DMLR*News
Brief — March 1st, 2002 (text
emailed to DMLR*News subscribers on Feb.28, 2002)
INDEX
*****
-D- Directory/SE
-M- Meta
-L- Last Minute
-R- Results at Primo 2001
This issue hits you some days in advance because
of organizational reasons -- look at point-M below!
Articles
******
--D-- Directory/SE. There is an argument that any good e-marketing newsletter
should face now and again. I mean the submission of website
url to directories and search engines (SE).
Usually they advice us about how to succeed in three ways:
a. difference between SE and directory and their different
criteria they are using to read and classify web pages --
that is SE by robots, directory by human beings;
b. how to write web pages to optimize the ranking on SE
results;
c. the up-to-date list of the main SEs.
The subject is always on the edge since statistics say
83% of Net surfers come to a site by means of web searching.
This figure is partially confirmed by the DMLR online poll,
that says 77-81% of visitors had found the url www.dmlr.org
through SE --see the SE list I'm used to prepare for the url
(Uniform Resource Locator) submission,
http://www.dmlr.org/webmarketing/SE.htm You will find there some links to pay per click SE.
These sites have developed a system to sell targeted traffic
to website depending on the budget to get one visitor, for
example, 0.30 euro.
Plus priority to gain traffic derived from bidding on the
keywords the potential customers are used to type into the
SE. If you bid right highly your web location appears at
the top of the results list provided by the SE.
Trends occurred past year on SE sector are mainly the
following:
- total number increased (that number's expected to exceed
3,000);
- some SEs were bought out by other companies or had inked
partnership with online global players --portals, networks;
- the free submission to SE has been turned into the more
segmented offering that generally provides pay-per-add-url
service for commercial sites and free service for non-profit
ones. Note:
Different prices mean different degree of guarantee on
the results coming from a website registration.
The pricing seems to settle on a three-level model:
<> max. price 250 euro, submission with guarantee of
listing within two workdays / one week;
<> min. price 120 euro, submission with guarantee of
reading appoximately within 2-3 months;
<> free with no guarantee on reading and/or listing.
So be aware of the conditions of use before you invest in
SE or directories. And be sure to have or hire someone to
submit frequently the website and check out its presence.
Related articles:
DMLR*News 27/iv DMLR*News 23/ii --M-- Meta. ABC of Web Marketing starts from the chapter on Meta tags,
the instructions to put at the beginning of each web page
to "speak" to the robots that will visit and review it in
order to enter the search engines selection!
This is not the place to repeat the golden rules on
writing meta tags after millions of articles other web
sites have published for the budding web marketer.
Probably the best approach to the meta tags is something
like ignoring or copying them from other business sites.
Web designers are supposed to build the web pages in a way
to optimize the capture of the right information by the
automatic operators. These are used to visit the
increasing number of web pages over the Internet --someone
counts them for us and fixed the number at 2-3 billions at
present. And these robots love to find instructions well
prepared according to their requirements.
So ignoring the meta tags would signify your website has
been built by a web-savvy agency or designer and you don't
have to devote your precious time in such a boring activity.
My second tip prescribes to copy the meta tags from other
websites, particularly if you are a beginner and you have
clearly understood what is your web model to import. Follow
the leaders by watching their meta tags --as yet you visited
the web site, now start to read what's behind the facade!
For both the ways --ignoring vs. copying-- I make you one
example.
Once I was surfing on a website of an aftermarket car
business whose marketing manager I had to meet the next day.
I was looking for any possible information about that
website and therefore I used the "view > page source" option
of the browser to read in deep the main page I was visiting.
That investigation did reveal a lack of very important tags
such as meta-content and meta-description. When I spoke to
the manager personally about their online strategy, I learnt
their support was a local firm providing all the services,
from the Internet connection to the website design to the
promotion. This global outsourcing by an external staff was
probably good for technical set up but far unfit for the web
promotion. Nothing to say the manager could not even imagine
the home page was so much of poor quality from a search
engine point of view.
Meta tags, http://www.dmlr.org/webmarketing/META.htm --L-- Last Minute. To enter the DMLR seminar launched on February from this
e-news, I shall explain you some added facts. The seminar
will bear out the 4-year case history of DMLR as website
and newsletter, passing from the naive style to the
statistics able to demonstrate strenghts and limits of
this venture.
Tips and good results to teach from, plus mistakes and
lacks to avoid by everyone who is managing or willing to
manage a similar project, both for business or personal
branding.
Seminar day is March 20, 2002.
Final submission deadline is March 2, 2002.
From now people interested in that can FAX to me the form!
Remember you must be a DMLR*News subscriber ;-)
More details on how to proceed here:
DMLR*News Feb02 Online form #1 Online form #2 --R-- Results at Primo 2001. Since 1998 I have been running a virtual website award
that makes sense towards both web masters and web users.
Nominees were 28 from several countries and websites
belong to any kind of top level domain (com, net, org, gov).
So in order of appearance on DMLR Top4 magazine in 2001:
Now the score for each of them...
Primo Award 2001, http://www.dmlr.org/come/primo01.htm And the winner is...
"...No Peace Without Justice [total score 12.60] as the best
example of online venture supporting a non-profit organization.
Its subjects of peace and justice have been designed to reach,
serve and involve anyone around the world".
Please, go to npwj.org and be supporter of peace!
Related articles:
- Primo Award 2000 - Site scoring criteria - DMLR*News 18/ii Next installment
DMLR*News Gold, April.
*******************
DMLR*News is a free email monthly newsletter.
I have been publishing it since 1997, now on www.dmlr.org.
