Learn Profit Tips from Internet Marketing Specialist

O.K. so you may know how the search engines work and you may know that you need to be listed by them, but do you know which engines get you more bang for the buck?

Here we will review the top search engines on the Internet today.

Google

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several years. They have gone from beta testing, to becoming the Internet's largest index of web pages in a very short time. Their spider, affectionately named "Googlebot", crawls the web and provides updates to Google's index about once a month.

Google.com began as an academic search engine. Google, by far, has a very good algorithm of ranking pages returned from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has become so popular over the years. Google has several methods which determine page rank in returned searches.

Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on the Internet today, and the site went live in August of 1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited directory, and provides secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around, as far as web directories and search engines go. Unfortunately, however, it is also one of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your site. Even if you pay it doesn't guarantee you will get listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is "reviewed" by a Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index update.

AltaVista

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider named 'scooter' accessing their pages. Scooter used to be AltaVista's robot. However, since the Feb 2001 site update, a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest search engines on the net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index your entire site, although the past few months scooter hasn't been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good amount of time to index your site depending on how large your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index, however they do pull the top 5 results of each search from Overture (formerly Goto).

Inktomi

Inktomi's popularity grew several years ago as they powered the secondary search database that had driven Yahoo. Since then, Yahoo as switched to using Google as their secondary search and backend database, however Inktomi is just as popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so. Their spiders are named "Slurp", and different versions of Slurp crawls the web many different times throughout the month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There isn't much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep crawl a site. Slurp usually only spider's pages that are submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more.

Lycos

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named "T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags to heavily, instead it relies on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages returned in results. The URL, META title, text headings, and word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. However, any page that isn't at least 75 words in content is not indexed.

Excite

Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL's, and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite search results, you need to be either listed with Overture or Inktomi.

Looksmart

Getting a listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart's results appear in many search engines, including AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and many others.

Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If your site is generally non-business related, you can submit your site to Zeal (Looksmart's sister site ), or if you are a business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner sites if you are approved.

Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be listed on Looksmart and its partner sites.

AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years

Take some time to register with these search engines as soon as possible and watch the traffic grow.

Grabbing the attention of an online surfer is challenging enough, so you want to turn as many viewers as possible into actual buyers. And you want to entice buyers to become repeat buyers.

Once you've told the product story, how do you get them to push that "buy button" again? Here are some traffic conversion hot buttons to add to your site today:

1. Expose your competition's warts. You can expect popular products to attract competitors. Study the competition and find the weaknesses or differences that you can exploit. Do you deliver faster or offer discount shipping, give choice of downloads or CDs, gift wrap, ship internationally? Let buyers know what sets you apart from your competitors.

2. Go ahead - name drop! Find a celebrity to endorse your product. Not necessarily a movie star, just people who are known and respected in your niche market. Send your product out to niche superstars and ask for their honest review as well as permission to use the comments on your website. You benefit for the star power of the endorsers.

3. Prove it! Find research that advances your product in the marketplace. Even a basic study that shows "7 out of 10 people who regularly exercise are less likely to get prickly heat," might be linked loosely to your product. Make the connection reasonable. If there isn't any research, make your own by using results from an online survey or poll.

4. Test yourself. Create three different pitches that play on your main product. Use each page for 10 days. At the end of the month, compare results. The pitch that captures the most buyers isn't always the one you like the most. Remember, it's about what clicks with the buyer - even if it isn't your favorite.

5. Befriend to win. Make sure that your sales copy creates a connection with your buyer. You can make money with straight sales copy but you'll make more money when you build a relationship with buyers.

Let them into your life enough that they care about you and they will be more willing to invest in your products. You can set up a forum to discuss your niche interest or add short reviews from your buyers.

Feature a buyer with a photo and candid interview. When you give buyers reasons to drop by regularly, then you are developing a relationship. Needless to say, your "special offer" email gets read when others are sent to the trash folder.

In this edition we will discuss how to think out of the Web - out of the World Wide Web, in the never- ending quest for new customers.

Text links, banners and search engines are all ways to attract clients and build a customer base. It's our buyers that's we're really talking about here. But the Web isn't the only place to look for customers even for Web-based businesses.

Some of the old traditional methods like word-of-mouth referrals still work just as well, and still bring me a fair bit of cash each month. Here are some tips to help you grab as many customers as you can while you're setting up your business and getting your online marketing programs in place.

Know Your Market

Whatever your line of business, you've got to know your market. You have to know who your clients are, what they want and what makes them buy. Do the market research, check out your competitors, create a formal marketing plan-but take the effort to put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. Otherwise you won't get any!

Bring Out Your Benefits

You might think you know what your product's sales points are-you might even be dead proud of them-but the fact is, your buyers don't give a toss about all the wonderful gizmos you've packed into your product. They just want you to answer one question: what's it going to do for me?

That's what all your marketing has to be about: explaining to your buyers how you're going to improve their life.

Make Your Site Sing

It can take a fair bit of effort and not a small amount of time to create a website that works. But you can't stop there. You're going to have to keep updating it, checking it and making sure all the links and addresses work. It's the first place to look when you notice your sales starting to drop, and it's crucial to keep them coming in.

Be Alert for New Marketing Opportunities

You must always be alert for opportunities to make new business contacts and not allow yourself to be caught off guard when opportunities arise. It doesn't matter if you're out shopping or at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, make sure that you have professional business cards, brochures, etc. on hand-and don't be afraid to use them.

Don't Keep Your Business a Secret

Tell everyone about your business and your product. You might even consider sending out a mass mailing to everyone you know, telling them what you're doing. Chances are, someone knows someone who wants what you've got, and friendly referrals usually bring the best business!

Find Repeat Customers

When it comes to building customers, there are clients who buy once-and clients who buy lots of times. It's the latter that you want to pack into your customer list; they're worth their weight in gold. Big companies are good places to prospect for repeat business (they have big demands and budgets) but always treat your repeat customers well. That might mean the odd discount or the occasional freebie, but the extra business should make up for it.

To wrap it up, customers are customers no matter where you find them. Customers found on the Web respond to many of the same things that make them customers in the real world. The sooner you think in those terms and apply that knowledge to your site, the better your site will perform.

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