Ask Mr. D

By Author: Bill Daugherty
Total Articles: 17
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Dear Mr. D

I have heard that to make it on the Internet,
a business must have a high ranking on the
search engines. I have submitted my
site to several of the top ones, but I never
get a high ranking. In fact I don't even think
I get ranked at all on most of them.

What can I do?

Signed,

frustrated

_________________

Dear Frustrated,

I know how frustrating it can be trying to get a
decent ranking with any of the major engines.

You submit your site, then wait weeks for the
search engine "gods" to render their decision.
More likely than not, their decision is to either
not list your site at all or to give it a ranking so
low that a surfer needs deep diving equipment
to find you. It's enough to sent you running for
a giant size bottle of Prozac.

Your first reaction will probably be to throw your
hands up and say the heck with those search
engines, who needs them?

Don't make this mistake. We all need our sites
listed on search engines. More visitors ...
... can be
gained through search engines than all other
marketing venues put together. Nobody can
ignore this vast source of potential customers.

So what can a poor beleaguered Webmaster do?

Most of us turn to the search engine gurus at
this point. We follow their advice on how to make
our web sites search engine ready. We insert
META tags into our site code. We struggle to
add just the right description and keywords so
the major engines will find us worthy of a high
listing. When all the i's have been dotted and
all the t's crossed, we submit again and wait.

Five or six weeks later we discover that once
again, the "big boys" have found our site lacking
in some way or another. It's back to the drawing
board. We read somewhere - to get approved
for a decent listing we need to build some
"gateway pages." This only takes a few days to
a few weeks to figure out and accomplish, but then,
at last it's done and we submit once again.

And once again, five or six weeks later, we
find that we still can't be found on any of the
major engines we have submitted and resubmitted
to and we feel totally defeated. Now what?

You have three options at that point.

Number one - You can keep on trying. Who knows,
maybe eventually you will get it right. Stranger
things have been known to happen.

Number two - You can hire a search engine
specialist. They do exist and I have heard
that some of them are very, very good. These
high priest of the search engine world can get
you a nice high ranking and keep you there.
I have also heard that their fees are very, very
high. Of course, it may be worth the money.

Number three - You can turn to the pay-per-click
type of search engine.

The frustration of trying to get a decent ranking
on the traditional engines has given rise to a
new breed called the pay-per-click. It only takes
a few minutes to get listed on these guys. You
open an account, make a deposit of from $10
to $25.00 ($50.00 is now the required amount on
GoTo.com) and then you list your keywords.

Your ranking under each keyword is determined
by how much you are willing to bid on each
listing (bids can be as low as 1 cent on most
of these sites, 5 cents on GoTo.com).

The great part is you only pay for results. Plus,
all of the pay-per-clicks I have seen, have a
members area where you can log in and check
on the amount of traffic each keyword is delivering
to your site. If any of your keywords are not
producing, just change it to what you think will
be a better choice.

As you can see the pay-per-clicks do cost a
little money, but it is money spent on results,
not on speculation. Here are the URLs of a
few you should check out if you are thinking
about exploring this avenue.

http://www.GoTo.com
http://PowerSearchExpress.com
http://www.SearchFeed.com
http://SearchHound.com

Regardless of what you decide to do about your
quest for a high listing on search engines and to
rid your life of those search engine blues, don't
ignore them. They are too important to keep out
of your marketing mix. If your decision is to keep
on banging your head against the "big boys," God
love you, I admire tenacity. I just don't have the
time for it. But, let me know how you do.
About the Author Bill Daugherty. Do you have an advertising or marketing
question you'd like to see published in this
column? Send it to mailto:MrD@epm.zzn.com
Mr. D and his staff review all questions but,
we can't guarantee yours will be published
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