As this eventful year 2001 winds down, Webconsuls wishes to thank you for your continued confidence in us. We expect that you have already seen beneficial results and anticipate that in the months to come your emphasis upon improving your firm’s web presence will continue.
In this edition of our newsletter we are going to discuss Link Popularity, Pay for Position engines, Virus Protection, and maintaining your domain name.
Link Popularity
We have written in the past about Link Popularity. We think this subject is so important to Search Engine Positioning, and may be somewhat misunderstood, that it bears frequent review.
Search engines are trying to list what they consider to be “important” sites. A key measure of “importance” is the number of other sites, especially sites with a similar theme, that link to the site in question.
You can find out how many sites the search engines “think” link to your site by using a tool available at “marketleap.com.” Go to this web page, type in your domain name, type in competitive web sites, select a category (optional) and start checking.
Here are some things you might try to improve your link popularity:
- Concentrate on finding sites that are of a similar nature to yours and approach them about linking to you. Links from sites of the same theme as yours help to reinforce your theme and further help in boosting your search engine rankings.
- Download the “Google Page Rank Tool Bar” to determine which sites have a higher “reputation.”
- Create a link page listing all of the sites that you wish to link to you. By linking to the sites you are going to be contacting first, they will be more likely to link back to you when you contact them.
- One often overlooked trick is to find similar sites that use guest books and forums. If you can find these you will often be able to post a message and include your URL.
- Testimonials of products can also be a good way to get your URL out. Consider writing a testimonial of a product you’ve used. Include your name and URL at the bottom. Email the testimonial to the site owner. Site owner’s are ALWAYS looking for testimonials as it increases buyer confidence and most likely they will be happy to post your testimonial.
- Writing articles on your topic can also be a great way to get your URL out. Write an article and include your URL in the bio at the end of the article.
Pay for Position Engines
Our reading and experience indicates that these types of engines are becoming increasingly important in overall search engine positioning. If you are not already using at least one in your web marketing portfolio, you are probably behind your competition. The good news is that you can catch up in a few days simply by getting registered.
Our preferences: Overture (formerly GoTo.com) followed by Findlink.com and then Sprinks.com. Each of these has partner agreements with major engines like AOL.com, Excite.com, About.com, Lycos.com and many more. You may have read that Yahoo is making changes, and one of them is to partner with Overture.
Contact Webconsuls to learn how easy these programs are to add to your Internet arsenal.
Virus Protection
Unfortunately several of our clients have been victimized by computer viruses. If your computer gets hit with a virus, you may face hours or days of work to get rid of the virus and restore your computer.
We recommend that your purchase, install and keep up to date one of the commercial virus protection programs. We do not recommend a particular program but suggest you check those sold by Norton http://www.norton.com, McAfee http://www.mcafee.com and Trend Micro Systems http://www.antivirus.com.
It is most important that you keep your virus protection program current as new viruses are detected frequently.
Your Domain Name
When your domain name was established someone, perhaps you, paid a fee to register that name for a period of time. They also registered a billing contact. When your domain name is about to expire, the billing contact is notified.
Perhaps the billing contact is an employee who has left your business or even yourself with a new address and E-Mail address. Then you might never get notified and your valuable domain name could expire.
You can check the information about your domain name by going to the Network Solutions web site http://www.netsol.com and clicking on the link to Who Is in the top black bar. At the Who Is page type in your domain name in the search box (our domain name is webconsuls.com). You should then see the information about domain name, including the contact information and when the record expires.
If you have any questions about the information, or how to change it, then please contact Network Solutions directly or search their web site for help. Changing this information can be time consuming and Webconsuls must charge its standard consulting fees if asked to help.
Hospitality Property Sales
Looking to sell or buy a country inn, a hotel, a B&B, a motel, cottages or a guesthouse? Know anyone in the market for these types of properties? Then by all means, check out our web site at http://www.helfand-enterprises.com.
Dick Fay Dennis Helfand Managing Partners, Webconsuls LLC
