) "LookSmart" is one of the most difficult search engines to get on to! LookSmart only allows selected HIGH Quality web sites on their DATABASE of web sites!

! (Do however realize and bare in mind, that since lately, it depends somewhat on the time of the day in-which you conduct your search, because since lately, AltaVista is rotating databases, and sometimes your site may not be visable at all!)

Rattling the web competition to gain a favorable web position can be a dauting task. Yet without that edge, your web site can remain as obscure as tree in the forrest. And similarly, as the song so well describes, "If a tree falls in the forrest, does any body hear?" ie. the tree can die, but who knows or even cares? So to, will your business, if you intend the world wide web (WWW) to bring you customers and you do not pay close attention to your web position.

The questions are always the same! How do i place myself in the top-10 ranking? How do i power house market my web site? How do i shake the web competition? How can i rattle the web competition? How do i make my site more visable or for that matter, even locatable by anyone besides my close friends and family, who know my web site URL (site name) address?

The key my friends, is in the wording. There placement and position, and knowing the intricacies of the search engine(s) to which you submit them (your carefully selected words) to. Also your wording as compared to the wording of your competitions web page wording! Jump start your web position using the following tips! Kick start your business with these key steps to ensuring your web site health! Put your web site on Viagra.

• )    The first kick start trick is to get your listing displayed to the appropriate people, not necessarily in the appropriate categories. Because the majority of people use search engines by searching for particular terms (rather than clicking through the categories like Yahoo), it's important to arrange keywords that will get your listing displayed to your potential customers when they search for subjects that interest them. Let's illustrate this concept with an example. Suppose you're selling lakefront vacation homes. Your natural tendency would be to use keywords such as "lake", "lakefront", "real estate", "homes", "vacation", etc. And those will work, as long as your prospect goes on the Web with the intention of looking for lakefront real estate. But this strategy will miss a lot of very well qualified prospects -- people who are in the market for your product but don't think about looking for it on the Web. What if instead of, or in addition to the "lakefront" and "real estate" keywords, you used words such as "fishing", "water skiing", "sailing", and "swimming" in your description? Do you see the difference? Yes, these keywords will put your listing in front of a lot of unqualified people, but it doesn't matter. What matters is, you'll catch those people who are interested in what you have but who would have never searched for .
• )    One of the DUMBEST things I see are those idiots who use the same Title, Description and Keywords for multiple listings. What is going through their tiny little heads? What benefit will they achieve by doing this? NOT ONE DAMN THING! These people should use different information for each listing. This way more people will find them in the search engines. Well you can't cure stupidity I guess... What if you just can't get your keywords down to 25? Or what if you want to appeal to several different audiences with different sets of keywords? Many search engines will not let you list the same site more than once or twice, particularly within the same category. So how do you get around this constraint? It's easy. For each listing, use a different URL. Have several different versions of your "home page", each with their own URL and "site name." You could use "index1.html", "index2.html" and so on. Packing each one of these with your powerful keywords. Some search engines limit your listing by your email address as well as your URL. Beware of this and get around it. Ask your provider what possible email addresses you have. This is known as aliases. Just ask your provider if they are assigning you an aliases. Let's look again at our lakefront property. We'll call it "Another Site at Hidden Shores." You could create a page titled "A Fishing Site at Hidden Shores", another one titled "Another Skiing Site at Hidden Shores", "Another Sailing Site at Hidden Shores" and so on. Each of these pages will have it's own unique URL and name, and if you're not too obvious about it, you can get a separate listing from most search engines (complete with different keywords) for each page. And if you're lucky you can use a separate e-mail address for each one of them. This can dramatically increase your exposure. (HINT, HINT, did you notice I titled each page starting with the letter A?). Now that you have all these sites (which is really the same one), it's time to head on over to Easy Submit! and get them listed. When using Easy Submit!, you can enter all the information you want, start submitting to the search engines and then return to the form page where you originally entered the site. Now you only have to change the URL and maybe a couple of keywords and possibly the title and description and you are now on your way all over again. Now submit this other URLs and return to do another. See how this all works? And you thought you only had one or two pages to submit...:) UPDATE!! I recently discovered another way to submit your same URL to multiple search engines. I really thought about not releasing this information, but.... Let's take this example: http://www.yourdomain.com/directory?1234 Now try this: http://www.yourdomain.com/directory?1234 I believe most search engines would not recognize that this is the same URL. I am currently testing this and so far it seems to work. Try it on your site. Type out your URL and add the question mark and some other data in your browser's location window and you will see that you will indeed go to your site without any difficulties. It actually works the same. I use 1234 so I can monitor how many times I have submitted the same URL to each search engine. You will notice that I am using a subdirectory here (/directory). The reason I am using a subdirectory is to help fool the search engines. Many pages these days are created dynamically. What I mean by this is that some sites give away free pages and use a technique similar to the above URL to produce a client's page. Most of these are MLM type sites. They produce different pages using the same URL using a different client ID#. The ID# is usually something like this "?6y543i". Get the idea?
• )   Here are the top ten requested search terms on Yahoo!: 1) sex 2) chat 3) xxx 4) playboy 5) netscape software 6) nude 7) porno 8) games 9) porn 10) weather You will notice the majority of these search words are sexual in nature and just goes to show you what people are looking for.
• )   Next on your punch list is getting better positioning than your opposition even when they have the same identical keywords. ---------------------------------------------------------------------> List your important keywords more than once on your site! Some of the major search engines will rank your Web site based on the relevancy of the keywords used in the search engine. For example, if your site sells Ray Ban sunglasses and the words "Ray Ban" are keywords listed on your page, your site will come up when a user searches for "Ray Ban". And the same for a competitive Web site with the same keywords. However, if you list Ray Ban not once but several times throughout your page, your site is more "relevant" to the search for the user and usually will get better positioning than the site who has it listed less times than you. Another keyword that I feel is the most important keyword is your business name. Many Web site owners often forget about this keyword. Think about this for a moment. Let's say you are new to the Internet and your provider allows you to search the Net using AltaVista. You heard that AT&T had a Web site, but you don't have a clue about the URL. While at AltaVista you could type the keyword "AT&T" and guess what you will find? That's right... AT&T's URL. Many of you have invested a great deal of money in your name and your contacts know your name so why not give them the opportunity to find you that way? Many Web professionals list their relevant keywords as many times as they possibly can throughout their site because of this very reason. You can also achieve this by listing your relevant keywords several times at the bottom of your web page, away from your main page, tucked away and out of sight. Maybe you've seen this for yourself on other Web sites. It may take a little longer for your page to load, but the extra attention your site receives because of the higher search engine positioning should outweigh the couple of seconds of extra downloading that this causes.
• )   Another overlooked but important Tip is your Web site "title". What should your web site title be to improve traffic? So many Web site owners name their Web site titles poorly. Why name our Web page title "Welcome To Advanced Business Systems"? Many search engines list by "title" and in many cases is the only thing a searcher ever sees. The name of your site has a tremendous effect on the number of visitors your site receives from search engines.
• )    Another overlooked jump start important thing to do is a spell check before submitting...
• )   Many Web sites on the Internet have dull, boring names for titles, but the title is THE most important factor which determines if people come to your site or not! Just because your site is listed first, the title alone will not convince someone to click on it does it? When someone does a search on a search engine, your title is often one of the ONLY things that determines if that person is going to visit your site. If you want high traffic coming from these search engines, then name your site(s) with enticing, stimulating titles. Create titles that get attention and "pull" them to your site. Here is a way you can do this. Most people can't wait to hear a secret or have something exposed to them. Check out the headlines of the many tabloids or newspapers for instance. You won't find one issue that doesn't mention someone's "secret" love affair or a scandal that has been "exposed". These are the titles that get attention. Get the word "secret" or one of these other keywords somehow into your Web site and watch your search engine traffic soar! Here are some other provoking words; these words call attention to "letting you in on something" or "letting something out of the bag". These are EXTREMELY powerful words. Insider information! Revealed! Unveiled! Unconcealed! People love to be let "in" on something, so offer some information to let them "in" on something, and you'll produce a lot of interest and visitors to your site from these search engines. Here are some examples that illustrate this idea:
• Little known deductions that will save you thousands (accountant)
• Pricing tricks furniture companies use to jack up your bill and how to avoid them (for a furniture dealer)
• What burglars fear most and hope you never find learn (for a security company) Secrets your teenager may be hiding and what to look out for (For concerned parents)
• How to win in court (even when you are flat out GUILTY!) (For a lawyer) Confidential information that your (teacher, accountant, doctor, mechanic, etc.) is hiding from you.
• Crafty tips pro's use to find the best real estate deals. (For a real estate agent)
• 5 revealing signs your spouse is cheating on you. (For a marriage counseling service)
• See how this works? Making your material something that appears to be a "secret", something that is of enormous interest to your target audience, will draw traffic like crazy. This is a very powerful concept. Get this image implemented in the title of your web page, and you'll have an almost cutting edge that most Web site owners will not at all see how to overcome.
• )    Another important consideration is load time of your site. I have often myself clicked on stop loading when a site took forever to be visable! Also the plain and simple size of each page can be a detureant for people clicking on your site ie. > 40K is a turnoff for many people with simple MODEM connections.
• )   One more thing that will help your listing come out ahead of your competition (even if you have the same exact keywords) is by beginning the "title" of your site with an "A" or a symbol or number. Some search engines will alphabetize (by web page title) "ties" on keyword listings. So a Web site titled "Amazing Beauty Tips" will have a better listing position than a Web site titled "Wendy's Cosmetic's Tips" when the same keywords are on both pages. Try to figure out a way to name your site starting with a number or "A" and that will give you a difficult to overcome (and hard to detect for the average Web site owner) competitive edge. Our research has also determined that not all search engines take the same approach regarding alphabetizing. Many don't consider single characters part of a title or a keyword. Sites like AltaVista for instance will not search on "Vitamin A" or "Computer". So therefore just because your site is titled "A Wonderful Site" and you have the exact keywords as "Victors Wonderful Site" doesn't mean your site will be listed first. In fact, we have concluded that many search engine will list you towards the bottom where the "W's" are and "Victors Web Page" would be listed first. To get around this try naming your site something like this "An A1 Wonderful Site". Get the idea? Also, sites such as Scrub The Web take a whole new approach to positioning. It doesn't matter what you name your Web page. The main thing that matters at Scrub The Web is keywords, descriptions and keyword phrasing. Many of you use keywords, but most fail to phrase those keywords. For Example. Let's say you use these keywords: antique, automobiles, cars, exotic This may look perfectly well by most of you, but it is entirely wrong. Nowadays people are using the power of these search engines and are searching by phrase. Let's say someone searches for these keywords: antique automobiles If the searcher is searching on "all" the words, the above site using "antique, automobiles, cars, exotic" as keywords, would be listed because it does contain "all" the words. But what if the searcher were to search by phrase? You would not be listed in the search results. How do you get around this? It's really quite simple. Think about how you wish a searcher to find you. Think about how they will find you. Then incorporate these keywords and keyword phrases in your descriptions and keywords. This is what I would do for keywords: antique automobiles exotic cars Did you notice I didn't use commas (,)? Keyword phrases will not work with commas unless of course the searcher uses them. I know you see sites say separate your keywords by a comma. DON'T do it! Now using the above keywords I will have a better chance of being seen whether a searcher uses "all" the words, "any" of the words or even if they search by "phrase" (which is becoming much more popular these days). Don't stop with your keywords. Use this same technique when putting together your description too.

• )   Proven techniques for selecting the most effective keywords and how to arrange them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Generally, the more specific you can be, the better. On the other hand, you don't want to use keywords that are too unique, because no one will ever think to look for them. Use keywords that someone who has never heard of you, but who would be interested in what you offer, is likely to search for. Many search engines limit your description to around 25 words. So your description needs to be crammed with suitable keywords. The more keywords, and the more strictly they describe your Web site, the more highly targeted traffic you're going to harvest. Your keywords are crucial, and in most cases you only get one chance with each search engine. Here's a very effective technique that uses brainstorming, essence and competitive research to develop a powerful list of keywords. Make a list of at least 50 words that describe your Web page. Just put down the first things that come to mind, until you have 50. Don't spend a lot of time fussing about how pertinent they are. Just do a little brainstorming and keep writing until you have 50. Now, remove all the words that appear in the name of your site. (Your listing will include these anyway). Take the top 20 remaining keywords and prioritize them, with the most important first. Now, get on-line and to a major Internet search engine. MetaCrawler (http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu/), which is a multi search engine, is a good place to start. I would next try then Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), Open Text (http://www.opentext.com/), HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/) and WebCrawler (http://webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/WebQuery.html) another multi-search engine. Try searching for each of the 20 words and keep track of how many listings you get for each one. Look at the listings you get back for each search, perhaps follow a few links, and see how the sites compare to your Web site. This will give you a good idea of what your competitors are doing, and how they're listing their Web sites. While there take a look at the source. See what their "META" (more on this later) tag consists of. See what keywords they are using here if any. Next, start searching for combinations of keywords and keyword phrases. Try combining the first two on your list. Try other combinations based on the numbers you got back for each individual word. Try each of your first few words combined with other words on your list. You'll probably discover some combinations that will give you more of an "exclusive" listing combinations that only return a few (or no) other listings. If you find certain combinations that (1) would likely be searched for by your prospects and (2) don't return very many other listings -- then make note of these. These we will call "commanding combinations". You may want to change the priority of your keywords based on what you find. So go ahead and re-prioritize your 20 top keywords. Now, you'll need to create several versions of your description. First, try and create a description using all 20 keywords. If you discovered any "commanding combinations" make sure that those words occur NEXT to each other in the description. Now, limit your description to 40 words total, using as many of your keywords as possible. Next, create a description that's limited to 25 words. Use as many of your highest priority keywords and phrases as possible. Finally, develop a 10-word description using your highest priority keywords. You now have several versions of your site description. It's a good idea to type them into a text file and have it available when going on-line to submit your listings. Then you can just cut and paste text into each Internet search engine's submission form. You'll want to do the same with the name of your site and your URL. The reason you've developed several versions of your description is that different directories have different limits on the length of descriptions. Some permit unlimited descriptions, and others limit to just 15-25 words. Also, there are other places and methods on the Internet for you to promote your Web site, so some of your descriptions can be used in other ways, such as for classified advertising. You can also use one of the descriptions you've developed on the top of your home page. Remember that the Internet search engines are out there looking for your page and you need a way to let them know how to describe it.
• )   The WEB PIPELINE: How to create a powerful "pipeline" that pumps traffic to your site --------------------------------------------------------------------- People don't go on the Web to be sold to, they go for information. They don't want military style bombardment of sales gimics! They don't want to be Spamed! Many surfers are hesitant to click on a site that they feel is just one big commercial. However, people are very willing to look at sites that they feel match their interests. So, the trick is to create a lot of highly informative, non-promotional "mini-sites" that will appeal to your target market. You want to employ and build non military type sites and use non military marketing techniques. They don't have to be extensive -- a page or two will usually do. And on each page, you can have a link (preferably a "banner") to your commercial pages. Then submit them with Easy Submit! You can submit a separate listing for each "mini-site" you create. And because these are non-promotional content sites, you have more options available to you in the categories that you're able to list under. You can use these "mini-sites" and their associated search engine listings to appeal to several different target markets, and then "pipeline" all these visitors to your main promotional site. The possibilities are endless and very powerful.
• )   How to use the META tag to help secure best positioning in AltaVista and other crawler based search engines. --------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the best and most popular search engines, AltaVista (now powering Yahoo), depends on a software program to search through web pages and generate listings. AltaVista will find your pages and index them on its own -- you don't get the opportunity to tell it about your site. AltaVista indexes all the words in your document, and uses the first few words as a description of the page. However, you can use an HTML tag, called the META tag, to specify how you want your page described and indexed. This tag is used when you create your web pages. Here's how it works. The META tags needs to be included in the HEAD section of your page, between the and tags. On your page, include the following two META tag statements. Example: The first statement will specify the description that AltaVista uses for your listing. The second statement will enable you to add keywords (which may not otherwise be present on the page) to the index. This is also a good opportunity to insert keyword combinations. We have also found that keywords work better without commas although I have no concrete evidence of this as of yet. May we suggest you create two (index.html & index1.html) to test this out on your own. Remember to keep close tabs on your hit results and let us know what you have found to be true. BIG TIP: If you have a large Web page which has all your keywords and keyword phrases within the content of your Web page, I would NOT include the META tag keywords="". Why? Because these crawlers do one of two things. They either index your entire Web page or they simply use the keyword META tag for the keywords. In many cases your text within your Web page has all the keywords necessary to make it work. I would however use the META tag description="". This way you can control the description on the search engine. **CAUTION** Some Search Engines who index using the META tag will not use the keywords in your META reference if you duplicate them several times. I would recommend you not duplicate these keywords more than 5 times. I might also mention that some search engines also limit your description to 25 words or less so think before you create your META tags. Also be careful of search engines that require you to put "site.idx" in your root directory. One search engine that requires this is Aliweb. Aliweb is not widely used so I would forget about this one. I have tested Aliweb's "site.idx" and found it to interfere with search engines such as AltaVista, HotBot and InfoSeek. I'm not sure why, but I can tell you that in one directory I had over 1,500 pages that were index by AltaVista and after installing "site.idx" I lost about 75% of the listings within one month. I completed this "site.idx" exactly as outlined by Aliweb and it did indeed get the sites listed there, but removed most of the site from the other more powerful and used search engines. ANOTHER WARNING: Make sure you put these META tags BEFORE any Java script. Many of you are including these tags after Java script which really confuses these crawlers. You don't want them to index you on your Java script code do you?
• )   Five things you should NOT AT ALL do --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) DON'T submit a listing before your page is up - your listing will most positively be rejected, and it will take you that much longer to get listed. I see people doing this all the time! Don't get ahead of yourself. Take your time and do it right! 2) DON'T try to list in an inappropriate category - this will also cause your listing to be rejected. The categories are not that important, because most people don't use them to find listings. So don't jeopardize your chances of getting a listing by trying to get it in an inappropriate category. 3) DON'T have a confusing site name - your site name should briefly describe your site and what people will find there. If it's cryptic no one will bother clicking on it. 4) DON'T use clever, made-up words. No one will know to search for them. 5) DON'T use the words "site", "Web", "Internet", "Web site" or "Home page" in your listing. These words apply to ALL sites and are a waste of the limited space you have to describe the unique aspects of your site. Bonus Tip! 6) DON'T use single characters for keywords. Single characters such as "B" or the number "1" most likely will be rejected and have no relevancy anyway. Let's take a site which sells vitamins for instance. They want to tell the world what vitamins they have available nd I don't blame them, but using keywords like "Vitamin B" will be relevant to all sites having the word "Vitamin" in them. Try using more specific keywords like "Vitamin B12".
• )    Don't count on WEB positioning software to help you much! In the end, you must decide by using your smarts and business savy to use the effective keywords to both promote your site and products / services and at the same time beat out the competition. The artificial intelligence associated with these WEB positioning softwares is far from being truely intelligent. Also; Web rules, search and positioning algorithms, and so on, constantly change at a rate faster than these programs are updated! You should, or you should get, a consultant who can constantly upgrade your web position. If you have a large web-sit and many products to market, this can become a full time job. However; as in any large company, it is part of the cost of being competitive and staying in the race! Yes the WEB is free! Gaining and maintaining your position in it can also be, but you had better get used to considering your time and the pay for the time you spend at it, ---- as $0.00/hr. The returns for your efforts and time however; may afford to pay you, a healthy retirement in the end!
• )    Many people believe that having fancy web pages with scroll bars, and or pictures, flashing neon lites, banners and the like ... will get them the results they seek and want! In reality however, most people, who search the Internet for answers, solutions, products, results, ... etc. DETEST and are repulsed by all that un-neccessary extra garbage, if not for the garbage itself, then for the extra time they must spend waiting for your junk to load! Even Microsoft and others, have in Early 1999, re-designed their web sites (due to public outcry and protest). Just as people have cried out against road-side advertising banners and billboards across North America, (which as of now, is very illegal in many States and Counties) so to, is it in bad taste to do on the Internet! If you want to turn people to turn away from your site before the information is even visable on their computer screen, then fill your web site with advertising banners and fancy .JPG pictures that take a lifetime to download from your ISP to your potential customer.