Website Promotion
Introduction to Web Site Promotion and Search Engines
1. What was the phrase you used in your search? List
a high ranking Web site (URL) and its business name. Name puzzles
http://www.unameittoys.com -- You Name It Toys
2. What types of product offerings does
it have? Stool puzzles, name
puzzles, picture puzzles, alphabet and map puzzles
3. Based on its content, product or
services who appears to be their chief target markets? The primary target market would be
consumers purchasing gifts for young children – parents, grandparents,
relatives.
4. What are the site’s main content
areas or features? Home page, Catalog
pages, Shopping Cart, About Us page, FAQ page, Privacy policy, Links page and Contact
information page.
5. Does the web site have a sense of
visual appeal and is it easily navigable? It is visually appealing for the most
part. The navigation is divided into two
separate areas – the marketing/shopping navigation and the informational
navigation. The pages are all based upon the same tabular design template
(except for the catalog, links, FAQ and shopping cart pages – which contain
more straight information) and so are consistent across the entire site.
6. Does it offer some degree of interactivity or
viral marketing (i.e. surveys, mailing lists to join, forms, refer a friend,
e-postcards)? Other items like pdfs for download or enewsletters to subscribe
to? There is a “Forward this site to a friend” email link and a comments
form.
7.
Does it have some of the elements listed under “search engine friendliness
features” in our text? (See Chapter 6). For example
does it use frames, splash pages (both unfriendly) and contain relevant
keywords (friendly feature)?
a. Review the site’s copy, page titles and
hidden meta tags (keywords and description) to see if
it is optimized for select keyword phrases.
The keywords
used are relevant to the products offered.
Each page uses the same META tags – there is no individual page
optimization of TITLE and
For the search term I used - “name puzzles” - my personal site http://www.asherwoodcrafts.com used to be in the top 4-5 listings on every major search engine, and for some other terms was (and still is) #!. I have not done any updates or implemented any new optimization in the past two years because I have started a new business and then moved from TX to NC. I had previously followed most of the proven techniques for high rankings and in completing this week’s assignment – I am glad to say that most of the practices that I was doing on my own were actually the right way to get the rankings I once had. That being said, it is a little disheartening to see the ranking of the site I used in comparison to my own – since they did little in terms of accepted, effective optimization practices. While it looks like I am dong everything right – I have dropped. I still get good traffic, but I am hoping with a little tweaking I will be back on the top of the rankings soon.