Re: Are keywords worth it?

From: Jim Stiles <jwstiles_at_winbatch.com>
Date: Fri 01 Sep 2000 10:29:15 -0700

RICK EICHER II <sales_at_gardendalepecan.com> WROTE:
>I have been reading this for a week or so and must say
>it is great. My question is , Has any one had and luck
>with internet keywords? Is this worth the time and
>money in doing?

Our experience with keywords includes both free and
paid keywords. In order of increasing out of pocket
cost:

1. Free keywords include the words on your top level
pages, and meta tag words. Also free are the key
indexing words used on Yahoo and other sites. DO NOT
FORGET FREE KEYWORDS! Find the words people use to find
you when they search from portals. This information is
in your log files. You can use a spreadsheet to find
them, or web analysis software like WebTrends. Then,
find your competitors' pages and put their keywords
into your pages, meta tags and in your content. Most
people will find you from AOL, Yahoo and a couple of
other sites that will vary. If you have a flat site
organization with your content not more than 4 pages
deep, and not buried away in a database, people will
find you without your having to pay anyone.

2. Real Names site registration puts you at the top of
many portal search results pages. The cost for the
first 1,000 visits to your site is $100.

3. GoTo offers keywords on a bidding scheme. A few
cents per keyword will get hits. I use log file
monitoring to follow this. The URL I use for GoTo
points to one of about 20 site entry pages, identical
except for their file name. This unique url allows me
to track the results. I can use log analysis software
to see if my paid keywords are driving the visits, or
folks are finding me through keywords that I have not
subscribed to.

4. We have spent thousands of dollars per month on
keyword selections at AltaVista and other portals. We
did not find that this increased traffic to our site
over simple site optimization (number 1, above).

Hope this experience will save you some $$$ and even
increase traffic.





Received on Fri Sep 01 2000 - 12:29:15 CDT