QUESTION.
We find ourselves starting a home-based business through the Internet. We have developed our own website which offers custom-designed widgets as well as stock widgets. Unfortunately we are having problems getting recognized by the Search Engines. We get conflicting advice as to how long it takes as well as what approach is best to become recognized. Some say "weeks" -- some say "years." Since marketing on the Web is new to us, we need immediate help in the form of sound advice from someone who has "been there, done that." To complicate our situation, we find ourselves on a shoestring budget which limits our ability to go and hire "Experts." I will admit to overestimating our ability to promote ourselves quickly on the Web. Can you help us? We truly hope so! Hope to hear from you soon.
ANSWER.
Books can be written on the subject you are asking me to send you an email about. I just took a look at your site and it looks pretty nice. Take a look at the following list of books. See BOOKS ON SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO).
I recommend you get three of the five books and read them and study them. Then put a list of questions you have and send them to me. I will answer your questions. However, in a nutshell, you need to figure out who your competitors are on the Web. Find at least 10 to 15 top Web sites that sell what you sell. Then examine the source code to the home pages to see what Meta-Name keywords are listed. Collect those keywords on a sheet of paper for all 15 top Web sites. Then type the keywords into Google and check the Meta-Name keywords used by the top 20 listed sites for each search. After a bit you will find patterns and typically used keywords people use to search your type of business. Those are the words you have to use to market your site on the Web.
You should write articles that people will enjoy reading, but that have those keywords embedded in the articles. Post those article on free article submission sites. See the list of sites in the bottom left quadrant of my homepage (http://www.jlippin.com/). You will want to sign the articles and and include the URL to your site's home page. Links from sites external to your site give your site more credibility and thus higher rankings with the search engines. Also, you should create FOUR different free blogs that regularly link to your site. See the way I have done it with my site at www.jlippin.com.
I signed up for a free Blogger site and a free WordPress site. Each blog entry is a simple article of sorts, but don't take as long writing the blog entries as you would an article. If you do an entry a day in each of your blogs (that's four blog entries a day) for a couple of months, then your Web site should be ranked high in the search engines. Make sure each entry has a link back to your site and each entry relates to some of the keywords that are critical to your site. Study my site (http://www.jlippin.com/) and see how it interrelates to my Amazon profile and two blogs. Then type my name (Jeff Lippincott) into Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, and Webcrawler. Create an Amazon profile and review a couple of books. Create a few lists and guides at Amazon under the account. You should name your profile the name of our Web site (it's URL). Having a meaningful profile at Amazon link to your site goes a long way in giving your site credibility.
Take a look at the following site: http://www.businessinfoguide.com/. It was created by Stephanie Chandler. See her Amazon profile at AMAZON. See how she interrelates her Guide site with her profile page. You can do the same, but name the profile the same as your Web site. I've given you a few things to think about. Good luck! Regards, -Jeff
Jeff Lippincott
SCORE.org Counselor
Princeton, NJ
scoreprinceton @ aol.com
www.scoreprinceton.org
http://www.jlippin.com/
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