A Webmaster's life isn't easy. Everyday seems to bring a new
challenge, a new problem to solve or some struggle that makes
you want to pull your hair out. But, nothing can be as
frustrating as trying to get a decent ranking on one of the
major search engines. Those search engine blues can be hard to
shake.
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 is the editor of the Web marketing ezine,
"E-Power Marketing." You can subscribe at:
http://www.freeadsgalore.com Visit Bill's latest project at:
http://www.instantez.com Contact Bill at: mailto:epower@www.com
