have website, now what?

[sptfr43]

hello all. I need some advice, I have my website done ( sort of ) , have it hosted and I can get to it by typing in the name but it comes up to where I have to click on a " go directly to .." link. How do I get it to show up in the listings on say google or yahoo search? Thanks

 

[Darley]

Randy nice pens you got on your site but have to say your we site is incomplete, I'm trying to build my own web site and I'm only on the drafting stage at the moment, you miss the price of your pens who I think is important to show the customer, a cart,a shipping policy, a warranty ( if you want, give more confidence to potential customer , payment facility a must ( IMHO )plus other things I miss right now but I think some members who as they web site will shine in hope this help

 

[railrider1920]

Hi Randy,
When I clicked on you link in your signature, I was brought directly to the page. I didn't see a " go directly to .." link like you said.

I'm sure someone can give you a better explanation than I can, but basically you have to submit your page for review by the search engines. They will check out your page and make a note of it. Then when someone does a search for pens, the search engines find the pages that contain the relevant search words on their sites. Then those sites are the ones displayed as search results. I was once told that the more content activity that your main page has, the better position your page is on the search results.

If I remember correctly, if you use metta tags on your site, it helps too. Basically a meta tag are words on your site that people might use as search terms, like pen, pens, wooden pens, handmade pens and things like this. When they are imbedded into your site, the search engines see these metta tags and remember them. Then when I do a search for handmade wooden pens, the search engines remember that there are metta tags on your site that contain those exact terms and returns your page as one of the search results.

I hope like heck I'm atleast in the ballpark about this stuff. If I'm not, I hope that I get corrected. Hope this helps you out some. BTW, those are some awsome looking pens in your gallery.

 

[sptfr43]

thanks for the replies. I do know the site isn't finished yet, in fact the last time I worked on it was a couple years ago. Couldn't convince myself to put the time in if I was the only one to see it.Guess I had better take the time now though, all those pens are long gone and my quality has gotten much better. Rob do you know how I would submit the site for review?

 

[BDKS]

Looks like a good start. I have almost 6 months of time invested in my website. If you have any questions feel free to post or PM me. One minor problem I see on the gallery page is a few pens missing descriptions. I prefer the way you setup acrylic page by not overwhelming the visitor with a large table of pictures.

Google has a section for webmasters. Including a link to submit your website.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

 

[madwood]

Randy, first...awesome pens. Second, you need a complete description and pricing for each pen. You also need a way for your client to pay for their purchase. I would recommend using Paypal for this. They do charge a percentage per transaction, but they make up for that in convenience...both for you and the client. The client can use their credit or debit card without signing up for an account. You tie your Paypal account to your bank account, I recommend using a seperate account just for your business. This makes it alot easier to keep track of.

As to directing clients your way, using search engines is fairly easy. Again, it can be a bit pricey, but if you set it up correctly, you can minimize costs. most are based on a "pay per click" basis. You can also budget how much you are willing to spend per month to direct potential sales your way. Using key words and meta tags you will get listed on a search engine, once you've set up an account and budget. I would stay away from Google and go with MSN adwords or Yahoo. Google is the most costly, but is also the most used service. Yahoo also can supply site building software and tools, along with domain hosting for a reasonable monthly fee. I use Microsoft Office Live for my hosting, domain name. It's easy to build a site, although a little limited unless you know HTML. Overall, I liked Yahoo the best. You can do everything you need for a site through them, including the search engine. Very convenient if you have an organizational deficiency like i do.

Hope this helps, and good luck,

John

 

[sptfr43]

I guess I should have pointed out that I am totally web stupid. If it weren't for the favorites folder I would be in trouble. I see now why people pay someone else to do this stuff for them

 

[toolcrazy]

You have a nice start, but you do need some changes. First you need at least a couple pen photos above the fold. You need to make sure the potential customer gets and idea of what the site is all about. You need to remember most visitors will have a very short attention span, and if you don't catch their eye right off, you will loose them. Second, its a little blah, but that is the problem with free templates. The site needs to convey that your an artist trying to sell your art.

 

[wizical]

Hey there,

one thing I have learned about getting listings on Yahoo or Google, is that you have to pay for it. It is called Cost per Click(CPC). also called google adwords. do a search for it and it will come up. pretty much you are paying for advertising space on Google, everytime someone does a search for wooden pens. your website will be up at the front of the list. but this can cost a lot of money. So do your research and see what works for you. good luck

 

[fernhills]

Hi, you are a lot furthur then i am,i am just totally lost as to the next steps...I know the more places you put your sig.the more your site will show up in Google`s search engine.You type in my site in the box and a whole page comes up,with every thing you say on forums and whatnots,,so be nice.. Carl

 

[toolcrazy]

Originally posted by wizical

Hey there,

one thing I have learned about getting listings on Yahoo or Google, is that you have to pay for it. It is called Cost per Click(CPC). also called google adwords. do a search for it and it will come up. pretty much you are paying for advertising space on Google, everytime someone does a search for wooden pens. your website will be up at the front of the list. but this can cost a lot of money. So do your research and see what works for you. good luck

This isn't entirely true. Yes you can buy add space on yahoo and Google. But that isn't the only way to get listed. There is plenty of free ways that you can do to get listed. Just a couple is submit a site map, meta tags on your site. You can also submit your site to all the major search engines. I get plenty of traffic on my site and I don't advertise on Google or Yahoo. Yes, this can increase traffic on a new site, but as you said, this is at a cost, minimum of $30 bucks a month for minimal exposure. SEO (search engine optimization) is an art, it takes a bit of research and a bit of time to learn what works.

 

[WWAtty]

Hi Randy,

Lots of good advice so far. You can do a lot of your own SEO work. Make sure your site has plenty of good content - i.e., text-based info. Alter the content from time to time, and add material to freshen it up, as the search engines respond well to sites with dynamic content. Avoid excess animation - splash screens, javascript animation, etc. These devices can throw off the search engine spiders or bots. You want the bots to easily find, index, and follow links around your site. Too much animation make look "cute," but it irritates visitors. Make sure your robots.txt file enables spiders to index and follow every page on your site.

Metatags don't carry the weight with search engines that they did several years ago, but place some in your HTML just the same. The title tag is most important, not only for spiders, but also for humans (that is what is displayed on the top of the browser window). The description tag is only marginally useful (Googlebot ignores it entirely), but put in a short description anyway. Finally, the keyword tag is basically useless, as all the major search engine bots ignore them due to keyword spamming techniques used by too many webmasters back in the '90s.

The best way to get indexed and increase search engine rankings is to get other sites to link to yours. Partner with friends, suppliers, business associates, etc., and exchange links. Inbound links from relevant sites will provide one of the best ways to get indexed by the engines, and drive traffic to your site. Avoid placing links on link farm and scraper sites, as some search engines (particularly Google) may actually penalize sites with too many low-quality inbound links. Sometimes, others will discover your site and place a link to it. You can search the inbound links to a site here:
http://www.smartpagerank.com/pagerank-backlinks.php

Register your site with the major search engines, and also at the DMOZ project.
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
Getting indexed by the major engines takes time, from weeks to perhaps months. Be patient. Spend time now to make a clean-looking, functional site that will appeal to human visitors. The bots will come.

Download and install the Google Toolbar. This includes a feature that shows the PageRank (PR) of any site you visit. Use it to monitor your site's PR progression. Always check your site to make sure it looks and functions correctly in both IE and Firefox. The latter has about a 10% market share among browsers in the U.S., so it's important that your site will render well in it.

If you want to delve further, I have an article on my site with some SEO tips that may be helpful.
http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/webpromo.html

Finally, if you do decide to hire someone to do SEO work, be careful. There are lots of hucksters in that business.

Good luck with your site development!

Cheers.

 

[sptfr43]

Ok, now I am completely lost. Spiders ( I hate spiders ) tags, bots... I thought the hardest part would be making nice pens. I think I'll just pay a computer person to do all this stuff for me. Thanks for the help. now to take some tylenol

 

[WWAtty]

Sorry, didn't mean to throw a bunch of jargon at you. Spiders are simply the automated search mechanisms that search engines use to find websites. The spiders crawl through millions of webpages. The spider will access your site, examine the content and look for certain things. The spiders (also known as "bots" or "crawlers") report this information back to the search engine companies, so that the engines can "index" it into their databases. When a person uses a search engine to search for particular terms, the search engine will have (hopefully) associated your site with those terms in its index. Think of it as a very sophisticated version of a library's old card-catalog system.

Meta tags are simply commands inserted in the computer language (HTML) behind your webpage design. These tags are read by the spiders when they crawl through your site, and may or may not be indexed. You can easily view those tags on any site. In your browser, go to "View" then select "Source" (IE), and a new window will launch, showing the actual HTML code. For example, you can do it on this site. The title tag for this page is near the top and should appear as:
<title>penturners.org - have website, now what?</title>

You will also see the description, and keyword tags, along with the robots instructions.

You can easily edit your own webpage. Open it in a text editor, such as Notepad, and type away. Save the file (be sure to back up the un-edited original) and upload to your website's host.

Don't be daunted by this process - it's really not that bad. And it can be kind of fun. Before spending your $$$ on a service, post questions here. There are people who can help, as lots of us have websites.

If you want to learn more about DIY website design, I can recommend an excellent book that walks you through each step. It's by Maran, Teach Yourself Visually HTML. It's available through Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/2cvleb or you might find it at your library.

Cheers.

 

[jrc]

Hi Randy, It looks like it could help to add a little more to your website. I make a living form pens and last year I got over 80% of all orders from my website. Go to Google and type in Free Submit and submit your website once a month. But the trick to getting traffic to your website is having a good title, description and keywords and your website has none. There is no way a search engine can find you without those.

<title>the write attitude - Main Page</title>

<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="INDEX, FOLLOW">
<meta name="author" content="NetClime.com, SiteKreator.com">
<meta name="keywords" content="">
<meta name="description" content="">

Even if all is good it still takes almost a year for the traffic to increase.

 

[JWW]

It will take a while to get used to all of the terms used. I took time to poke around and learn the terms and somewhere you will even find a list of terms and their meaning which helped me.

I used to use http://searchenginepromotiontools.com/ and did quite well. They have different packages to offer and many tools that will look at your site and make recommendations for meta tags, keywords and such.

I haven't had a site in a long time and I don't know how they are now but they used to be very good. There are many many services like this out there. Once I used them it took a lot off of me as far as worrying about submitting my site to the engines.

 

[WWAtty]

But the trick to getting traffic to your website is having a good title, description and keywords and your website has none. There is no way a search engine can find you without those.

Not true. The search engines will find your site with or without the meta tags. Having relevant terms contained in those tags may enable the search engine to associate those terms with its listing for the site - at least in the case of the title tag. However, as I had mentioned, metatags - especially the description and keyword tags - are of diminished value now. A web designer should have those tags populated with some relevant terms, but it is a minor factor. However the "robots" tag (or a separate robots.txt file) will determine whether the search engine will index the site or follow the links.

It is far more important to have other sites linking to your site. That is the basis of Google's ranking of sites, and many of the other engines are now following similar paths.

Cheers.