Most often people visit your site after they have found your company in Google, AOL, MSN or other search sites.  So, the best way to attract potential customers is for your business to appear high up on the list of search results.

The first step in getting customers to see your site is to determine what search phrases people will use when looking for your product or service. These phrases are called "keywords".

Moreover, you want to select keywords that are most popular with searchers and have the least number of competitive sites vying for top ranking.

Once you  have chosen the keywords you believe potential customers would search for when they want to buy your products and services, you optimize a page for each of those keywords.

Each keyword phrase is targeted on a separate page. For example, if your keywords are "San Francisco CPA" and "San Francisco Certified Public Accountant", create two separate pages. One is optimized for each keyword.  (See examples of how to tune two pages for different keywords by clicking on the links in our example phrases.)

Your home page should highlight the keyword you believe is most important and most likely to be searched for by potential customers. Additional keyword entry pages are called "doorway pages". They are designed to capture high place rankings for other keyword phrases and then to feed visitors from those doorways into the main part of your site.

Additional techniques for gaining traffic to your site include paying for ads, paid directory listings, and links from other sites.

You should also analyze your site for browsing blocks, such as slow-loading graphics, which will make visitors click to a competitor's site before your page finishes loading! These add-on efforts are valuable second, third, and beyond steps. The first task is to get listed in the search results.

The task of optimizing sites for search engines has created an industry of "Search Engine Optimization" consultants and software. Ozdachs does search engine optimization. We subscribe to industry journals and employ special purpose software that is dedicated to providing optimization tips, submitting pages, and tracking a site's place in search results.

The software Ozdachs uses is updated each month to track the current algorithms of Google and other search sites. We tune web sites to match the characteristics of the sites that already rank highly in search results.

Optimizing a series of web pages is specific to the keywords selected and each website. However, some basic rules can help anyone achieve reasonable rankings:

• Start your page title with your keywords! Do not use your business name as your home page title!
  
  Sad, but true: most people do not know your business' name.  For example, potential Ozdachs clients will not search for "Ozdachs Consulting". Instead they will search for "Website Design and Promotion".
  
  Your home page's title tag* should lead with your most important keyword phrase. You want to optimize your pages for that keyword phrase, not for your business name.
  
  (*tags are part of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) in which web pages are written. If you would like more information on this topic, Web Monkey, offers a clear explanation.)

• Lead with your keywords in the first Header (h1 tag) on the page.

• Lead with your keywords in the paragraph text. Repeat the keywords several times on the page, especially near the top of the page.

• Lead with your keywords in at least two ALT tags for images on the page.

• Use approximately 400 words on your page! Search engines like pages that describe what is on them in words. Information on pictures and drawings may be pretty to humans, but it baffles automated indexing software. Put enough words on your page to convince the software that your site has real content and deserves prominent placement in the results list.

If you do the few simple things above, you can rank above most of the sites on the Internet – even professional, large corporate sites. Honest!

A few more basic tips:

• Do not waste time stuffing phrases in the "Keywords" tag. All major search engines currently ignore the Keyword tag. (They ignore it because in the past unscrupulous web masters put unrelated - but popular – phrases in the Keyword tag in order to misdirect unsuspecting people to their sites.)

• Few search engines use the Description tag, but those that do pay attention to it display its text as the description of your site. So, put a clear statement of what people will see on your site in the Description tag.

• Do not try to be perfect. You can update your pages often, so do not agonize before getting your site up and published!

Once you have optimized your home page and doorway pages for your keywords, you are ready to tell the world that you exist.

You do that by submitting to free search engines and directories. You may also decide to pay for fast indexing at some sites (you get listed within 48 hours instead of 6 weeks) or to pay for directory inclusion (you don't get listed at all at without paying).

Ozdachs recommends that everyone first submit to the major free search engines and directories. These are:

• Google/Yahoo Web Matches (also supplies results to AOL, Netscape, IWon, and others)
• All the Web (Fast)/ Lycos
• HotBot/Overture/MSN
• Foreign affiliates of these engines

Ozdachs also recommends that you submit your site to the free directory, Open Directory Project, and to the Inktomi indexing service (approximately $49 a year).

After you take the steps outlined in this report, you will start becoming visible on the Internet. Search engines and directories take from days to several months to list new sites. While you wait to show up and to start getting customers, you have time to take the second, third, fourth, and beyond steps!

Consider:

• Paying for ads on Google (Costs vary per click-through to your site. Typically 25-cents to $2 per visitor.)
• Paid directory listings at Yahoo ($300 a year!)
• Links from other sites. (Make sure any associations you belong to list your web address in their on-line directory!)
• Analyze your site for browsing blocks
• Improve the navigation on your site to make it easy to contact you!

Thank you for reviewing this White Paper on Tuning Your Site for Visibility

Please contact us with any questions or if we can help you with getting your site seen and visited!

Internet address: www.Ozdachs.biz

Telephone: (415) 647-8830

© Ozdachs Consulting, 2003