"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
_____________________________________________________

                 March 2001

In this issue: "You've always had to pay one way or
another for search engine placement. Now it's going
to be more direct. Here's how to get the most for
your money."


_____________________________________________________

   "The Desktop Global Marketer" is free, and may be 
   re-published freely with permission. We encourage 
   you to give it to your friends.

   For subscription (or un-subscription) details,
   and other information, please see the end of the 
   newsletter.

   For any other purpose, please write to:
   	jamie(at)siderealdesigns.com
   Or visit us at:
   	http://siderealdesigns.com
_____________________________________________________

It has always been the case that unless you had a very unusual
set of keywords or were very lucky, you had to work very hard
to get a high ranking in the search engines. For almost
everyone this meant hiring an engine placement specialist to
constantly monitor your rankings and twiddle your page
content, and to constantly re-submit your pages, and this does
not come cheaply.

Sure there have repeatedly been new tricks discovered such as
gateway pages, but as fast as these become popular the engine
managers find ways to defeat them. Nowdays ranking more often
depends on things such as how many other pages reference your
site, or how long people who select it stay there before
returning to the engine, than they do on your actual page
content, and certainly metatags are largely an irrelevant
antique. Some engines now even penalize you for using them.

So, one way or another you were always going to pay for search
engine placement. The process has now become more direct. It's
still important to have your site properly set up, but if you
even want it looked at by the engines it's now going to cost.

Among the major engines (and I am lumping together directories
and search engines here,) Yahoo and LookSmart are asking payment
to be considered for inclusion. Others are offering ways to
improve your ranking for money. You can still submit and hope
using the free submission methods, but you are going to have to
compete with people who are paying, and some of the major engines
such as Inktomi are actually down-ranking you for using their own
free submission pages.

The big guy, Alta Vista, has just started using a registration
procedure that defeats automated submission. Check out
http://add-url.altavista.com/cgi-bin/newurl? to see how it works.
It seems likely this is an initial step towards pay-to-place.

So, given that it's going to cost you one way or another, how can
you optimize your return on investment? The first thing to know
is that what appear to be a lot of important search engine
databases are really only at most a few. for example, AOL, MSN,
and other large sites really all use the same few major search
engines to supply their search functions. Most of the smaller
engines simply take from the major ones, and even the majors
usually default to one another. Thus, placement on a few
carefully-chosen engines will bring you heavy results, while
paying others might be simply duplicating the same result at
increased cost.

Here are some of the recommended places to put your money:

Yahoo: They are asking $199 for submission, and it is the ONLY
way to get into their top categories, even though they claim it
only guarantees consideration, and you still need to watch how
you submit. (For tips see http://keywordmarketing/yahoo.asp)
Yahoo is definitely one of the major places you need to be.  Once
you're in you can "sponsor" your category for even more money and
greater prominence.

LookSmart: They claim to serve 75% of all search traffic, and it
may be true. They serve many major portal sites. The $199 for an
"expedited" submission is probably worth it, although again the
claim on paper is it buys you nothing but early consideration. If
you believe it I have a bridge you may also want to purchase. You
definitely need to be listed here.

Inktomi: Another of the major engines, once the largest, and
currently serving AOl, MSN and many others. You can be listed in
the directory in 48 hours for $20 per URL.

NBCI: You probably knew this under the name "SNAP." Basic
submission is free, but if you want to be reviewed for
'recommended sites' (read make it worth your while to be here) it
will cost you $199 (is this figure starting to be familiar?)

Two places that are still (as of this writing) free, and which
are important because other major portals and engines draw from
them, are Google (google.com), and DMOZ (DMOZ.org) and you should
be sure to be there.

Finally, I'll repeat what avid readers of this column have
frequently heard. Don't neglect the 50% or more of your traffic
that will come from non-search engine sources no matter how
well-placed you become: putting your URL on everything be it
Internet or plain paper, and developing a network of reciprocal
links. See our previous newsletters for tips on doing this.

Best,

Jamie






_____________________________________________________

To subscribe, send email to: 
	newsletter-request(at)siderealdesigns.com
and include the word   subscribe   as the only item in
the body of the letter.

To unsubscribe, send email to: 
	newsletter-request(at)siderealdesigns.com
and include the word   unsubscribe   as the only item in
the body of the letter.

If you have problems with either of these, write directly
to jamie(at)siderealdesigns.com for prompt attention from
a human.

If you would like to re-publish any of our newsletters,
at no cost, please contact jamie(at)siderealdesigns.com.

"Sidereal" is pronounced sy-DEER-ee-all, and means "of
or pertaining to the stars, the heavens, etc."


______________________________________________________________________________
Sidereal Designs, Inc. "Making The Web Simple."   http://siderealdesigns.com