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Category: links

Search Engine Marketing Newsletter November 2003


Saturday November 15, 2003

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Lycos:

As announced last month with the change in our Position report inclusions, we are continuing to allocate the bulk of our resources with only the most important search engines. Accordingly, we have discontinued the Lycos campaign and many of our clients will see this reflected change in a lower monthly statement.

Links:


Webconsuls cannot overstate the importance of developing a link popularity Program. If you are not focusing on this aspect of your business, we can almost guarantee you that much of your competition is and has been participating in links programs for some time. Search engines place great emphasis on analyzing how many links you have and the quality of those links. If you want to be found well positioned for various keywords, a link campaign is crucial. Webconsuls has many tools that can help you this area. If your site is hosted at Millennium Systems, a web company that supports .asp technology, we can even provide you with a “simple to use” template for adding links yourself. No knowledge of html or web design is needed. Just fill in a few lines and the link appears live on your web site. Contact Webconsuls for details.

Web Site Text Modifications and Updates:


Need to make simple changes to your web site? There is now an excellent software Program available (under $100.00) that will enable you to make text modifications, including, rates, dates, services available and other needed and regular changes to your site, in-house. It does not require any knowledge of web design! Clients who have tested this software for us “love it.” If several of you think it is something that will be useful, we can arrange a bulk purchase, saving you money. Let us know, as this can be a real cost-saver.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

It has been a while since we have written our clients.

We are going to discuss promoting your site “off of the Internet,” basic search engine positioning and what you can do to help your site, some features you may want to add to your site, and review the pay per click situation. We also discuss changes to your site, a “spam fighter” program and another web site business that we run.

Off the Internet Promotion

We know that many of our clients do a great job of this, but have seen others that do not. You should review your business cards, brochures, point of sale advertising and other media that you use to promote your business. Do you include your URL (for example, www.webconsuls.com) in your promotion? Your potential customers may not even be aware of your web site.

Your Email is another source of potential advertising. Most email programs have a signature option that will be included in new Emails. You should have a signature file and it should include your URL.

Search Engine Positioning

Currently search engines rank web pages by they two R’s – Relevance and Reputation. Relevance is measured by the content on the page and the content on the pages linking to the page. Reputation is measured by the number of links to the page and quality of the links.

Notice how important it is to get links to your site. Most important is to get links from sites related to your site.

You should pursue all opportunities to get people to link your site. If you see sites that link to your competitors, then you should try to get them to link to you. If you are in an organization that lists its members on a web site, then your listing should link to your site.

We work on improving your relevance and reputation. We can only do so much and you can certainly help.

INKTOMI

Before a search engine can rank your site, it must know that it exists. Inktomi is an Internet database that indexes for many of the major search engines, i.e. MSN, Looksmart, HotBot, Looksmart and about 50 other Partners; it continues to be listed among the Internet’s most important Internet marketing resources. If you are not registered with Inktomi, you are probably already several steps behind your immediate competition. Annual registration is only $30.00 for a page and in many cases, it is only necessary to register your Home Page! Contact Dennis or Dick for information and get registered.

Features

We have developed some dynamic features that some of our clients have found very useful. We think you might want to consider them for your site.

Contact Form and Email List

We will either add a contact form to your site or enhance the one on the site to capture the contact information in a database. We will then give you the capability to send an email to everyone in the database. This will allow you to keep a record of those who filled out the contact form and can notify them of new products, pricing, or other changes in your business.

Dynamic Links Page

Many people will want you to reciprocate a link to you with a link to them. We don’t have the time to add links like this for our clients without charging a fee each time. We can add a Links Page to your site and give you the capability of adding the link.

Events Calendar of News Page

We will give you the ability to add and delete information about an event or news item related to your site. The cost to add these features depends somewhat on how your site is constructed. The minimum is $100 per feature. We can only add these features to sites hosted at Millennium. You should expect a $10 per month increase in your hosting fees from Millennium. For many clients these are small costs for what could be a great benefit. If you would like to see a demo on how these enhancements will add to your marketing reach, please contact Dennis or Dick and they can take you through a Demo.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click programs have several positive elements. They allow you to get listed quickly – and you only pay when someone clicks to your site. Overture is the best known and most successful Per Per Click Program (PPC), and also the most expensive. We think that our clients have received value from FindWhat, a less well known and less expensive program. Other popular opportunities, with PPC variations, exist with Google Adwords and Looksmart.com.

OVERTURE

Overture recently instituted a price increase, raising the required minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.10.

All existing listings with bids between $0.05 and $0.09 will be “grand fathered” at their current max bid for the foreseeable future. Going forward, if you or we make any bid changes to these grand fathered listings, the new bid must be at least $0.10. However, anyone can continue to update titles, descriptions and URL’s for grand fathered listings without affecting the bids. All new listings must meet the $0.10 minimum bid.

Overture announced plans to acquire Alta Vista, a major Search Engine. The integration into Overture is expected to take several months and we will keep you posted on how this change will impact those of you that participate in either or both of Webconsuls’ Overture/Alta vista’s Internet marketing programs.

FINDWHAT

FindWhat.com will raise its minimum bid to $.05/click effective July 1, 2003.

Web Site Changes

We often get requests to make changes to our clients’ web site. Obviously we can not maintain sites without compensation. We charge $75 per hour. The minimum charge is $25.

Spam

We all get way too many junk emails. There are several spam fighting programs. We like one that can be found at http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/ There is a free 30 trial period. We have been on trial for months and have not been asked to pay anything. This product can only used with Microsoft Outlook.

Helfand-enterprises.com – Do you have a resort, Inn Motel, Cottage for sale? Did you know that Webconsuls operates a subsidiary company that markets hospitality properties for sale across North America, the Caribbean and most recently, our first property in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, South America? Check out . If you know of some one who is interested in selling a hospitality property or if you know of someone looking for an interesting and rewarding lifestyle career change, have them get in touch with us.

Reading Time: 9 minutes

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

Reading Time: 13 minutes

We have decided to send you our newsletter more frequently. You can expect one about every month.

In this newsletter we are going to discuss:
• Something you can do to generate traffic to your web site.
• An opportunity for our clients in the travel, hospitality, recreation industry
• How you can help yourself and us
• Silver, Gold and Platinum Accounts
• Changing Web Site Hosts

Something You Can Do to Generate Traffic

Frequently our clients ask us how or what they can do to generate more traffic to their web site. We think the one thing, and maybe the best, is to get links to your site, especially links that are relevant to the theme of your site.

You should go to the web site of any local, trade, or professional organizations of which you are a member. Does that web site list, with links, the web sites of their members? If so, are you on the list with a link to your site?

As you spend time on the Internet you should be looking for any directories or specialized search engines that target the theme of your site. You should be looking for opportunities to get your site listed on these directories. Many of them are free, or only require that you link to them. Some are paid, and for those you need to do your evaluation of the economics.

Links to your site help in three ways

  1. Someone may click on the link and visit your site. Obviously if the themes of your site and site linking to you are similar, the more likely that it generate traffic. 
  2. Search engines track the number of sites linking to you. The theory is that the more links to you, the more important the site hence a higher ranking. 
  3. Search engine spiders crawl the Internet going from site to site and indexing web sites. Links to your site help drive the spiders to your site. 

An Opportunity For Our Travel, Hospitality, Recreation Business Clients

Centraltravelguide.com is a one-stop resource that provides consumers with an online national travel and vacation guide of information. We are delighted to announce a Partner Arrangement with Webconsuls, featuring a tailored program to provide special benefits to Webconsuls’ clients.

Although there are numerous “travel related” websites currently available on-line, Centraltravelguide.com sets itself apart by specializing in “a quick and easy searchable database” of information.

This content is free of the usual “banner” type of advertisements, pop-up windows, airfare offers, hotel discounts coupons and other travel related information that often interferes with a consumer’s informational needs.

The site is simply ‘sponsored’ by travel and vacation related websites. These sponsors are conveniently located in their corresponding area of the site. For example, our client, Magic Falls Rafting (www.magicfalls.com) is a sponsor of Centraltravelguide.com’s MAINE accommodations area, as well as its RAFTING section. With this system of sponsorship Magic Falls specifically targets those consumers applicable to their services.

Best of all there’s no cost to Magic Falls Rafting. All Magic Falls does is host a link to Central Travel Guide on their main index page. This linkage provides visitors of Magic Falls with a national database of information just clicks away. This type of co-sponsorship markets both Magic Falls Rafting and Central Travel Guide.

Centraltravelguide.com is in the process of building its network of sponsors. Besides sponsors in the vacation and travel industry, CTG is also visited by consumers from other websites outside the travel industry. Their database information is partnered with sites like Collegenews.com, a site that has received over 3 million hits annually for the past three years.

Central Travel Guide is like an online ‘inserted travel guide.’ Their database of information is currently available on 12 partner sites. The site, and it’s easily accessible database, was launched this past May and expects to fill up with partnerships quickly. For information on becoming a Sponsor, contact Webconsuls as soon as possible to ensure obtaining your State Sponsorship position.

How You Can Help Yourself and Us


Your web site was developed on a computer, probably by a designer, maybe one of our designers, maybe by yourself or a friend. In any case the site was transferred to what it called a Server where it is hosted on the Internet. So your designer has a copy and there is a copy on the server. When you hire Webconsuls for Web Site Marketing we download your site from the server, make critical changes for search engine placement, and put the site back on the Server. We also monitor the success of our work and may later make other changes to improve positioning.

Now let’s say you want to make a change to your site, maybe a modest change like changing a few images. If the designer works with the version on the designer’s computer and then uploads it to the Server, our important changes will be lost. It is therefore critical that you inform whoever is changing your site that they should work with the version on the Server so that they then start with the version that has our changes. You should also tell us that the site is being changed so that we make sure that our work has not been lost.

Redoing our work because someone else has destroyed it is not part of our arrangement with you. In the future we will charge for this work. Before starting we will tell you what has happened and provide an estimate at $75/hour.

Silver, Gold and Platinum Accounts


Our Silver Package is designed for small sites, those about 5 pages or less, that are not in extremely competitive categories. For these sites we make our changes to up to 5 pages and submit to the major search engines and directories. Quarterly we resubmit the key pages and send a position report to the client. We have recently raised the sign up fee for Silver Accounts to $475. The quarterly fee is $75.

The Gold Package is designed for larger sites in more competitive categories. For these sites we work on up to 9 key pages. We resubmit monthly and send the position report on a monthly basis as well. The sign up fee for Gold Accounts has been raised to $500. The quarterly fee remains at $100.

Platinum accounts are large sites in very competitive categories. These sites are custom quoted. The schedule for submissions and the position report is done on a case by case basis and we generally add pages designed by us for search engine placement.

Changing Web Site Hosts


It is sometime necessary to change your web site host. This can be a simple process or it can get very involved. A new host needs to be found, Internet records must be updated, your site needs to be uploaded to the new server, any server functions that your site uses need to be tested and perhaps redone, and email accounts may need to be reconfigured.

We have recently moved the Webconsuls web site to Millennium, a hosting company located in Southern California. As part of the move we will have to redo the area that processed credit cards on-line, so that functionality is currently down at our site.

We will work with you if you want to change your web site host. However we will need to charge if there is extensive work involved. Contact us and we can discuss.

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay, Managing Partners.