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The Real Secret:

If you cannot explain your Web site, service, or product in two keywords or less, the search engines will likely not be a good resource for you. Many people expect search engines to be their solution.

It is so simple. If your customer has a hard time finding what they want at a search engine related to what you are selling, you will have a tough time reaching them via search engines. The real problem is the general nature of any search engine.

The real solution comes for your customer. Can they explain what you do in two words or less?

At the Web Success Letter, we cover many aspects of Web business. We register with the search engines, but there are not two keywords that everyone would think of to find us.

If that is true for you, be sure not to focus all your energy on the search engines. If you are selling "pizza", you should focus on the search engines because you have one keyword. If you have a retail site with 10-20 products, the search engines will not be as helpful.

Don't forget about marketing instead of thinking about ways to fool the search engines. These are not the most important place that people will find you.

The Six Dirty Secrets to Fool The Search Engines V. 2.5

 Search engines look for one thing: words. They count words to determine relevance of a Web site. The following are some tricks that will fool some search engines. Remember that search engines are adapting their approach to some of these tricks. Do they help your site generate traffic and help your audience find what they are looking for?

I don't guarantee these will all work, since the search engines keep changing. But the truth is the search engines just count words; if you can use enough keywords, you may get your page to register on a search. You are on your own with this one, but some of these tricks have worked for me.

Secret 1: Use Flash Pages

A Flash page is an introductory page to your site based on keywords. A visitor comes to this page and is either forwarded (see below) or clicks on a link to enter your site. You create a small page which focuses on the keywords you want to promote. You can create multiple flash pages for more and more keywords. Write a short paragraph and turn it into a Web Page. Put your keywords in links. Then put a forwarding address like this at the top of your page, in your META TAGS (see next secret for specifics):

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="1; URL=http://www.webletter.net/index.html">

The "Content" one is where you put the seconds you want to wait before you are forwarded automatically. Or you can just have a link to enter your Web Site. You do a different flash page for every keyword you are thinking of, leading to different sections of your site.

For example, you could have "Web Marketing" be the keywords for one "flash" page. Maybe "Internet Consulting" for another.

Secret 2: Use the <META> Commands

Take a deep breath; this isn't about code, it's about keywords. At the top of every Web page is the following code:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>The Title of Your Web Site, Appearing at the Top of the Page</TITLE>

</HEAD>

You need to add to this; add the <META> statements. There are several types, but only two that really help. They are <META NAME="Description"> and <META NAME="Keywords">

<HEAD>

<TITLE>The Title of Your Web Site, Appearing at the Top of the Page</TITLE>

<META NAME="Description" Content="This is where you can really describe your site. Otherwise, the search engine will just print what's on your front page, which really looks garbled. Go to a search engine and see what I mean. With this statement, you'll get about two sentences to describe your Web site, which many search engines will show .">

<META NAME ="Keywords" Content="Marketing online Michael Declan Dunn Web Letter, publishing content development expert marketing marketing, Web publishing publishing Web,web">

</HEAD>

Also, just worry about the first few sentences or series of words; your visitor will never see more than 25-30 words (200 characters) anyway, so go for it and request that the search engine revisit your site once this has been added. Do not repeat words endlessly; this will only work against you. If you have someone else put up your page, just send them the words and this description; they'll know what to do with it. If they don't, they should learn. It's easy and this is the most important tool to use.

Secret 3. Focus on the First 200 characters of your page

Search Engines like the first words they see on a page. Repeating words endlessly is not the goal. Repeat them in sentences, bullets, and descriptions. Put them in the beginning and put them in links. The best part of this secret is that even if it does not work for the search engines, this style will likely work for customers visiting your site as well. The most important thing is to make it easy for your customer to understand what you do. I recommend using 2-3 primary headlines on a home page and feature them. Make them links and include your keywords in the headline.

Secret 4. The Dirty Tricks: Images and Comments

Images give a great place to insert key words. The code is as follows:

<IMG SRC="whatever.gif" HEIGHT=59 WIDTH=60 ALT="Describe the graphic, then stick in your keywords like crazy. The search engines will read them and all the viewer will see, if the graphic doesn't appear, are the first few words.">

This trick is a great one, because it hides words and never puts them on the physical page.

Comments are another great way to insert words; I learned this one from the Discovery Channel page, which used the following (I actually edited this a bit for reading):

<--nature nature nature nature nature>

This code is called a comment, which never appears on the Web page. You can see it in the code, but how many of your audience are looking at the code? Comments are used on the Web to separate sections of code.

All search engines are different; like meta files, this trick will work for a few. So why not be a hacker-like user of keywords and stick in those empty spaces the keywords that will make the search engines think your page is more relevant? No one will send you to jail for it because it's not illegal, and it might help you avoid getting lost like a needle in the haystack of competitive Web sites.

Secret 5: Submit to all the search engines at once, then go to the top ones each month to make sure you are in there. My recommendations to repeat visit:

1. Yahoo: www.yahoo.com
2. Infoseek: www.infoseek.com
3. AltaVista: www.altavista.digital.com
4. Lycos: www.lycos.com
5. WebCrawler: www.webcrawler.com
6. Excite: www.excite.com
7. Hotbot: www.hotbot.com

Secret 6: Write a Good Title, Description, and even Web Address (especially for Yahoo!)

Your title and description are what your clients will read. In fact, a TITLE is required on every Web Page. Why not use it as a good headline, a place to put your keywords, and sum up your business in one sentence?

Again, those 200 characters, even the first 200 words, are most important.

P.S. You can also use the <FONT COLOR=> Command to change the color of your keywords to match the background, like white print on a white background. Be warned, though: if the viewer doesn't have Netscape or Internet Explorer, you could look stupid. You can use this to place keywords so they are noticed, but so they do not show up on the page. Again, do not repeat keywords here; but use it to augment what you show on the page.

Michael Declan Dunn is a Web publisher/trainer/designer online with a newsletter called The Web Success Letter.
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