Re: Case study: Promotion of a web site

From: Walt Dibbern <dibbern_at_interaccess.com>
Date: Thu 02 Mar 2000 20:57:47 -0600

Boris Kontsevoi proposed the group look at his site as
a case study, it seems out of frustration with the lack
of success he is experiencing in his promotion efforts.
I'd like to offer these suggestions; hopefully they'll
generate further discussion which he will find helpful:

BORIS KONTSEVOI WROTE:
> Search Engines Positioning. We have about 25 doorway
> pages designed, optimized (by "common sense") and
> submitted to major Search Engines. The result is very
> interesting: a) Only AltaVista and AOL have indexed
> our site, not in first 50 positions of course; b) Other
> Search Engines seems don't care to index at all

If you do nothing else, do this: dump those doorway
pages. You've got at least eight of them listed in the
Open Directory Project, and they're going to hurt you
eventually. You're qualifying for a spam blacklisting,
and that could take A LONG time to reverse.

There's nothing wrong with real pages -with fully
developed content- submitted to the categories you've
tried to capture, but those little one paragraph
ditties don't cut it.

I'm speaking as an ODP editor, albeit not in your
business categories. I'd never pass on your submissions
the way they are presently, in fact, I'd delete them.
And please, remember that this is advice offered with a
view towards helping you, not a critique of your hard
work.

I know this doesn't provide immediate help but its
important: have you taken a realistic approach that
ackowledges the true number of competitors in your
market? Your business -web site development- is one of
the most hotly contested areas of the battle for search
engine placement, AND has tens of thousands of
competitors. Using a "paid" submittal service such as
you did is a weak strategy for even a company with few
competitors; in your branch of business it's an even
worse choice.

Get a search engine specialist to help you redesign
those pages for more optimization, rethink some of that
content, resubmit to the SE's, resubmit again, and be
patient. They're not saturated -as you claimed- just
harder to work with. You may as well look on this as a
never ending process.

Specifically:

-- I'd never open a page with a table such as you use
on your index page. Get some text above that table, and
make sure it describes your unique strengths. Don't
waste the effort to compete with millions of
competitors for over-worked phrases such as "web site
development", etc.

--dump those dozens of meta tags you're using , and
keep only the description and keywords. Reduce your
"keywords" tag by about 80%; its actually that much too
long.

HE ALSO SAID:
> it's necessary to know EXACT ranking algorithms
> used by different Search Engines, not advice,
> common sense, etc

No one exists who knows the algorithms for every
engine. And the few who would come close are employed
-are the programmers- of the SE's.

You hear so much about "advice, common sense, etc"
because its much more an art than a science. That's
partly due to the fact that these things change so
often, any absolute information such as you seek
wouldn't be worth much six months from now.

Good luck with your efforts at improving the popularity
and response level from your site. I hope you find
success.

Walt Dibbern
Dibbern & Dibbern
Site Doctors for Improving Your Business






Received on Thu Mar 02 2000 - 20:57:47 CST