Search Engines and Linking -

The traffic you can get from a search engine really depends on how well you are ranked, and under which search terms you rank well.

Most of my visitors are from Yahoo, Infoseek, and Alta Vista. The others don't rank me as well.

However, I get a ton of traffic from repeat visitors and reciprocal links. These are the best places to get traffic initially, as the search engines are constantly changing.

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John Pollock
www.pageresource.com
www.javascriptcity.com

for all my sites i get 40% of my page impressions from return visitors

30% from recip links

25% from payed links

5% from search engines (haven't figure the search engine game out yet for high ranking)

Sorry, I strayed a little from the original question, so I'll answer that now. For the one site (have 5) that I have listed on Yahoo (the only search engine it's listed on) I get about 20-50 unique visitors a day from it. Thing is I'm listed under Axis & Allies, a little known board game turned pc game. So, if your listed under a popular keyword or directory category you could probably experience much much much higher unique visitors a day, like say "free stuff".

I envy all of you that have a site listed in Yahoo! As far as I have figured that out, the only way to get in there is being lucky or look for an empty category and buid a site that fits in it.

I am kinda confused why I get so many referrals from search engines from people who search for the name of my site, like
&searchString=goKewl.com
Why would anybody search for a site that he already knows.

I have one site that gets constant exelent traffic from infoseek, but my new one doesnt get any good listing. Thus far I get hits from altavista, excite, webcrawler, lycos, looksmart and yahoo(by inktomi).

Did anybody here pay to get looked @ by Yahoo? They now have that option for business sites. I dont know whether its worth the 200$

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

I'm wondering: How do you guys know where your links are coming from?

I know some link exchange and pay-to-click services provide reports, but many don't. And certainly not any sort of reports from the search engines.

Thanks.

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Original Artwork...
Hand Tied Flies...
Unique Books...
And More!

ArtsNFlies.com

Every time a browser requests a new page it sends the referring page in the request header.

To find out where your visitors are coming from, you can either analyze your server logs, catch the http-referrer upon every request with a little cgi script, or use JavaScript. I use the last method. It has the disadvantage that you miss some people if they have their JavaScript turned off but that only about 2%

Later,

Malte

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

My service gives stats but only the IP address and I don't have time to reference each and every hit.

Can you suggest any good free CGI scripts to automatically capture the referer's URL? Or any place I can see an example of some Javascript to do that?

Thanks.

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Original Artwork...
Hand Tied Flies...
Unique Books...
And More!

ArtsNFlies.com

Hi goKewl,

I have a few pages (three I think) that get over 100 a day from Lycos, a couple on AltaVista bringing about 200 a day total. I get oh 50 to 60 a day from Yahoo, Excite, and Infoseek as a total average.

I think the key to getting placed well in the major search engines is to design your pages (and I use doorway pages) for the perticular keyword phrase you think people would likely use to find the information or product you offer on the site.

I personally do a study on keywords and how people use them in phrases then pick a three word phrase and design the doorway pages around that phrase.

Then you have to make a doorway page for each search engine using that same keyword phrase because each engine indexes differently. Even then it is sometimes just a crap shoot as far as placement. Also, you can spend lots of time designing pages for a perticular keyword phrase and never get results if you are wrong about the popularity of that phrase.

I subscribe to a custom keyword ranking program which monitors five keywords that I choose and then mails me weekly reports on how those words are being used in the major search engines. I will run those five words a few weeks then change the words. That has been a good way for me to find out how people use the words that discribe my offers.

I also use Web Position Gold to design the doorway pages. It is a great program. One of the few that keeps up on search engine changes and has frequent updates for download so you can adjust your pages and stay fairly well ranked.

What I have explained in breif detail here is a fairly logical approach that is starting to work for me.

Good Luck,
Doug

Technel Services
www.technel.net

Would the body of a frameset document be usable as doorway page?

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Malte Ubl
http://goKewl.com
Germany

GoKewl,

I don't see why you couldn't do that. Just rename the body page to something else and submit it as a new page to the engines. I normally try to name the doorway pages in such a way as they would be easily indentified by me as doorway pages for perticular engines, like: page-a.html (for altavista) page-ao.html (aol netfind) page-e.html (for Excite) That is just easier for me to keep track of them.

Also, just take your time doing the meta tags and content so as to meet the indexing criteria for each particular search engine.

If you are interested in the keyword mailings I spoke of you can sign up for a free general keyword mailing (once each two weeks I think) here:wordspot.com
Hope the UBB link codes work on this new board.

One thing I did not mention. Although you can use the body page for doorway pages. The actual reasoning behind making new and unique doorway pages is that when constructing and analizing your pages, you may find that a page that is "optimized" for good ranking in a major search engine may not be a page that makes for good reading because of the need to sometimes repeat a sentance or phrase. Even inserting your (ALT) tags on your images can be annoying to your visitors.

Just an after though on your question. As I mentioned, I find it easier to just make new doorway pages per keyword phrase's and build them from scratch.

It is not uncommon for doorway pages that are VERY effective in some search engines to be flat out annoying in appearance, but if it places well I will just put a Java Redirect code on it so people won't even see it unless they have java turned off. They just get forwarded to your site.

Hope some of this helps

I totally agree about webposition gold. It is absolutely excellent, and their knowledge base saves me about 30 hours per week. I have a link to it on my links page if anyone wants to download a free trial version.

I also use Submit Wolf Pro (for the lesser known search engines) just to get the mass coverage, but do not use it for the main 10 search engines.

This gives me the best of both worlds, in my opinion.

I have also found that, although occasionally I may completely disappear from a search engine, a really good way of generating consistent traffic is through webrings. BUT take note to follow this method:

1. Make a subdirectory called "ring"
2. Make a different page closely resembling your home page, and name it after every ring you wish to join.
3. Join as many rings as you like, and put each one on its own page.

This way, you get a steady flow of traffic and don't have to ruin the look of your site with lots of ghastly webring html fragments.

I am presently a member of about 15 webrings, and none of them know which others I belong to.

Oh, I also have my own webring and any of you are more than welcome to join. It's at www.millenium-online.com/astrology/ring.htm

Kind regards,

Monty Harris.
A Sign of the Times Astrology
www.millenium-online.com/astrology

Re. Java redirect.

I know many of the search engines look for a meta refresh tag of less than 5 seconds or so, but are they oblivious to a java redirect?

Monty.
www.millenium-online.com/astrology

Jaiem,

Check out: http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs

HTH

Curtis

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How do you do that? I am glad to hear that. is there any ways or direct method to do this? I am sure SEO helps you a lot. You must spent your time on it, so it gets so many visitors.