“How is this different from gateways or doorway pages?”
Tons of people use gateway or doorway pages. In general, these low-value pages fail to deliver good content, and do not address the best interests of the SEs or prospective visitors. Worse still, such sites are in danger of being banned by the SEs. The engines take a dim view of any Web page that has no INpointing links, even from its own domain (a tell-tale sign of a doorway page). As a result, people who use such pages are constantly in jeopardy of losing their businesses overnight.
Your Theme-Based Content Site, on the other hand, creates real content, easily accessible from your home page or TIER 2 pages. You’re creating value, not simply spider bait! You’re addressing the needs of the visitor and of the SEs. Those are huge differences.
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C
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M is the only long-term solution for small business people who want to build long-term profits online. Instead of trying to outguess or outplay the Search Engines, create a site that stands out as a winner when the spiders come to call.
Make Your Links WORK! provides an excellent “big picture” perspective regarding Search Engine Optimization, IN-pointing links and other traffic-building strategies. Download your free copy of this must-have resource here…
http://buildit.sitesell.com/MYLW.pdf
Another question?...“What do the Search Engines look for?” Answer…
So glad you asked! DAY 7 and Make Your Links WORK! examine this question more closely but for now, here’s a quick answer…
Search Engines want to satisfy a visitor’s need by delivering the best possible results for his/her search query. And why does a Search Engine care so much about this? The Search Engines must satisfy its clients.
To determine who the SEs’ true clients are, just follow the money. Advertisers, not surfers, pay the SEs. Therefore, advertisers are the true clients!So the #1 goal of a Search Engine is to provide lots of exposure to their advertisers’ ads. If search results are relevant and of good quality, satisfied surfers will return to search another day, generating more ad impressions. If they are not, the surfer will leave to search somewhere else. If this happens enough times… well, you see where this is going. Ad revenues fall, advertisers go elsewhere, and the SE slowly dies or fades away.
Bottom line?The SEs’ primary mandate is to deliver relevant and quality search results to surfers. It’s WIN-WIN-WIN all around…
The surfer wins by finding what she needs. The advertisers win by getting lots of exposure to prospective new clients. And, the Search Engines win when they generate the revenue they need to survive and remain competitive. And how does a Search Engine recognize relevance and quality?
Except for the top executive and a few select professionals at each individual SE, nobody knows the exact algorithms used to evaluate page relevance. However, we do know for certain that on-page and off-page criteria form the backbone of any SE’s ranking algorithms.
Much of what we’ve been covering so far in this course has to do with on-page criteria. Now for a brief note about off-page criteria…Obviously, a Search Engine will always have to examine the elements of any Web page to determine its context. A page about porcupines, for example, would have the word “porcupine” in the TITLE and heading tags, in the META keywords, and sprinkled throughout the page text. The word “zebra”, on the other hand, would be conspicuously absent from such a page.
And what about off-page criteria?As Search Engines become more sophisticated, they track more external factors to determine a page’s relevancy. For example, if a high-value, topicrelated site links to your site, the Search Engine considers your site more credible by association. If a dozen sites do the same, your site appears even more so.
I’ll talk about link strategies in much greater detail in the next chapter. For now, recognize that credible links are an important measure of human behavior. Any Tom, Dick, or Jane can use software to create a perfectly optimized page about porcupines, for example. But only a high-quality, relevant document written by a porcupine expert will garner IN-pointing links from credible porcupine authorities.
It is this combination of off-page criteria that reflect human behavior and on-page criteria (as outlined earlier) that most SEs use to determine relevance.
I was just about to call it a day, but let’s go with one more question…“Just how important is design?”
Hmm. This changes the direction of our discussion a bit but it’s a good question all the same!
Design is not as important as most folks think. Words, not graphics or colors or font styles do the PREselling.
Start with a clean and welcoming Look & Feel. Add a simple but professionallooking logo. Make your site easy to navigate. Then get out of your own way and let your words do the talking.
(The role of design in PREselling is well covered in Make Your Content PREsell!.)
Geez, I’ve really got to leave. My wife is conceiving a baby tonight, and I wanted to be there. (Actually I stole that from a guy who got off a speeding ticket with that line!)
I’ll take another question.“Can I follow the C
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Mapproach on a free Web hosting service?”Absolutely. But remember that success is much more than just putting up a site. Don’t be caught by the “cheap-quick-easy” advertising lure…
http://www.sitesell.com/index-advertise.html
Free sites have two huge strikes against them. They’re treated with disdain by both the visitor and the engines.
Let’s talk about humans first. When I notice that a site’s URL is at a free hosting service, I don’t bother clicking to visit. If I have a special reason, I might go -- but I arrive at a free site with doubts. Most folks harbor the same kind of bias.
And what about the engines? Free sites don’t get treated with much respect by the Search Engine spiders, and below zero respect by the directories like Yahoo!.
Here’s what Danny Sullivan, the most well-known Search Engine guru on the Net, once said about free hosts…
Even on the Net, there's no such thing as truly free. Think about it... a company has to make money to survive. One way or another, hidden or not, the service costs you. But the low credibility of free sites costs you way, way too much… your time.
“...get your own site, under your own domain, rather than doing it within Tripod.com or any place offering "free" home pages. Sites offering free home pages are often looked upon with suspicion by search engines, because search engine spammers also make use of them. It's like sharing a house with bad roommates. Move out, get your own house, and you'll probably do better with search engines.”
If engines don’t spider you… or if customers don’t respect the site… or if advertising lures your customers away and hurts the sales-effectiveness of your site… you’re wasting your time. And that’s way more valuable than less than $25 per month to host your own site. You must put a value on your time if you want to succeed. All successful people will tell you that time is their most precious commodity.
A non-free site with your own domain is a prerequisite to building credibility with your readers and with the Search Engines. So find a good Web hosting service and put up a real site. For the $25 or so per month, it’s worth it.
Site Build It! builds a site that is a powerful traffic-builder and customerconverter. No other system provides such success whether you use SiteBuilder or the HTML Editor Compatibility module…
http://results.sitesell.com/
What you are learning in this course is a flexible strategy that anyone can use for any niche. Take your service business site with your particular niche. Bend it and twist it. Add your own ideas just like these successful Webmasters have done…
http://case-studies.sitesell.com/Here’s the bottom line. Every single success story has focused on a niche that the Webmaster knows and loves… finance, insurance, children, etc. That’s the fastest road for you as a service seller, too.
And while you are on this road...If I can have just a small piece of your attention, I’d be most delighted. Our WIN-WIN 5 Pillar Affiliate Program treats affiliates well financially, and provides them with outstanding tools, support, and education. I’d love to have you as a partner-in-sales. To register, please go to…
http://affiliates.sitesell.com/Before proceeding to DAY 7, please complete your DAY 6 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal...
Ongoing Goal... Create one Keyword-Focused Content Page per day. Start with the TIER 2 pages. Then keep adding TIER 3 pages, 1 per day. with the TIER 2 pages. Then keep adding TIER 3 pages, 1 per day. 70 maximum. Then start a new Theme-Based Content Site.
If your time is limited, reduce the goal to a page every 2 or 3 days. Even then, you’ll have a traffic-building, income-earning site in three months. Consistency and discipline, not speed, are the keys. It’s OK to be the tortoise…
http://tortoise.sitesell.com/… as long as you stay the course.
What’s next? More visitors, more traffic… the lifeblood of your business…