Optimizing Your website for Different Search Engines: Using Robots.txt File
If you think that you are ranking well on one search engine for some keyword or phrase and by default will rank well on other search engines too, then you are highly mistaken. All search engines have their own different methods, ways and algorithms to rank the sites. Now you want to optimize your site for different search engines, how do you do that? It is not so simple as just creating very similar pages with slight differences here and there. If you do this, Google's spiders will consider it as spamming and may ban your site forever or give you very low rankings. So what's the solution? How do you optimize your pages in order to satisfy and impress different search engines? Well, the answer is Robots.txt file.
It is a text file created by using a simple text editor like Notepad or Wordpad so that your site does not get banned or punished by the search engines for designing different pages for different search engines. This file stays in the root directory and in order to stop some search engines to not view or index certain web pages of your site that don't stay in your root directory, you need to point towards the right directory and then list the file as normal.
The code to insert in the file is:
User-Agent:(Spider Name)
Disallow: (File Name)
The words before the colon never change and are mandatory, but the words after the colon will change according to the file and search engine that you want to ignore or avoid. User-Agent defines the name of the search engine that you want to disallow visiting the files that are mentioned in Disallow category. In case you want to list more than one disallow files, they can be listed one under the other. For example, if you wish to disallow Inktomi to view or spider two pages optimized for Yahoo and three pages optimized for Google, you can do so by placing these files one under the other.
Robots.txt files can be your saviour, if you are optimizing your web pages for more than one search engine, but you need to be very careful while listing the names of those files as a small error on your part can turn into a blunder. So, go ahead and optimize your pages for different search engines without the fear of getting banned or punished for spamming by simply creating robots.txt files.
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Some Less Tried Web Marketing Techniques
No doubt ranking in the first 10 or 20 slot on major search engines is a dream come true for webmasters. But is it the 'be all and end all' of web marketing. I say no. After all, why do we want higher rankings? Because we think higher rankings means more targeted traffic and better business prospects for us. Well, dear readers, that is not the whole truth. Only ranking higher in the search engines doesn't guarantee a higher profit or targeted traffic always. You may fetch more traffic and people for some time initially, but in the longer run, you will find your site vanish from the search engines as fast as it arrived. Why? Because probably your site didn't have the power or conviction to hold the attention and getting links from other sites within its niche.
So just concentrating on higher rankings is not enough. It is posible to get your marketing message listed in Google's top ten results for your targeted keywords, and still get good traffic for your site. What you do is advertise on a site that gets spidered by the search engines. This leads to higher rankings for your targeted keywords, others read your advertisement and click on the actual website. This is something that not many people have tried. Try it because it works well.
Similarly, there's another not much explored and tried out way of increasing traffic to your site. If you have heard of a service called Google Answers, then you must be aware that users submit specific questions to Google Answers with the specific amount they are ready to pay for each answer. Google loves to list questions and answers from Google Answers within their top 10 search results. So all you need to do is post a comment to a query listing your company and even the URL in the comment. That's it.You will find your marketing message listed in a very high position for that comment. So all you did was add some information about your site and got ranked. No hassles, no payments, all done. So from now on keep a watchful eye on the queries to post comments to, in a way, referring people back to your site.
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Opening up an e-commerce business is no longer the exclusive right of some now. With more and more information getting accessible to people, thanks to the internet revolution, every business minded person can not only think of, but actually open up his/her e-commerce business. But there are many if and buts involved in the whole thing. And if you are new to the e-commerce business, avoid the following things to get the most out of your online business:
Do Proper Research
Never start anything that you have not researched on adequately. Your target market and the product you aim to sell must not be already saturated to a point in the market. You must identify your niche market very carefully after extensive research.
Be Realistic
It's good to dreams and have big expectations but remain firmly grounded on earth. Don't expect to make a gold mine in first go only. Be practical and keep working on your marketing strategies to get agood result. No doubt you can make money on the net, that's why e-commerce is booming, but there is no guarantee or surety too. So dream about good profits, but don't day dream.
There are no free lunches in this world
Those mortals who think that they can make money and run a busines online without spending anything, are living in a fool's paradise. Every thing in this world costs something and you should be prepared to invest some money in advertising and marketing of your products to remain above the competition. It helps and pays in the long run.
Too much PPC
Excess of everything is bad. How True. Pay Per Click is an amazing way of advertising online, but depending too much upon it can be dangerous too. Instead indulge in natural, organic, ethical SEO to get higher rankings in search engines along with PPC. But don't over indulge in PPC advertising.
The crux of the whole story is that you need to be really brushed up as to what's happening out there. Do your research very well and get, set, go. Your first experience will tell you where your business is heading. If it is doing well, fine, otherwise leave it and move on.
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Relevance of E-Zines and Blogs
E-zines or email newsletters comprise of detailed, comprehensive, and much researched articles meant for that audience which is little less serious or passionate about your products and services as compared to the blog loving audience. On the other hand, blogs consist of short and sweet, focused pieces of writing meant for an audience that comes to you for updated information on a regular basis.
Both these can be combined together to cater to different target audiences. For an audience that looking for frequent ideas as well as answers to their questions and want to remain abreast with the latest that is happening in the industry, blogs is the solution. But the audience who are not much into blogging you can very well send a monthly or bi-weekly newsletter that consists of all the important and meatiest of your blog articles along with urls of all other important entries in your blog.
It is like understanding and respecting different people's needs and giving them what they want. Blogs and e-zines fulfil different needs of different people, so gauge the mood of your target audience and give them what they want- a blog or a newsletter. http://www.segnant.com/
Have You Checked the Popularity of Your Keywords?
The keywords that you use for your website play a significant role in improving the ranking of your site in search engines. So it becomes all the more important to check the popularity of the keywords that you plan to use in your website. It is this popularity count of the keywords that will help you determine the list of chosen keywords, with the most unused but relevant keywords coming on the top of your list. And these should form your target keywords that will be further optimized according to your website requirement.
Once you have a list of 25-30 keywords with you, you need to expand the list by experimenting and playing with these keywords using singular/plural word combinations, synonyms, or interspersing same keywords in different combinations, and so on. The idea is to come up with ample number of keyword combinations that might possibly be looked or searched by people on the search engines for your website.
To check for the competing pages on google, you should put the keywords in quotes in the search box, and this will give you the clear picture for the keyword that we plan to optimize for. Also keeping a tab on the ranking of the subpages on the SERPS page helps. In case the subpage shows a high occurance, the key-phrase is less competitive.
The keyword density on your page should be in between 5-20% while optimizing. Remember that 20% of your search traffic reaches you through primary keywords and another 20% through the secondary keywords and other different combinations. the rest 60% is fractional.
Some important keyword tools:
Overture
Google Adwords Alta Vista "PRISMA"
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