Marketing Your Website

Search Engines / Search Directories

One way prospective customers or clients can find your website is through Search Engines and Directories. These can be thought of as individual "Yellow Pages Directories" on the Internet that people use to find web pages using relevant keywords or phrases.

With the Internet growing at an explosive pace, these search sites are becoming more important. At last count there were over 500 Search Engines! These are almost all free services, with each having different formatting & submitting requirements. Some of these catalog a database of all Web Sites submitted, some use "spiders" or "robots" that search all of the pages on the Web to find your website.

We have spent a great deal of time learning the proper method of designing and formatting your Home or Index Page. This includes the correct use and placement of a 25-word description, keywords, proper HTML formatting and coding, etc. We have also done extensive research into the correct information and submission formats required by each of these search sites. LDG provides a Search Engine and Directory Web Site Registration service to our clients. When your site is completed and approved, the next step is to submit all appropriate information (in the proper formats for each) to the top 20+ of these Search Engines and Directories.

Strategic Linking / Email Promotion

Imagine for a moment that you sell straws on your website. Wouldn't it be great to get a link on Pepsi's website? You'd get a portion of their traffic as well as your own. Ok, it's unlikely to happen with Pepsi, but the principle is a sound one.

In addition to the extra traffic that a link on a related website will bring you, the search engines will often give a higher ranking to a site that has a lot of links to it from similar or relevant websites.

Don't forget e-mail as a great marketing tool. While we don't like spam emails, it's perfectly reasonable to email your current clients with special offers, company news or new products.

Traditional Advertising Methods

Once your website goes live, you should include your web address on everything you can. That means including it on your business cards, letterheads, or anywhere you would list your telephone number as a way to contact you. Other good places to include your web address are TV and radio advertisements, as well as newspaper and magazine ads.

Search engines are where a lot of people go online to find a website on a given subject, in a given area, or dealing with a given product or service.

When someone types a word or phrase into a search engine, the results they see are based upon many factors, including:

• The text on the website
• The hidden meta tags
• The amount and quality of search engine optimization used by the website designer
• The way the website was presented to the search engine

In addition, the search engines all have their own algorithms that determine how well a website will rank for a given keyword or series of keywords.

The popularity of the search terms is a vital factor in ranking. For example, a search on the word "music" would return a huge number of websites. It would be almost impossible to get a high ranking on that word alone. On the other hand, a term like "jazz music" would return fewer results, but the number will still be very high. The term "jazz music from china" would return even fewers results, but the results would be more in line with what the searcher is seeking.

Basically, we have to try and determine what words or phrases people would most likely type into a search engine to find your products or services, and then use that information to try and ensure that they find your website.

Many of the search engines use "spiders" to crawl the entire internet looking for websites. In theory, all websites will be eventually found and listed. In practice, it could take years, or never happen at all. There are some automated submission systems, but these have limited success, so we submit all ours by hand.

Most likely. In order to keep their results fresh for the searcher, search engines are continually changing the criteria which must be followed when submitting websites to them. Often, this may result in your website dropping in the search engine rankings, or even being dropped from their listing totally!

Our job is to keep up with the most current search engine requirements and to optimize and re-submit your website as necessary to meet those requirements.

Yes. The success of a website depends on many factors. Being listed in a search engine is not the only way to drive traffic to your website. Continually reviewing and implementing your Internet marketing strategies will allow you to build a steady flow of visitors to your website.

You should constantly look for ways to promote your website, both online and off-line. Including a link to your website on your email will make it easy for your customers to find your website. Including your website address everywhere you advertise your company's name and telephone number will increase your visibility. Press releases, direct mail-outs to existing customers, newspaper articles, classified ads, and trade magazine advertisements are all great ways to announce your new online presence.

No. Many companies claim to be able to guarantee top rankings in search engines. With the number of websites on the Internet today, and with more and more websites being added every single day, it is virtually impossible to guarantee a top ranking on even one search engine, much less all of them. We do however, guarantee that we will optimize your website and keep it current with the search engine criteria in order to get your website ranked as high as possible.

Almost all of the major search engines are now implementing programs such as paid submission, keyword bidding, etc., by which companies can pay for inclusion into their listings or bid on specific keywords, which can result in higher visibility for your website. We keep abreast of the latest submission options and assist you in determining the value of using these options in your online marketing plan.