Using the E-Commerce Internet .... Getting Known: Search engines Back in 1996 when ImagineNation.com was first getting started, all you had to do was build a web site and visitors would immediately show up to see what was going on. Even though our business focus has changed, we still maintain some of the early web pages because those pages are still linked to and used by certain organizations. Today some of the major search engines index over two billion web pages. By comparison, in 1999 indexing 200 million pages was a high number. Fast Search & Transfer ASA has been making a play for Google Inc's reputation as the web's largest search engine. Fast said its consumer search site, AllTheWeb.com, now searches an index of 2,095,568,809 web pages, just over 20 million more than Google claims. You can bet Google will soon top this, if it hasn't already. So, where does this leave you: the new guy on the block? Fortunately, being found through a search engine isn't your only way of attracting visitors; nor is it necessarily the best way. But, for this newsletter issue, we'll talk a little about getting listed by search engines. There are hundreds of search engines, many are simply co-branded versions of one of the major engines. Others are regional engines offering selections based on country. Engines fall into two general categories: crawlers that search the web for listings; and directories that require human intervention to create a listing. As a rule, fewer than 5% of the search engines will provide over 90% of your referrals. And you'll get referrals IF.... and this is a big if.... if your listing ranks in the first 10 or 20 returns. So, to get search engine referrals, get listed in the top 10 engines and get your listing to show up in the first 20 or so entries. If your site caters to a specific country, be sure to get listed in the top regional engines. Danny Sullivan edits SearchEngineWatch.com, the ultimate search engine site, describing the major engines, how they work, and providing many submission resources. PhilB has a great resource for country based search engines. There are many theories about how a search engine will rank your site. Since how sites are ranked is most often proprietary information, the theories are often just speculation. Your best bet is to stick to the four basics supported via the three meta tags in head of the web page and by the document itself: 1) a descriptive but brief title: IE: "Everything for bicycles, seats, peddles, frames, wheels" 2) a short and direct site description: IE: "Complete information and parts for all makes of bicycles: Bianchi, Cervelo, Gary Fisher, GT, and Iron Horse" 3) a list of keywords that your customer will use to make a search: IE: "Bianchi, Cervelo, Gary Fisher, GT, Iron Horse, bike parts, bike seats, bike peddles, ....etc" 4) page content that reflects all of the above The correspondence between page content, title, description, and keywords is important. Most search engines will, in part, position a site in the returned list according to how pertinent the page info is to the information in the meta tags. This is one part of your site ranking. The keywords (phrases) are equally important. Anticipate what your potential customer will type into a search box; these are your keywords and phrases. Another way used by some engines to rank your site seems like a Catch22. They will list according to the popularity of your site and how many other sites your site is liked to. The dilemma here is how to get popular if you can't get listed among the top ranked referrals in your search category. This is a topic we will cover in future newsletters. A search of the web will return many companies that offer to get your site listed in the search engines and some promise top rankings. Be cautious here. First of all, you don't need to submit your site to thousands of engines, news groups, and bulletin boards. Second, if you do, be prepared to get flooded by e-mail offers of everything imaginable and have your e-mail address added to spam lists. Having said that, there are many legitimate search engine listing services, some will even guarantee to maintain a top rank listing for you. These won't be cheap; you're going to get what you pay for here. OK, here's what we recommend and you need to spend a little time but no money. Concentrate on the top seven or eight engines and search from each of them using key words and phases that you think your customers will use. See what sites get returned in the first page of results. Visit these sites and view the page source. Look over the information in the three meta tags we listed above and see how your competition describes themselves. Adjust your page and meta tags accordingly and manually submit that page to the engine. Don't worry about being listed at the top of the page. Maintaining this position involves a battle you can't win. You may also notice with some search engines that the very top of the page is reserved for companies that have paid for positioning. Keeping your site listed among top ranked sites will be an ongoing process. You're always going to be tweaking tags and refining content to stay ahead. Next issue:  Beating the credit card charge back Up-comming:  more on attracting and keeping customers Further reading:  SearchEngineWatch.com  Products of ImagineNation!    Providing on-line stores for small and mid-size Internet businesses since 1996,   Imaginenation is a full service company meeting all of your e-commerce needs:    Storefronts     Credit Card Processing     Back Office Utilities     Merchant Accounts DO YOU NEED HELP WITH OUR PRODUCTS OR HAVE A GENERAL QUESTION? Please E-Mail specific product questions using the mail form at  ImagineNation.com For general information questions, visit our moderated public Q&A   FORUM Recent     Changes    Improvements    Upgrades MyStore3.3 Lite grade has been upgraded to improve operation and the default appearance. This new build still uses the same store specific files as before. New information and quick setup pages have been added to the opening introduction to better assist new users. If you are already using MyStore Lite and want the new build without disturbing store specific pages, do the following: 1) Go to http://MyStore.to and download the free trial. 2) Rename your existing MyStore folder so that when extracting the new build, it won't overwrite your store specific files. 3) Extract the new download. 4) In the new MyStore, replace the following files with your store specific files: In the top MyStore folder: storefront.htm In the Database folder used for your store: db.htm, promo.htm, promoout.htm Add your images to the Images sub folder for that database In the Files folder: promoin.htm In the Layouts folder: add your sub folder of images and buttons 5) Upload the new MyStore to the host site. Have you seen the new PeddleGold storefront? If you want a storefront that is quick to set up, easy to maintain, has advanced features, and integrates seamlessly with any of the ImagineNation back office utilities for taking credit card payments, then PeddleGold may be just what you're looking for. PeddleGold is the standard for a robust, easy to use, low cost storefront. Take a demo ride.       Check our low prices. Get your first month free. Tips 'n Tricks    HTML tags shown here use the caret (^) instead of braces <> for proper rendering.     Brackets are represented by the curly bracket symbols ({}). The new webPeddleGold storefront lets you automatically create reusable drop down select menus that can be associated individually by item for any item in the database table list of products. These menus are especially useful for generating customer preference selections that apply to an item where listing the same item many times for each of the preferences looks bad and isn't practical. For instance, if you sell T-Shirts, you may want list a particular style only once but give the customer choices for size and color. Create a select menu using the sl.js file by entering lines that will look something like this: pref{1} = new opList('color','red^green^blue',''); pref{2} = new opList('size','small^medium^large','0^2.25^3.25'); In the database file, db.js, there may be a record as follows: line{5} = new item('T-Shirt','Webbed Style','9.55','tsw_thumbnail.gif','TSW(1,2)'); Now when a customer selects a list of T-Shirts, they will see the webbed style shirt listed with drop down menus for selecting color and size. These menus are activated automatically by the numbers one and two (1,2) in parentheses, immediately following the item ID code. Note that pref{2} also has entries for adding amounts to the base price of 9.95 depending on the size selected. This is a dynamic pricing feature that can be used in a variety of ways. For instance: to set an add-on shipping charge for specific destinations. Each pref{} record created is re-useable across any or all items in the product list, making for a very compact set of sl and db files. Note that for this newsletter only, we are using the curly brackets ({ }) and not the straight brackets required in the related files. ImagineNation © 1996 - 2002 Suffering from overload?  List Removal E-ComTips is brought to you by ImagineNation because you are listed as a user of one of our storefront products or have subscribed to receive the Newsletter itself. To remove your address from our list, go to List Remove and, if your correct address and service ID are not showing when you get there, enter the correct values manually. Please do not reply to this newsletter return e-mail address. Replies here are not received. Use the Mail Form at ImagineNation to correspond.

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