Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [43]
On a late night flight to Cleveland, I was sitting next to a woman and her young daughter. We were having a nice conversation when she mentioned she had started her own business but was frustrated with her website. Of course, my ears perked up, and my attention was captured. I’ve heard my fair share of stories of bad advice, but this woman’s story was right up at the top of the worst. She spun a long tale of woe, recounting bits of advice she’d endured during her short career with this website. I sat amazed as she shared with me the advice she’d been given and the things she’d been told to do.
I realized that many people offering advice about website marketing must have read an article or two years ago and now think they understand one or two “tricks” that work magic in the search engines. Others seem to be coming from plain ignorance. And the person who pays for the bad advice? The business owner, who is usually on a shoestring budget and just wants to run her business. Or, it’s the website manager who can’t afford to make a bad decision, because it will cost the company tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more, and possibly their job. This lady beside me on the plane doesn’t have time for unfounded advice that could destroy her business.
Unfortunately, I cannot educate those who think they know everything already. But I can do everything in my power to be sure that website marketers have the information they need to correctly build and market their website. All they want are straight answers in a language they can understand. To start this week’s activities, take a look at some of the misleading advice this business owner was given. There is a common theme to it all—that there is a “trick” to having success in the search engines.
Conflicting Technologies One consultant told her she needed to move her website to GoDaddy’s platform. She transferred the domain registration, her email accounts…everything. Unfortunately, it took a few weeks of frustration before GoDaddy’s support team realized she was Mac-based. GoDaddy’s site-builder program was incompatible with the Mac operating system. GoDaddy’s advice? Buy a PC. Needless to say, it took just as long to get everything off GoDaddy and back to her original registrar as it did to transfer things over in the first place. The result? Countless hours and dollars wasted from very bad advice.
Search Engine Submission The next thing she was told was to pay for a submission service to search engines. This is where I had to bite my lip to keep from exploding. No one has had to submit a site to the search engines since 1999. Submitting your site to search engines is a thing of the past. It’s not necessary and usually is a rip-off offer. Seriously, $29.95 to submit your website to 100 search engines? Name 10 search engines…nope? Most people can’t.
Search engines will naturally find your website. Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines. In fact, anyone who has anything to do with creating, programming, developing, and marketing a website should read those guidelines. Search engines want your website, and they work hard to get it. Just by picking up a few links to your website, you can ensure that the search engines will find your pages.
Domain Registration Amazingly, all the advice to this point was enough to make me scream out in frustration, but that wasn’t the best part. Her Mac guy, who helps her computer run smoothly, tells her that the “trick” to getting into Google is to register her domain for 10 years. I remember that bit of advice when it was first floated as a tactic in the late 1990s.
There is a debated element of Google’s ranking algorithm where search engines may evaluate the length of time that a domain is registered. Anecdotal evidence suggests that domains registered for a year are not as invested as domains registered for 10 years, which is based on the idea that the owner has made a commitment to the domain.