Serch Engines

deborahbur · Post by **deborahbur** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 10:55 am

I have a website but need to know what search engines to use that are not too expensive and give good results.
http://www.marthasvineyardglass.com

Thanks
Deborah

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 8:22 pm

Hi Deborah,

I would like to take a stab at answering your question, but am confused. Are you trying to submit your website to a search engine? If so, I recommend using bCentral. ...or are you wondering whether to use a "pay per click" portal site? ...or Google?

If you are interested in our new "accessories" section coming up early next year, let me know. We will be expanding to include tableware, cabinet knobs & pulls, etc.

I like your work!

Bert Weiss · Post by **Bert Weiss** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 12:17 pm

deborahbur wrote:I have a website but need to know what search engines to use that are not too expensive and give good results.
http://www.marthasvineyardglass.com

Thanks
Deborah

The search engines will find you all on their own. Good keywords and lots of links are very helpful to getting a good rating. Don't link to spammers as Google will penalize you for that.

These days Google is the only player that matters.

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 12:44 pm

A comment on this - submitting to search engines through a company like bCentral ($35 or so) will expedite this process considerably. Bert's suggestion of making sure your keywords & description meta tags are set up properly is important before you submit.

The side benefit of a service like bCentral is that you can use the site to do keyword analysis and ranking. I can see from your site, for example, that you haven't done the most important thing - a description. This is what Search engines that support META tags will display along with your title in their results. When creating your META tags, the first sentence of your description field is the most important to capture the attention of a user and use the rest of the description tag to elaborate further.

If you go to my website, look at the very top blue line (if you are using Internet Explorer) and read the sentence. This sentence may not make the most sense, but it uses the keywords that are most important to our business. The keywords in that first description sentence are the most important for search engines.

Once you have your website optimized, then submit - or just wait and eventually you will they will catch up to you.

If you want to see the results of what keyword/meta tag optimization will do for you, go to Google and put in: "glass artists". I believe we are the 5th site down - an incredible accomplishment as far as I am concerned. ...and one that I can tell you took months of optimization and employing myriad other "tricks" to accomplish. We continue to refine our site to make sure it is organized in a way that is conducive for search engines. There is no silver bullet here - there are hundreds of things you can do. But again, the simplest way to start is with keywords and your description.

...and then there are links - another important and often misunderstood concept. If you want to know more, just ask

Good luck and I hope this was helpful.

Brad Walker · Post by **Brad Walker** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 1:57 pm

JackHealy wrote:If you want to see the results of what keyword/meta tag optimization will do for you, go to Google and put in: "glass artists". I believe we are the 5th site down - an incredible accomplishment as far as I am concerned. ...and one that I can tell you took months of optimization and employing myriad other "tricks" to accomplish.

That does sound incredible. While I agree with most of what you've written, I find it unbelieveable that it would take a massive amount of effort and a fee to someone like bCentral to ensure that a search for the phrase "glass artists" would find the website glassartistsgallery.com. Seems to me that that would happen regardless of whether you used meta tags or paid for the privilege (especially on Google, which rates sites based on relevance and how often they're linked to by other sites).

To test my theory that a search for the name of a web site is likely to come up with that website, I went to Google and typed in "warm glass". Lo and behold, warmglass.com was the first entry. How did that happen? After all, I've spent absolutely zero dollars on promoting my website and zero minutes on worrying about meta tags.

I'm only being half serious, of course (and I hope you take this with the good humor intended) -- but I just had to point out that if glassartistsgallery.com comes close to the top of a search for the phrase "glass artists" it probably has more to do with the url than with anything your web developer did.

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 2:20 pm

- Yep - much of what you say is true, Brad. ...I guess I wasn't complete in my answer - the post was just getting too long. If I type in "glass artists gallery" I fully expect to be on the top of the list. ...however "glass artists" is a different thing all together. It would be like you expecting that you would come up to the top with just "glass" (because it's part of your name). And I can tell you that in the beginning, we didn't come up that high in the rankings for all the keywords we care about ("Glass Artists" may not have been the best example).

If you look at the website that Deborah originally inquired about, I don't see the name of her company in her description. When I searched using her full company name, I didn't see her pop up in the first page... My point was to demonstrate how important it is to set up descriptions and keywords properly. The reason a $35 investment is a good one is that for folks who aren't as web savvy as you could benefit from keyword optimization and some of the other help found on bCentral. The keyword submission service is just icing on the cake.

Hope this makes more sense.

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 2:23 pm

To Deborah:

One other suggestion as I look again at your description on your site. The words you use are: "Beautiful fused glass that is functional". You only have so many characters available. Take out the words "beautiful", "that" and "is". What are the most important search words for your work? Obviously "fused glass" is one of them. Will people search for you by your name? Maybe, maybe not. How about "glass plate" or "tableware"? Only you can decide, but food for thought.

Brad Walker · Post by **Brad Walker** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:03 pm

[quote="JackHealy"]My point was to demonstrate how important it is to set up descriptions and keywords properly. The reason a $35 investment is a good one is that for folks who aren't as web savvy as you could benefit from keyword optimization and some of the other help found on bCentral. The keyword submission service is just icing on the cake.
[quote]

Agreed, but with one major caveat. Google ranks sites based on how often they are referenced by other sites. One way to increase your ranking is simply to get other sites to link to your site.

Seems to me that the major question for Deborah is what she's trying to achieve. Relatively few artists actually SELL a lot of work via their sites. Instead, they use the galleries as a kind of portfolio -- they tell galleries and others about their work (often on a business card or a resume) and show off their work that way. Search engines don't usually enter into that equation.

Paid advertisements (like as the ones that pop up at the top of searches on Yahoo) might work to bring people to your site that wouldn't come otherwise, but I'm not sure how much glass is actually sold online (very little would be my guess, and mostly on places like Ebay, which is a different topic).

So the real question isn't about search engines, it's about what you want your site to be.

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:14 pm

Well said with another caveat - My understanding is that Google uses a formula that includes how often your site is referenced (and the size and type of those sites) - but also it still has to "crawl" through your site and keywords/descriptions/meta tags is very important in this process. Again - my humble opinion and experience.

Bottom line? You are absolutely right, Brad - it depends on what Deborah is trying to accomplish with her site. I can tell you from experience that we only sell an artist's work when we get a phone call and establish a relationship. The intent of our site is to get folks to call us - not online sales. Most of our artists use their sites as "portfolio sites" for their galleries.

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 4:03 pm

Great thread, Deborah. I'm watching this with interest, having been considering similar ideas as you recently.

Even paying Google for the clicks and I like the idea of having a gallery online that I can operate myself.

deborahbur · Post by **deborahbur** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:25 pm

I am so glad that you all have responded.......I need all the help I can get. I think alot of people on warm glass would like to read this post as many of them have their own websites.

Thanks again.

Deborah

rosanna gusler · Post by **rosanna gusler** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:10 pm

great thread! thanks, rosanna

jim simmons · Post by **jim simmons** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:51 pm

Brad Walker wrote:
JackHealy wrote:If you want to see the results of what keyword/meta tag optimization will do for you, go to Google and put in: "glass artists". I believe we are the 5th site down - an incredible accomplishment as far as I am concerned. ...and one that I can tell you took months of optimization and employing myriad other "tricks" to accomplish.
T

To test my theory that a search for the name of a web site is likely to come up with that website, I went to Google and typed in "warm glass". Lo and behold, warmglass.com was the first entry. How did that happen? After all, I've spent absolutely zero dollars on promoting my website and zero minutes on worrying about meta tags.

Also, "Warm glass" will display my site, (the 6th one down), and like Brad, I haven't invested a dime in promotion and the only time invested was to put together the site, Which with the help of templates only took this illiterate about 7 or 8 hours.
Jim

JackHealy · Post by **JackHealy** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:27 pm

Where you fall in the search engine results partially depends on the popularity of the keywords and how many other sites are using those same keywords. You can probably imagine that the amount of sites using "warm glass" are considerably less than "glass artist" - thus the competition I faced getting higher in this ranking was a bit stiffer. It's even more difficult in the categories I care about: lighting, sinks, etc. The competition in terms of the number of sites I compete against in these areas is fierce. In fact, I am redoing my website for the third time to go to a slightly different format that we believe will help us with these more difficult keywords.

Hopefully I have also conveyed in my previous posts that with a little diligence on keywords, you don't have to spend money on bCentral - I am only suggesting that through my experience, using tools like this have helped me raise my rankings faster than if I hadn't had the benefit of the tools.

One other suggestion - hopefully everyone who is really concerned about improving their website traffic is aware of Alexa? I use Alexa to help me determine the popularity of my site as compared to others (we have a ranking of around 150,000 which for a non-portal and non-forum site is pretty decent). You can also check stats for who is linking into your site and your competitions. Good stuff if you are really watching your traffic and trying to improve your ratings - as well as working on linking with quality sites.

Again, I hope this helps some of you and it is clear that the waters are a bit muddy with this subject - thus the incredible demand for quality webmasters in the commercial arena. Larger companies who depend on their websites are paying more and more for the specialists who will help them with exactly these issues.

Chaeli Sullivan · Post by **Chaeli Sullivan** » Sun Jan 04, 2004 6:59 pm

Jack Healy
You are absolutely "right on" about using metatags effectively. It makes a world of difference to Google and the other search engines. With the best usage of metatags, when viewers go to "glass artists" .... they find you on the first page of the search. Very few folks will click thru 15 pages of "glass artists" to see who's listed on every page ... and even if they do click thru (say 3-5 pages) they lose interest and inertia to see if someone new is going to be on page 12 !!!
Jack .... You've obviously studied this and are sharing valuable info !!!

Jim Simmons .... You are right, too. If one gets their site listed in more well-known websites it's a definate bonus. First, because you'll be "seen" there and associated with the image of the larger site; and, secondly, the search engines do note "clicks". So, You've increased your visibility in both aspects.
Chae

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