a prime opportunity for you
to refer others to your site for more info and to gain
exposure for your website. Here's a great Help Board
that's free to join. I (under the username, Bubbels)
am currently ranked one of the top 10 experts in "Java
and Web Development" there! |
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NEWSLETTER: Publish
an e-newsletter and be sure to put a subscribe link on
every page of your site. Send an issue out at least once
a month using "More Info" links at the end of
every article. The links should direct the reader to pages
at your site where they can find more information on that
subject. A great resource for managing a Free Mailing
List or Newsletter is Bravenet. |
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ADDURL
/ FFA: Do a search on the net using the terms
"add url" and "ffa" or "free
for all" to find pages where you can add your site's
link free. |
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NETWORK:
Post on message boards around the net. Put a link to your
website in your signature and post it whenever an opportunity
arises. |
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EMAIL
SIGNATURE: Put a link to your website in the
default signature for your email account. |
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GIVE
AWAY LINKABLE GRAPHICS: Start a program at your
site whereby you give out a graphic that links to your
site. Examples would be an award, seal of approval, safe
site seal, or member emblem. |
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BOOKMARK:
Be sure to provide a "bookmark us" button, link,
or reminder on your site to get repeat visits. Grab the
free code for this. |
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| According
to Brandweek Online Magazine: "Search engine
positioning may be just one part of an online
marketing strategy, but it is the fundamental
part. It's the baseline. If you are doing nothing
else, search engine optimization and keyword-related
advertising can make up 80 to 90 percent of traffic."
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