Several are concerned about HOW WILL ANYONE FIND OUR WEBSITE? I am finding that building awareness is not an easy task, so let's check out what the experts tell us. Then perhaps we can work on a plan.
Configuring: Rules for site ranking by search engines
When you search for a topic using a search engine, you will almost instantly sort through the millions of pages in the engine's database and receive the ones that best match your search topic. The best match for your search will be listed first.
However, search engines don't always get it right. Sometimes pages that don't relate to your search make it through, and sometimes it may take a little work to find what you want.
Search engines follow a set of rules to determine which pages best match your search. The main rules are related to the location and frequency of keywords on a specific Web page.
Most search engines will place a heavy emphasis on the TITLE tag of your Web page. If you are looking for Hawaiian Vacations, the search engine will first find sites with "Hawaiian Vacations" listed in the Title Tag - there is an assumption being made that those pages will best relate to your search.
Search engines will also check to see if your search words appear near the top of a Web page, such as the headline or the first few paragraphs of text. The assumption is that any relevant pages will mention those words in the beginning.
How often a keyword or key phrase appears in the Web page is another factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine analyzes how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a Web page. Those pages with a higher frequency of keywords are often considered more relevant. Updated 04/16
Keywords: Finding your best search keywords
What are they looking for?
When you want to find something on the web, chances are good that you start by typing in a keyword or phrase into a search engine. When someone goes looking for products, services, or content like your site's, you want them to see your site at the top of the search results. The way to achieve this is by strategically positioning your site to maximize your search engine ranking on the most important keywords and phrases. But how to decide which keywords matter most to your site?
Tried and True Methods
There are several ways to find your strategic keywords, but there are a few obvious sources. First of all, think of what words you would use to search for your site's content. The next obvious place to look is in the "keywords" META tags and page titles of other web sites. Finally, look at newsgroups, mailing lists, and discussion groups on similar subjects to make sure you haven't missed any keywords. Simply browsing the subject lines of a few days worth of newsgroup postings will probably give you all the keywords you need.
Now, there's a Better Way...
So, you've got a list of keywords written down. Now it's time to find out which ones really matter to web surfers. We'll accomplish this by taking advantage of a "pay per click" search engine and a "pay for placement" site. For each keyword or phrase on your list, try it out to see how popular that search is.
After finding out how popular each keyword or phrase on your list really is, you can focus your search engine positioning efforts in the right place. Nearly every web site operator in your field of interest is trying to maximize their ranking on the most popular keywords. You may not be able to reach anywhere near the top of the list for your most prized keywords. Now that you know how popular each one is, though, you can work your way down the list until you start to hit pay dirt.
Always try to rank well on the most popular terms, but don't forget that sometimes the best gold is a little farther down the mine shaft. We've gotten quite a few hits from the term "Web site promotion toolkit," but it may take us months to see a top 20 position for "Web site promotion." While we tweak our doorway pages for the most popular search terms in our field, we're still getting traffic from several search engines. And that's the way this game is played.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Creating a Blog ~ R.Lowry
I would like to suggest using Blogs, such as this, to convey new ideas & activities through our website.
What's a blog?
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.
Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others.
And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.
Publish your thoughts
A blog gives you your own voice on the web. It's a place to collect and share things that you find interesting— whether it's your political commentary, a personal diary, or links to web sites you want to remember.
Many people use a blog just to organize their own thoughts, while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands. Professional and amateur journalists use blogs to publish breaking news, while personal journalers reveal inner thoughts.
Whatever you have to say, Blogger can help you say it.
Engage your friends
Blogging is about more than just putting your thoughts on the web. It's about connecting with and hearing from anyone who reads your work and cares to respond. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog — let just a few friends or the entire world see what you have to say!
Blogger Comments let anyone, anywhere, offer feedback on your posts. You can choose whether you want to allow comments on a post-by-post basis, and you can delete any comments you don't like.
Access Controls let you decide who can read and who can write to your blog. You can use a group blog with multiple authors as an excellent communication tool for small teams, families and other groups. Or as a single author, you can create a private online space for collecting news, links, and ideas, to keep to yourself or share with as many readers as you want.
Blogger Profiles let you find people and blogs that share your interests. Your Blogger Profile, where you can list your blogs, your interests, and more, lets people find you (but only if you want to be found).
Design your blog
Whether you're starting your blog or just think it's time to give your existing blog a facelift, Blogger's user-friendly editing tools help you easily design a great-looking page.
Templates — Our collection of templates will get you started with an attractive site right away without you having to learn any HTML, though Blogger also allows you to edit your blog's HTML code whenever you want.
Custom colors and fonts — When you're ready to take the next step, you can further customize our templates to create a design that perfectly reflects you and your blog.
Drag-and-drop page elements — Blogger's simple drag-and-drop system lets you easily decide exactly where your posts, profiles, archives and other parts of your blog should live on the page.
Post photos
Sometimes you just want to share a photo. There's a button for uploading photos in the Blogger interface. Just click the photo button to upload a photo from your computer. If the photo you'd like to put on your blog is already on the web that's fine too. Just tell us where it is.
You can also send camera phone photos straight to your blog while you're on-the-go with Blogger Mobile.
Go Mobile
Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you're on-the-go. All you need to do is send a message to go@blogger.com from your phone. You don't even need a Blogger account. The message itself is enough to create a brand new blog and post whatever photo and text you've sent.
Later, if your want to claim your mobile blog or switch your posts to another blog, just sign in to go.blogger.com and use the claim code Blogger sent to your phone.
We support most popular mobile carriers in the US and worldwide. If Blogger Mobile is unavailable from your provider, you can still send posts to your blog using Mail-to-Blogger.
Get started
The fastest way to understand blogging is to try it out. We've worked really hard to make it really easy for you. Just click the link below, and you can be part of the phenomenon that's transforming web and media to a participatory activity in less than five minutes. Seriously.
What will happen then? Who knows. It might be fun, though.
And remember: Blogger is totally free, and if you have trouble, just click the Help button from any screen, and you can find the answer you're looking for—or even ask our dedicated support staff.
What's a blog?
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.
Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others.
And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.
Publish your thoughts
A blog gives you your own voice on the web. It's a place to collect and share things that you find interesting— whether it's your political commentary, a personal diary, or links to web sites you want to remember.
Many people use a blog just to organize their own thoughts, while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands. Professional and amateur journalists use blogs to publish breaking news, while personal journalers reveal inner thoughts.
Whatever you have to say, Blogger can help you say it.
Engage your friends
Blogging is about more than just putting your thoughts on the web. It's about connecting with and hearing from anyone who reads your work and cares to respond. With Blogger, you control who can read and write to your blog — let just a few friends or the entire world see what you have to say!
Blogger Comments let anyone, anywhere, offer feedback on your posts. You can choose whether you want to allow comments on a post-by-post basis, and you can delete any comments you don't like.
Access Controls let you decide who can read and who can write to your blog. You can use a group blog with multiple authors as an excellent communication tool for small teams, families and other groups. Or as a single author, you can create a private online space for collecting news, links, and ideas, to keep to yourself or share with as many readers as you want.
Blogger Profiles let you find people and blogs that share your interests. Your Blogger Profile, where you can list your blogs, your interests, and more, lets people find you (but only if you want to be found).
Design your blog
Whether you're starting your blog or just think it's time to give your existing blog a facelift, Blogger's user-friendly editing tools help you easily design a great-looking page.
Templates — Our collection of templates will get you started with an attractive site right away without you having to learn any HTML, though Blogger also allows you to edit your blog's HTML code whenever you want.
Custom colors and fonts — When you're ready to take the next step, you can further customize our templates to create a design that perfectly reflects you and your blog.
Drag-and-drop page elements — Blogger's simple drag-and-drop system lets you easily decide exactly where your posts, profiles, archives and other parts of your blog should live on the page.
Post photos
Sometimes you just want to share a photo. There's a button for uploading photos in the Blogger interface. Just click the photo button to upload a photo from your computer. If the photo you'd like to put on your blog is already on the web that's fine too. Just tell us where it is.
You can also send camera phone photos straight to your blog while you're on-the-go with Blogger Mobile.
Go Mobile
Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you're on-the-go. All you need to do is send a message to go@blogger.com from your phone. You don't even need a Blogger account. The message itself is enough to create a brand new blog and post whatever photo and text you've sent.
Later, if your want to claim your mobile blog or switch your posts to another blog, just sign in to go.blogger.com and use the claim code Blogger sent to your phone.
We support most popular mobile carriers in the US and worldwide. If Blogger Mobile is unavailable from your provider, you can still send posts to your blog using Mail-to-Blogger.
Get started
The fastest way to understand blogging is to try it out. We've worked really hard to make it really easy for you. Just click the link below, and you can be part of the phenomenon that's transforming web and media to a participatory activity in less than five minutes. Seriously.
What will happen then? Who knows. It might be fun, though.
And remember: Blogger is totally free, and if you have trouble, just click the Help button from any screen, and you can find the answer you're looking for—or even ask our dedicated support staff.
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