"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)



   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,

   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are

   considering becoming one.

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                 October 2001



In this issue: "I'm going to tell you what I did to get

sixth position on the most important search engine all

by myself, and where you can get the book that tells you

how for free."



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   "The Desktop Global Marketer" is free, and may be 

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Yes, this is the October newsletter, and it's way late.

I've been busy but I'll try to get November out as well

this month anyway. 



Continuing to report on the results of first-hand 

experiments in marketing technology that I began a while 

back, I want to report on the topic of search engine 

placement because I had some unexpected success, and 

because I've found something very helpful and you can 

have it free.



As long-time readers know, I have always advised our clients

against focusing primarily on search engines as a means of

bringing in traffic. I continue to do so. That doesn't mean

you should neglect them however, so let's see how to do the

best we can there.



The basic problem is this: unless you have extremely

unusual keywords, 5 million other sites are going to be

vying with you for search engine placement. That means if

you have average luck you'll rank 2,500,000th. Since if

you're not in the top 30 you might as well not be there,

this is not good.



I know, you get ads every day guaranteeing to put you in the

top ten on the top engines for practically no money. Forget

those. There's always a scam behind it. Real search engine

placement specialists work hard and charge for it.



Instead I'm going to tell you what I did to get sixth
position on the most important search engine all by myself,

and where you can get the book that tells you how for free.

I undertook it as a sort of experiment to see just what

could be done realistically.



The best search engine around is Google. Not only is it

extremely important in itself, but Yahoo Web Pages rankings

simply mirror Google. You get the picture; this is the place

to be. So I set as my goal to be on the first page of Google

search results.



Next problem: what keywords to target? Anybody can get to

first place with unusual keywords; there's no

competition. But so what? No one will look for them so no

one will see you. I used an inexpensive service called Word

Tracker that advises you on frequency of search for keywords

and on the number of competing sites using them. They also

compute something called the "KEI" that gives you a figure

of merit for any keyword based on this information.



For me, web design had the best KEI, with web designer, web 

designers, etc. being less highly ranked. However, those of 

you who read my letter on targeted ad placement recently 

already know that that's misleading because people looking 

for web designers don't enter web design. The people who do

are looking for courses on it, books on it, tools for it, 

tips on good design, and a host of other things. From this

experience I already knew the clear choice for me had to be

"web designers." KEI is useful but you need to dig deeper.



At this point I came across an E-book (downloadable book

that runs on your machine) by Sumantara Roy. Roy is one of

the top search engine placement specialists around and the

book is incredibly meaty and helpful. I already had some of

the tools he recommends but had never really used

them, or at least not well. After reading it, I got busy. 



One of the things he recommends is a program called "Web

Position Gold." He doesn't recommend you do everything it

offers - for example creating doorway pages for you - but he

does recommend you use its knowledge base of search engines

to optimize your pages for particular engines. I used it to

optimize for Google.



There's a lot more you need to do of course. You have to

work really hard at those reciprocal links. You know I've

always advised reciprocal links as a way of getting traffic

that's not search engine-derived, but there's another reason

now. Most search engines today use link popularity as a very

important factor in weighting a site. (by contrast, most of

them practically ignore your keyword meta-tags nowdays.)

Reciprocal links build your link popularity measure. (Roy

also tells you other ways to do it, and some tools to use to

find the best sites to target for reciprocal links.)



You very much need to worry about the way keywords are used

in your text, however, and Web Position gold will analyze

that for you.



You have to worry about how and when you submit, which

engines don't like automated submissions, which ones

require repeated submissions, and which ones penalize you

for it. Roy covers some of this, and the regularly-updated

engine database in Web Position Gold advises you further 

on it.



You can also use it to compare relevant features of your

page to the pages that rank above you to get an idea what

they're doing that's working better than what you're doing.

This is even more powerful than the engine's statistical

preferences because it's particular to your situation.



So what happened? I worked at it for about a month, at which

time (ta da) I had Sidereal Designs in the sixth spot on

Google for web designers! Now that's pretty good because

there is an awful lot of competition for that keyword and

worse, most of the people competing for it are pretty savvy

about the web. Better yet, it put me on the first page,

because Google's default is ten listings per page.



Then I turned around and did the reverse experiment and left

it alone to see how fast it would sink. (You have to keep

working at it because other people are working to get ahead

of you.) To my surprise it stayed there for two months. As

of today it's fallen to thirteenth, so I'm off the first

page and I think I'll start working at it again, because it

did bring in business contacts.



This gives you the flavor of the beast, but I can't give an

extensive course here. Suffice to say it worked for me and

you should read Roy's book, get the tools, and follow his

advice. I am going to make that easy.



Got to my site, http://siderealdesigns.com and go down to

the bottom of the first page. Click on the free offer. It

will take you to a page where you can download Roy's book

free. Read it and decide if you want to do that work

yourself. If not you might consider hiring Roy, that's

obviously why he's written the book, but it's not just a

come-on, his stuff is the real thing, straight from the

shoulder, and I've proven it works.



And while we're on truth in advertising, if you should

decide to buy any of the tools he recommends (which are not

his, by the way) and if you decide to buy them by clicking

on the links provided in the book, I will get a small

gratuity from the sellers of the tools because you got it

from my site. I tell you this because I never want to

recommend anything to you here with any suspicion of

bias. If you want to avoid me realizing anything from it,

all you have to do is surf to the vendors' web sites

directly. I don't get anything for your downloading the

book and reading it, so at least do that. If you have any

interest in search engine positioning, you'll find it

fascinating.



Sometime soon I'll report on how much effort it takes to

stay on page one once you're there.



best,



Ernie



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Sidereal Designs, Inc.               "Putting your business on the web"

http://siderealdesigns.com    301-916-5702   info(at)siderealdesigns.com