Achieving Top Rankings With the Search Engines
It's "promote, promote, promote" all the way. Cut up
your activities into small, easy to handle chunks.
- First comes content (no point if you haven't any, is
there? :-), optimizing your pages for the search
engines, checking your HTML code, etc.
- Next, submit to the engines. Sign up with link
populartiy programs if your site qualifies. Find a
selection here:
< http://fantomaster.com/fasmbres01.html#linkpop >
- Upgrade your site to an info hub by offering prime
outgoing links - such as a search engine portal. This
will help boost your site's ranking with the search
engines. Contrary to popular opinion, linkage counts
both ways, incoming and outgoing.
Check out this free distributed search engine portal:
< http://searchenginebase.com/ >
The signup page is here:
< http://searchenginebase.com/sbfreeportal0.html >
- Participate in discussion forums.
- Promote on Usenet via your sig file if you can
answer (or ask) questions in areas your are either
proficient or at least interested in.
- Check your rankings regularly.
- Also, your linkage.
- Generate lots of fresh, useful content. Keep your
blatant marketing activities on economy drive (pardon
the pun), be subtle about your promotion. Far too
little subtleness/subtlety around in these blaring,
excitement driven times! People will notice, will
favor: less dumb hysteria, more openness, honesty.
Admit to mistakes if you make them (as you're bound
to), but don't cringe, don't give the impression
of reacting self-assertive or self-depreciating for
the heck of it. (Everybody's tired of everybody's ego
but their own ...)
- Remember you are free to come and go as you please
on the net.
- Submit your new content.
- Possibly resubmit your older content, depending on
ranking and various other factors. (Introduce at least
some minor changes before you do.)
- Read, read, read - learn the trade from scratch.
- Test out stuff - your mileage may vary immensely
from the gurus' - every web site is different, or,
at least, should be.
- Link to lots of useful sites not directly competing
with yours.
- Request reciprocal links.
- Create yet more, fresh content.
- Submit it.
- Contribute to mailing lists.
- If you can, issue a newsletter of your own. Never
mind if you only have yourself, your wife and your
stepmother for subscribers - put it on site and submit
it to the engines. (They simply love that sort of
all-text stuff currently!)
- Check your logs daily.
- Learn how to recognize search engine spiders.
- Don't go for cloaking unless you really know what
you're doing. It's risky, but it *can* be highly
effective, if you play it right.
- Check ot all search engine generated hits to
determine: a) your ranking, b) what people are
actually searching for - you may be in for a surprise
or two on that score.
- Look at what your competitors are doing. Don't just
copy them - BETTER them!
- Create more domains and interlink them all.
About the Author
Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of
fantomaster.com Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH
(Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ > a company
specializing in webmasters software development,
industrial-strength cloaking and search engine
positioning services. You can contact him at
mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com