Now that we’ve reviewed the way to make your site search engine friendly, this week I’m going to talk about page optimization and registration, the first two steps of a positioning campaign. Doorway ads (gateway, entry or splash pages) are the third step, to be described in detail next week.
1. Page Optimization
Page optimization is the process of evaluating a web site’s individual pages. I call this process the web site audit. You may want to call on your interactive agency, PR firm, ISP, host, or web designer to help you with this process as it requires expertise. Or you may be qualified to do it yourself.
Start by reviewing the HTML program language within your existing web site page or pages. Next, make a commitment to optimize them by making each page search engine friendly for one key phrase. These changes will give your pages the best potential for getting registered in the engines (see last week’s article).
All labor should be reported and described in weekly and/or monthly reports. The web site audit gives you a benchmark against which to measure your professional registration campaign.
2. Registration
Among the many tasks and techniques required for registration, the most important involve the M word maintenance. Make a commitment to register or re-register your page or pages each month. Keep a continuous log from which to compile monthly registration reports and re-submittal reports. As mentioned last week, if you stop your monthly maintenance, you risk losing all your past workmanship.
The reports can be simple logs with dates, URLs, and actions. Here’s an example of a re-submittal report entry:
April 19, 2000
URL: http://www.mydomain.com/keyword Not Found.
Re-Submitted: AOL, Alta Vista, HotBot,… and so on.
Found: Netscape, Google, Yahoo,… and so on.
Next Report Scheduled: May 18, 2000
I have always advocated manual registration, and there are several techniques you must follow when submitting by hand.
- Follow all instructions per each engine very precisely.
- Use the exact number of words, symbols, commas, spaces, etc., the engine allows.
- Hand-submit to each engine or directory separately, observing relevant guidelines.
- Verify that the engine accepted your submission.
- Go back the following month to re-verify that you are found in the engine database.
- If not found, start over, again verifying that the engine accepted your submission.
- Do not submit multiple pages on the same day.
- Limit your submissions to key pages only.
- Submit only to the engines and directories that count.
The registration process described above is a professional service. All labor should be reported and described in weekly and/or monthly reports. A good registration plan provides the benchmark or starting point for a professional positioning campaign.
Next week I will cover proper timing intervals for submissions and understanding how the various engines accept URL submissions as I lay out what’s required when working with doorway ads. After outlining the proper procedures to follow, I will also provide you with examples of HTML code tags.
Email me at [email protected] if you have a specific question about code tags or a case study to review in this column. Your story or question could help other readers, and I welcome your input.
