Search Engines Are Advertising That Works
What is the most effective advertising strategy for web marketers? Banner ads? Print ads? Spam mail? Sorry, none of the above! According to a July 1998 study by webCMO, the most effective method of generating web site traffic is "search engine submissions." This study asked web marketers for their perception of the effectiveness of different web site marketing techniques. The following data from the study shows ratings of over-all effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most effective. Search engine submissions 3.35 solicited or opt-in email 3.34 Offline advertising 3.04 press release 3.00 Banner advertising 2.85 discussion forums 2.83 Sponsorships 2.61 newsgroups 2.46 Strategic linking 2.44 spam 1.83 While submitting to search engines is the most effective method, submitting alone is not enough. That is only the first part of an effective search engine strategy. You also need to make sure that your site achieves a top ranking. Otherwise, no one will find your site even though you have submitted it to search engines. This extra effort will separate you from the vast majority of businesses on the Web. Another part of the webCMO study rated the effectiveness of different methods for generating sales. Search engines are close to the top of this chart, but opt-in mailing lists rate a little higher in this category. This is probably because sales associated with mass e-mailing are more easily tracked than sales from search engine traffic unless special software is used. Search engine promotion offers an advantage over most other marketing techniques because you can get results without having to spend hard earned money. Unlike acquiring mailing lists or buying banner ads, search engine submission and positioning is FREE. The trick to making a big profit is simply knowing how to do it properly. Types of Search Engines Key to improving your web site's rank in the different search engines is an understanding of the basic criteria by which search engines index and then retrieve documents. Before you submit your web site to each search engine, we want you to have the tools and information to maximize your results. There are two primary kinds of search services: 1. Search engines: These rely on "software spiders" to index web sites. You submit your page to a search engine and the spider will index your entire site. Theoretically, these spiders might find your site by accident, but odds are they won't unless you go to them and tell them about your site by filling out their "submit" page. Examples of search engines are AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos. 2. Directories: These rely on submissions from users and web site owners to populate their indexes. Most directories add your site to their index, but generally they link only to your home page rather than indexing the full text of each page on your site. Examples of directories are Yahoo! and Open Directory. We will refer to both search engines and directories as "search engines." This report deals with only the eight most important search engines including: Search Service: Type of Service: AltaVista search engine AOL search directory (OpenDirectory partnership) supplemented by inktomi when no matches available in the OpenDirectory Excite search engine HotBot search engine Go. com search engine Google search engine Lycos directory (OpenDirectory partnership) supplemented by the Lycos search engine matches when no exact matches in OpenDirectory MSN directory (through a partnership with LookSmart) supplemented by AltaVista's search engine matches when no exact matches are found in the LookSmart directory Snap directory WebCrawler search engine Yahoo! directory supplemented by inktomi when no exact matches available in the Yahoo directory database. These eight search engines are the most popular search services on the internet. They are where you should spend your time working to achieve top rankings.
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