1. Industry Insights
2. Search Engine Visibility Tips

In this unpredictable economy, your website can be your most economical and effective marketing vehicle. There is a lot to be said about how to make your website more effective and to that end we will periodically write newsletters with tips on enhancing the effectiveness of your website as a marketing tool.

• Tell your customers what you do on the home page. I can't tell you how many sites forget to explain what they do on the home page. If a customer can't find out what you do right away, chances are they will not continue and you've lost their business. So take a quick look at your home page as if you were a complete stranger. Do you get it? Will your customers get it?
  
• Make sure search engines prominently display your Website. If the search engines can't find you many prospective customers won't find you either. We think this is so fundamentally important that we are devoting the entire tip section of this newsletter to this issue.

• Current Issue
• December 2003: Update on Federal Anti-Spam Legislation
• November 2003: Direct Mail Tips
• October 2003: Impact of Spam on Direct Email; Value of PR (Part III)
• July 2003: The Value of PR (Part II)
• March 2003: The Value of Public Relations (Part I)
• December 2002: Reader Feedback on Hawthorne's 50 Tips
• November 2002: Making Sales in a Tough Economy
• September 2002: The Secrets of Effective Communication with Customers, Employees and Partners
• June/July 2002: ROI & Distance Learning
• May 2002 Newsletter: Accelerating E-Learning Adoption Inside Organizations
• March 2002 Newsletter: Trends in the Training & E-learning Industries
• October 2001 Newsletter: Marketing Thoughts
• August 2001 Newsletter: E-Mail Direct Marketing Tips
• June 2001 Newsletter: Marketing E-Learning Inside Organizations
• May 2001 Newsletter: Sales & Marketing Tips for Tough Times
• March 2001 Newsletter: Search Engine Visibility Tips
• February 2001 Newsletter: Trade Show Tips
  
• January 2001 Newsletter: Marketing Tips

1. First and foremost, don't be intimidated. A perfect starting point to learn about optimizing your site for search engines is www.searchenginewatch.com. You don't need to be a web programmer to use this resource - Searchenginewatch.com is a great resource for anyone involved in web marketing, regardless of technical expertise. A couple of the tips that follow below refer directly to this resource for further guidance.
   
   
2. Get your website's URL listed as many places as possible, because link popularity (the number of pages that link to your site) can boost how search engines rank your site. If you are given the opportunity for a free listing of your site's URL, jump at it! These opportunities come in many forms: Is your business a member of a professional organization? Many will include an online "membership directory" be sure your URL is included. Are you exhibiting at a trade show? Most trade shows have online directories of exhibitors - make sure your URL is included along with your listing. Does your company advertise in a particular trade magazine? Many magazines offer a free or low-cost inclusion in an online directory of their advertisers. Always ask if "linking" opportunities exist.
   
   
3. Make effective use of meta tags on all pages of your website - Meta tags are hidden elements of a web page containing information describing the document. (click here for more about meta tags) Using meta tags does not guarantee improved rankings. In fact, some search engines give little or no weight to them. However, many other search engines DO consider meta tags, so effective application of these elements remains important. The two meta tags that should be included in every page on your site you want indexed are the "description" tag and the "keywords" tag. The "description" tag briefly describes the content of the document and the "keywords" provide a list of descriptive words relevant to page content (e.g., Hawthorne's keywords would include "marketing", "public relations", "training", "learning", "e-learning", "knowledge management", etc.) Refer to "Search Engine Submission Tips" at www.searchenginewatch.com for a guide to using meta tags and a list of useful online meta tag resources.
   
   
4. Using "frames" in your website can hinder search engines - Frames are a terrific design element for websites… they enable you to establish a stationary part of a website for navigation controls (e.g., along the left side or top of the browser window) while having a "scrollable" section of the page for content. The problem is that search engines can have difficulty navigating (or "crawling") through a site that uses frame. However, there are ways you can easily optimize "framed" website for search engines. Refer to "Search Engine Submission Tips" at www.searchenginewatch.com for an excellent guide called "Coping With Frames".
   
   
5. Submit your site to the top search engines. Essentially, "submitting" is a request to the search engine to visit (or "crawl") and index (add to the database of catalogued webpages) your site. In the case of human-tended directories, such as Yahoo, submitting is a request for your site to be reviewed and added to a directory. There are services that promise to submit your site to the top zillion search engines, but for most businesses there are only 10 or 20 top search engines and directories that really count (e.g., Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, MSN, AOL, Google, Ask Jeeves, etc.), so submitting on your own is doable though somewhat time consuming.
   
   
6. Paid listings / Paid submissions: In the old days (remember 1995?), you could submit your website for inclusion in Yahoo's directory for free. Late last year Yahoo announced that submitting a URL for inclusion it's directory of businesses would now entail a fee of $199. During the past couple of years, many other directories and search engines have established their own fee structures for site submissions and placements in search results. These fees are sometimes well worth the cost - just be sure to understand what you are paying for. A "placement" fee typically relates directly to how your site will rank in search results, whereas a "submission" fee is the cost of being included in a search engine's index of websites.
   
   
7. Analyze your website's traffic - you can use this information not only further optimize your website for search engines, but also refine your online and print-based marketing materials. Every hit to your website is typically saved to a log file. Software tools such as "WebTrends" can help you analyze this log file to give you crucial data about your site's traffic. This data includes key information about where your web traffic is coming from (e.g., what search engines are giving your site the most referrals, what keywords are pulling the most traffic to your site, etc.).