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“The Truth About Search Engines”
By Nick F. Nichols, CPMC
Do you rely heavily on the search engines to bring visitors to your site? Find out why you may be missing out on thousands of qualified prospects and what to do about it.
“Seek, and Ye Shall Find?”
Okay, so you've built your Web site. Now what do you do to get people to see it? Standard answer: “List your site with as many search engines as you can.” This is a good idea, but depending on what you sell, search engine listings may or may not bring qualified prospects to your site.
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The reason for this is, search engines are interactive devices. They require people to enter key words, then scroll through the results, then select one or more listings to visit. Search engines only work when people are deliberately looking for something. This presents some inherent challenges for online marketers.
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First, the key words surfers enter are what they believe to be relevant to what they're looking for. These words may not appear anywhere on your site. Surfers may misspell key words or they may not know how to use search parameters properly.
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Second, even if your key words match a search criteria,
there may be hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of other sites that also match. Your listing may be buried deep down the list, never to be seen. (When you search, how many pages do you check?)
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Third, and most important, the people who use search engines
may not be qualified prospects for you. Depending on what you sell, your best customers were probably referred to you in some manner. Search engine listings are not referrals. They're like white page telephone listings: virtually anyone can get one.
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What can you do to supplement search engine listings?
Plenty! First, determine who your best online prospects are.
Next, figure out where they go on the Internet.
For example, depending on who you're trying to reach, there may be one or more news groups you can visit. News groups are where people with a common interest maintain ongoing discussions about that interest. You can join in on the discussion and offer your thoughts. It's possible to slant your comments in a way that will prompt people to visit your site. There are two ways to do this.
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You can solve a problem for someone in your posting to the news group. This shows your expertise on the subject. If you include your email address, people with similar problems can contact you for solutions.
You can include a signature file in your posting that gives a
brief description of what you do and how to contact you.
To see a partial listing of news groups, visit:
http://www.intellinews.com/groups.txt
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Another way to get qualified prospects to visit your site is to write articles for online publications. Again, determine who you want to reach and figure out where they go on the Net. There are hundreds, if not thousands of online newsletters, magazines, resource Executive Directories, you name it, that use articles written by outside experts. Find some of these and monitor the kinds of articles they post.
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Then write an article that addresses a common problem readers have (that you can solve!) and submit it to a publication. The publication may want to publish your article. They probably won't want to pay you anything but they will publish your Web site URL. Depending on the publication, this can bring hundreds or thousands of qualified prospects to your site.
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A third way to promote your Web site is to trade links and
content with complementary but non-competing sites. Find sites that you like and offer to link to their site if they'll link to yours. Offer to give them articles you've written to post on their site in exchange for articles they've written to post on your site. This can be a great way to bring qualified prospects to your site.
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*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*WARNING*
Don't use these self-promotion strategies until your Web site is the best it can be. The last thing you want is for visitors to be disappointed with your site, never to return. News travels fast and furious on the Net. Your reputation can be smudged in nanoseconds.
I've developed a free, Do-It-Yourself Online Marketing Check-Up you can use to see if you're doing the right things on your site.
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Click Here to learn how you can grow your business by 25%-100% in six months or less—guaranteed—using the Rapid Results Marketing™ System.
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