During the past few weeks we have working hard at transferring all of Dubina.com links to our new dynamic interface. During this process we have been verifying all the links to make sure that they are working correctly and that the sites receiving our visitors are still online.

I was very surprised at the number of Flash sites that are currently online in Puerto Rico, or sites that are not taking full advantage of what is available to generate 'traffic' or customers to the site. I thought that perhaps I should share some "Pearls of Wisdom" with those who have taken the time to read this. This document might be a bit technical for those of who are not Web Designers or Webmasters for that matter.

Let me start by saying that I have been doing Internet Marketing for nine years going on ten. My background includes site optimization (preparing the code in websites so that search engines can index and record the information), Search Engine Marketing (usually called Pay-Per-Click Programs) at Google, Yahoo Network, the new MSN program, Overure, Verizon Superpages, Searchfeed, GoClick and several secondary engines and directories. I currently have pages ranked atop several major categories in Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. So what I will share with you is based on experience.

The Basics:
Each major search engine has its own Primary Information Provider (a Directory) - Google uses Dmoz.org to obtain information then indexes the Internet to acquire new and fresh content/information (new sites). Yahoo uses Inktomi as its primary information provider, then, as Google does, indexes the Internet for new sites and information. MSN has been using Yahoo's directory to provide information on its search directory but their contract with Yahoo expires soon. Then you have your smaller search engines (called secondary search engines) that use information from either Inktomi (Yahoo) or Google. If you would like to know as to who gets what from whom, I recommend you take a look at Bruce Clay's Search Engine Relationship Chart and you will a better idea as to what search engine gets information from.

If you have a site, whether a company site, your personal site, etc., your first step is to go to Dmoz.org and list the site there. Word of caution - make sure you select the appropriate category where you would like to be included. Once you submit your site and it is accepted for inclusion, it will be next to impossible to get the category changed. Google obtains information from Dmoz every six months or so. If you want your site indexed before then  there are ways to do that as well (trade secret).

The Crawlers, Spiders, Robot, Bots, etc.
Each search engine has developed a software program to go on the Internet and look for new information on a daily basis. These programs are referred to as "spiders" "robots", "bots" "crawlers", etc. If you look at the statistics under "Robots" or "spiders" (if you use AWstats) and you probably see an entry for "Googlebot" - this means Google visited your site and it probably recorded information on your site. The same applies if you see MSNbot, Inktmi Slurp, Alexa, WISENubot, Lycos, Voila, etc., etc.

As I mentioned before, these programs go through the entire Internet looking for new information to add to their data base - when I say new information I mean new pages or new content on a site, the robot then re-visits  sites once or twice per month. Popular sites are visited once or twice per week.

Meta Tags
When a 'robot' comes on your site, what does it looks for on your pages? Each and every search engine crawler will look for very specific information. They will start by looking at the Meta Tags. The meta tags are those cute little things a page has at the very beginning of the page source code (this is the code behind all those pretty web sites you look at every day).

The indexing robot will look at the "Title" of your page (hopefully you still do not have "New_page.htm" on you home page because that will be the category where your site will be placed in) - if you are a bank you want to be included in the section for banks, not in "New_page.htm".

After taking a look at the "title" of the page, the robot then takes a look at the 'description' of the page, looking for a match (that the information on the title matches the description of the page).

Example - Good description:
Title - "Banco de la Gente"
Description - "Banco de prestamos hipotecarions y tarjetas de crédito"

Example - Bad description
Title - Banco de la Gente
Description - Concesionario de autos.

Example - TERRIBLE DESCRIPTION
Title - Bienvenidos a R-G Online (this is the information RG Online has in their page code right now.)
Description - None

(If RG Online expects to be included and ranked high they will be very disappointed because they are not telling the robot what their site is about, or where it should be catalogued under. They don't even include the word "banco" to give the robot an idea about their site.)

After looking at the firt two meta tages (title, description) each search engine goes about looking at different things on each page. This is where most people have a difficult time understanding which robot looks at what. So that we are all on the same page, let me tell you what they do.

Google - Title, Description, content of the page, anchor links. Google DOES NOT LOOK AT KEYWORDS.

Yahoo, MSN - Title, Description, keywords, alt.text in images, anchor links, content of the page.

Ok, so what is an "anchor link"? An anchor link is a link that you place within the content of the page. Example: You have a Real estate site and in your page you describe the services you provide. Let us assume that within that text you mention Houses for Rent. You will insert a link in "Houses for Rent"  (<-- anchor link) that people can click and go to that section. Why would you do that, and why would robots look at that? Because you you want to make sure that the robot follows every link on your site and index the pages. The robot does that to make sure they get all information available.

Content
Content is what drives the Internet - the content of your page/site will make or break you. The robot will look to see if the content of the page is similar to the information provided in the "title" and "description" meta tags. They took this step because a lot of people where including page descriptions and keywords that did not apply to their site, i.e. "microsoft", "yahoo", "naked ladies", etc. Since these are very popular search terms, people wanted their sites to be ranked high and this was a way of doing it.

The content of your page should be original content - in other words, do not copy what other site has written. Besides being a copyright violation or plagiarism, (remember that search engines know everything - they index the internet and know if the text appears in another site - word by word). The penalty will be harsh - you will be punished in the sense of not being included in directories or natural search results.

You should change or create new content frequently - this does not mean changing the entire a page or entire site, changing a paragraph here and there will do - it will be new & fresh content and search engines live for that.

Robots.txt file
What the heck is that, you ask. That is a file that provides instruction to the robot as to what should be indexed and what should be left alone or not indexed. This is the first thing the robot will look for when it comes calling. Look at your statistics program or web logs. In your statistics program (AWstats) look for the section called "HTML Error Codes". In that section take a look at the "404 Document not found" and if you see an entry titled "robots.txt" it will tell you if you are missing the file and how many times a robot has looked for it! How do you create a robot.txt file - see Searchengineworld.com for examples. Te see our robots.tx file you can click here.

Sitemap
The best way to get your site completedly indexed by a search engine robot is by having a 'static' sitemap of your entire Web site. If your site is a dynamic site (database driven) ask your programmer to use "mod rewrite" (PhP) on the server so that it will appear as an 'static' html document to the robot.

To Flash or not to Flash?
Creating a site in flash is really neat - all those great bells and whittles you can have on the page. Unfortunately, and web designers will not tell you this, search engines cannot read flash. They cannot index a site that is totally a flash site, i.e. RG Online. So basically you have a choice, you want your site created in flash that no one will find, or you can create a site that uses some flash, with content created in html and have people find it. Example - in Google and or Yahoo look for 'Bancos Puerto Rico" or 'Bancos en/de Puerto Rico'  - tell me if RG Online appears. People at RG Online must be wondering - why don't we come up on the results after we paid all that money!

Does it work?
You are probably wondering if what I have written here does in fact work. As they say, "the proof is in the pudding". So you want proof of what I say works does indeed works. In Google, search for "online services  - you will find one of our properties (fundsnetservices.com) listed among the top 5 results (should be #2) out of 1.7 billion pages - go check. In Google, use "sports supplies" as the search term and you will find ssww.com among the top five results (should be #1) out of 69 million pages. In Google again, search for "bancos en puerto rico" and see where dubina.com is ranked.

Search Engine Optimization
If you are a merchant you are now wondering how do I get my site optimized. Well, SEO experts (not that I am  one), are very expensive. The reason for this is because merchants, Very large merchants (macy's, Amazon, and now even Yahoo) have realized that having your site in a favorable position (top five) in natural searches is much more cost efficient than to participate in Search Engine Marketing (Pay-Per-Click) programs. I know of companies that are spending $20,000 a day in PPC. Search Engines love Casino sites - these sites are spending $1 million a month on PPC - their studies have shown that the PPC expense is worth the revenue generated form this form of advertising.

SEO companies will charge $20,000 and up for optimizing a merchant site, depending on the size of the site (number of pages) and if the site is 'static' or 'dynamic'). Once the work is completed they will provide free support (monitoring for 6 months, after that you have to pay around $125.00 an hour.

Web Promotion
If you are a merchant you are also asking yourself  how to do Web promotion of your products and services. Look at Web promotions as you would look at your investment portfolio. You do not invest all of your money in one sector (I would hope you don't). You invest certain percentage in bonds, another percentage in stocks and another percentage in mutual funds. Then you see which sector performs better and move your money accordingly.

Web promotion is basically the same. You must have a 'game plan' to include search engine marketing (sem), an affiliate program and site optimization. A the end you will realize that search engine optimization provides the best return for the money invested (ROI). The reason for this is if the optization is done corectly, you will rank high on natural searches, even though you are not spending a cent in promotions (other than the investment of having your site optimized) for the revenue generated from search engines. Let me give you an example of a former company for which I worked. We were spending $50,000 a year in PPC to generate $125,000 in sales, but in 2005 we generated $1.5 million in sales from search engine natural searches with no investment or cost to speak of.

Hopefully the above information clarifies some questions and misconceptions about how to go about doing some things to generate sales from your site. I have not included all of my 'trade secrets' for obvious reasons. If you have a question about the information I have posted please feel free to contact us.

A. Gil de Lamadrid
Dubina.com