Hello, My hosting buisness should be up within some days, and I`m planning on utelising webpostion Gold for my costumers throughout their hosting for free. How much do you think this will attract costumers? I`ve just utelised the trial version today, but I`m wondering if anyone has had any experiance with this software over time? If one manages the software properly can one expect a place amongst top 100 position on a popular keyword?

Regards,

This is my opionion -- and as I've stated elsewhere, it's only my opinion -- but in years of fiddling with them, I've never seen one of these things that worked worth a damn.

Personally, I prefer an application called Swiss Army App (http://www.swissarmyapp.com). In regard to etLux's comment, the key is not to target popular keywords (since that's what everyone else is doing), but popular combinations of key words. For example, if you have IE 5.0 or higher, type in "Toronto Pet Show" (a fairly common phrase.) You will likely see the two "major" sites I've designed (Canadian PET EXPO 2001 and RegionalShows.com) in the 1, 3, and 8 positions. Why? Because I focussed on the phrase itself. It's surprising how much traffic and revenue that silly little trick pulled off.

I agree with Spider John, it is not easy to be on the top 10 of a popular keyword search, position yourself to a smaller group and chances is your exposure rate will be higher.

Thanks for your replies, I guess it wasn`t as easy as I hoped.

True, it isn't going to be easy, but you'll learn and gain.

Well, no pain no gain :)

No matter how you go about it, one must realize, too, that the competition for top slots in the s/e's is truly intense -- with literally hundreds of millions of sites vying for position in the search engines.

There are only so many keywords (and combinations thereof) that you can use to describe a given product or service; so, chances are, unless you offer something very unusual, you'll be fighting it out with quite a list of other sites.

For that reason, submissions alone play only a very small part in your ranking in a great many of the engines; in point especially, those that 'spider' your site.

Some do and some do not read your META tags, but either way, it's crucial in general to have solid material in place in the keywords and description there.

Further, and increasingly, the actual page content needs to be salted with search-engine fodder, as well -- and with some of the engines, one of the things that'll get you ranked higher is how many links to other sites (called a Connectivity Index) they find in your page content.

and also how popular you are among the other related sites, means how many of those sites offer a link to your site in their pages.

Originally posted by Spider John
Personally, I prefer an application called Swiss Army App (http://www.swissarmyapp.com). In regard to etLux's comment, the key is not to target popular keywords (since that's what everyone else is doing), but popular combinations of key words. For example, if you have IE 5.0 or higher, type in "Toronto Pet Show" (a fairly common phrase.) You will likely see the two "major" sites I've designed (Canadian PET EXPO 2001 and RegionalShows.com) in the 1, 3, and 8 positions. Why? Because I focussed on the phrase itself. It's surprising how much traffic and revenue that silly little trick pulled off.

When you say popular combinations what do you mean? notice on your source your keywords are individual not phrases ie
,Toronto, not ,Toronto pet show,

Originally posted by fweikeong
and also how popular you are among the other related sites, means how many of those sites offer a link to your site in their pages.

Yes, and that too, fweikeong -- and other considerations, as well.

The general point I'm attempting to make, here -- albeit in a somewhat cluttered fashion -- is that mere submission to the search engines is only a very small part of what goes into play in determining your rankings.

etLux:

Indeed true. There are just too many criteria involved in determining a site ranking and it changes from time to time.

Anyway, a good site may gain its 'ranking' in the heard of its viewers in time, words spread and it is always worthwhile spending the time to do up a good site instead of over concentrating on s/e's rankings.

:)

Originally posted by fweikeong
etLux:

Indeed true. There are just too many criteria involved in determining a site ranking and it changes from time to time.

Anyway, a good site may gain its 'ranking' in the heard of its viewers in time, words spread and it is always worthwhile spending the time to do up a good site instead of over concentrating on s/e's rankings.

:)

Also true -- there are just too many criteria to keep track of, they change constantly, and they differ broadly from one engine to the next.

Ultimately, what carries you through is a good, solid site that offers something people wish to see, and... simple longevity.

I've never been able to confirm this, but I also suspect that some of the search engines actually feed off each other (that is, raid each other for listings), too -- so the longer you're around, the more listings seem to appear all over the place.

Yes, the s/e are kind of in a consolidation stage, sharing of resources, or perhaps out-sourcing their databases/indexes. I've been following this for a while, done a little bit of homework, though.

You`re mentioning a lot of criterias and conditions for being listed high. I know what you`re talking about realy after submittong with webposition. (If true) it knows all the criterias and you modify a doorway page until it`s perfect. In my case I`m going to have this doorway that look rediculous, but it will load instantly to my real site. I hope this works, even though it will be difficult to implement a doorway to my customers sites.

Originally posted by gthorley

When you say popular combinations what do you mean? notice on your source your keywords are individual not phrases ie
,Toronto, not ,Toronto pet show,

This is true, but MSN's engine (to my knowledge) doesn't require tagging, and for the most part commas are immaterial in Meta tagging. (I haven't touched it, however, due to the rankings I have received, nor am I about to screw with what brought me to the dance.) ;)

Originally posted by Haakon
You`re mentioning a lot of criterias and conditions for being listed high. I know what you`re talking about realy after submittong with webposition. (If true) it knows all the criterias and you modify a doorway page until it`s perfect. In my case I`m going to have this doorway that look rediculous, but it will load instantly to my real site. I hope this works, even though it will be difficult to implement a doorway to my customers sites.

Many search engines (AltaVista comes to mind) will not even index doorway pages, nor will they index pages with the JavaScript refresh tag inserted into them. Another thing to keep in mind.

I don't have any insight to offer about search engines but I do marvel about the following. I searched on my self and found some really strange hits, like the following. I have no idea why the search picked up the second example. There is definitely no META. Strange.

1. a 1996 email I had sent to a discussion list.
2. the following web page (I am showing you the source code - there are no tags - it is pure text).

Hi,

Sorry, there is nothing here any more.
They removed CGI support and I moved my
development elsewhere.

Try:

http://boldlygo.to

or

atusm.com

later

or

cetusm.com

later