I have just launched my site www.boardexchnage.co.uk and wish a
deatiled answer on how to carry out the following:
1. How do i have the site placed on the search engines to come up on
the first page of searches?
2. How do i go about running an "e" campaign on the net?
3. What is pay per click and how does it work exactly?
4. How do i do all this without huge amounts of cash(not scared of
long hours and hard work)?

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Clarification of Question by sferguson-ga on 26 Jan 2003 15:09 PST

Is there any other typr of PR/Marketing I should be considering also?

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Request for Question Clarification by aceresearcher-ga on 26 Jan 2003 22:04 PST

sferguson,

To receive Answers to these questions more quickly and perhaps more
completely, you may want to consider cancelling this question and
reposting it as 3 separate Questions, with the information from #4
listed on each Question. This way, a Researcher who may feel that they
can do an excellent job of answering one part but who has no expertise
on one or both of the other parts would be willing to Answer your
Question. It will also get you the expertise of 3 different
Researchers, rather than just one.

Regards,

aceresearcher

>> I have just launched my site www.boardexchnage.co.uk and wish a
>> deatiled answer on how to carry out the following:

Congratulations on launching your site! I hope the techniques I
provide below let you do what you were planning as far as your site's
growth is concerned.

>> 1. How do i have the site placed on the search engines to come up
on
>> the first page of searches?

Getting your site placed on search engines is a thorny issue. This is
mainly because all search engines don't look for the same things.
There are however, some good resources on the Internet and some good
advice I can offer you for getting your site ranked the best it can
be. The first thing I would do is immediately add what are called
"meta tags" to your site. You can read more about meta tags <a
href="http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html">here</a>, but
basically, they are hidden tags that some search engine programs read
to determine what your site is about. You not having them may be
hurting you from moving up in listings. While these tags are NOT by
any means the only things that are looked at by search engines, they
can certainly help. You need to come up with a short description of
your site and several action words that describe your site. A good
description of your site may be something like "Buy, sell, or trade
your skateboards, snowboards, or windsurfing equipment" and keywords
you may want to consider are "exchange, buy, skateboards, snowboards,
wind surfing" -- in other words, be concise yet descriptive. One thing
you do not want to do is make these tags irrelevant.

While having search-engine readable tags certainly helps, the biggest
thing you could do to increase your web page's standing in search
engines is to put some content on the front page. What you have now,
while very visually appealing, is awful for search engines. Your page
looks like nothing but a bunch of images and Flash objects (and search
engines can't do anything with those). I would recommend putting a
short paragraph about what you do and why people should visit your
site somewhere visible on the front page - perhaps right below your
existing content now. This should help search engines understand what
your site is about and that should help raise you up dramatically in
rankings.

In addition, you obviously need to be listed on search engines in the
first place. I would recommend adding yourself to <a
href="://www.google.com/addurl.html">Google</a> and <a
href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/">Yahoo!</a> first of all -
many other smaller engines use these 2 sites for their results.

Nothing can guarantee you a high placement in search engine results.
The techniques listed above will help, but only good content can do it
in the end. Make sure you keep your page up to date and rich with
relevant content, and the search engine placement will begin to take
care of itself.

>> 2. How do i go about running an "e" campaign on the net? 

There are lots of ways to promote your site online. You can place a <a
href="://www.google.com/ads/">text ad on a search engine</a>, you
can also place banner ads on relevant sites, and you can try to
exchange links. I'll discuss each of these methods now.

Text ads on search engines are nice because you know the person
searching is at least somewhat interested in your site. They are
generally inexpensive and provide a great way to drive visitors to
your site. They also are a good introduction to trying to 'sell' your
site in a short amount of space. You need to develop about a 6-7 word
description that makes people want to visit your site. This
description and a link to your site appears when users search for
certain words.

Banner ads on relevant sites are good as well. For example, you could
place a banner on an extreme sports site or on a ski resort site. This
should help your traffic because all the users of those sites would
have at least a passing interest in your site. The biggest problem you
can make with banner advertising is to not have it relevant. For
instance, don't place a banner ad for your site on <a
href="http://www.slashdot.org">Slashdot</a>, for example, because it's
not your target audience. You'd just be wasting your money.

Link exchanges are good for smaller/starting sites and work like they
sound. You agree to link to a page in exchange for them linking to
you. This helps people navigate to similar sites and they often can
have a high rate of success. The problem is similar to the one with
banner ads - these must be targeted to be effective. Link exchanges
with irrelevant sites won't do a thing to help your traffic.

>> 3. What is pay per click and how does it work exactly? 

Pay-per-click is a system where you create a text-based ad or a banner
ad, but unlike other methods that charge you for everytime the ad is
displayed, pay-per-click only charges you for actual clicks to your
site. This works by a site redirecting the user to your site, after
they've counted the click so they can charge you for it. <a
href="http://www.overture.com">Some search engines</a> are entirely
pay-per-click, and others just elevate the pay-per-click listings to
the top of the results. Pay-per-click is a good way to get initial
exposure for your site, but it can rapidly get expensive as your site
gets popular. Personally, I recommend using standard text-based ads
instead. Judging from my own site, users tend to ignore banner ads and
are much more likely to click on a text-based ad, as long as it
interests them.

>> 4. How do i do all this without huge amounts of cash(not scared of
>> long hours and hard work)?

To be honest, except for advertisments, you shouldn't need to spend a
penny. You can submit your search to almost every legitimate search
engine for free (sometimes you'll have to search to find the
submission page), and all the optimization techniques are free. Your
advertising is only limited by how far out you want to reach and how
much money you have to spend. Ultimately, the more work you put into
your site, the better it will be ranked. Infinite amounts of cash
won't keep users coming back to a bad site.


I hope the information above was helpful and that it thoroughly
answered your questions. If it did not, please feel free to post a
clarification request, and I will be glad to answer any additional
questions that you have.

Thank you and good luck with your site!

/gleffler-ga

The content from this answer came almost 100% from my experience as a
web developer and from maintaining my own successful web site. If you
are looking for more information, it would be good to search for some
of the following phrases:

<a href="://www.google.com/search?q="search%20engine%20optimization">search
engine optimization</a>

<a href="Http://www.google.com/search?q="internet%20marketing">internet
marketing</a>

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Clarification of Answer by gleffler-ga on 28 Jan 2003 21:54 PST

Please excuse the HTML strewn throughout the answer. I got carried
away with writing the answer in an external editor and forgot to strip
it out before posting. The URLs I linked to are contained like this:

<a href="http://www.this-is-the-url.org">descriptive text</a>.

Hello Sferguson,

You may find the following helpful in answering the first part of your question:

Google search results -- how to optimize a site
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=45408

The #1 key for high results in search engines is content. If most of
your content is for members only, this means nobody will link to you,
and the search engines won't be able to index the pages. I suggest
that you make some of your site available to everybody, and let
subscribers get something extra... no ads, extra content, special
priveleges...

Id: 148859
 
A usefull question.and here the answer:
 
First of all, your website is down right now on: 27/january-2003 23:00
GMT.
1- There is too many ways to make your site apears on first page of
search engines. More money you pay, you will be more lucky to be on
first page. you can register your site manually by visiting the search
engines one by one, and creat an account with setting how much you pay
if they send some one to your site. the easier way to do it is to buy
a tool (software) from a trusty company and use it to register your
site on search engine. I preffer "addweb 6" from the folowing webiste:
http://www.cyberspacehq.com/products/addweb/home.shtm
 
Submitting your website to the search engines with Softwares and even
manually, cannot be the only step taken in promoting your Website.
If anything can be more important than telling the search engines that
you exist, it is telling them who and what you are! Building web pages
that are designed to perform well on the search engines is not just
tactically important, not doing so can be the death of your website.

There are a number of things to be done in order to perform well in
the searches. There are also things that can be done to destroy your
listings on many of the search engines.

there are some sites that just can't seem to get listed, but over 90%
of the time we examine the pages in question and find exactly why they
are not listed.

I  have found that education in Web Page Optimization is the key.
These themes will include Don't use Frames, Provide readable content,
Check your Meta Tags, Use Accurate, HONEST information, Don't Spam and
Don't Trick the search engines. There are many more things involved
and it WILL seem overwhelming at first.

The question you should ask yourself before going further is "Do I
want a good listing for my website". The Pros and Cons should be
readily apparent. If they aren't, you may not be ready to have a
website. If they are, buckle up, You're in for a ride through the
internet like you've never seen.
Many people believe that they should submit all of the pages (or
multiple pages) from their website. DON'T DO IT. You will likely get
banned from the search engines.

Only submit your home page, and follow the submission rules. 

If you have multiple pages on your site that relate to different
subjects, make sure they are in their own directories and make sure
they are really on different subjects.

Don't try to spam the engines with multiple pages in the hopes of
getting more keyword results. It just won't work, and will likely
backfire.
the most effective methods of promotion involve allowing the engines
to find you naturally. yes, Link exchange. This simple method of
exchanging links with other webmasters is the result of extensive
research and testing. I have found it to be faster and more effective
than submission alone.

Engines like it because they know the links to be real as they follow
them from other sites. They know you are active in the internet
community as you are linked to from somewhere else. They know you are
a valuable link as they find you on a number of other sites. As you
see, there are a number of reasons an engine will want to list your
site based on LinkTrader over submission alone.
you can also go directly to pay money per view. engines like money and
they will add you on first page if you pay more than others. but this
is not the solution. then you have to pay millions of $ ! do like
above and you will be first . don't forget, Meta tags are too
important than you think. engines will find you from there. and
description is important too, because engines will show description to
people.
 
for more information about meta tags and description go to:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html
 
2- there are lot of usefull tools on the net witch you can send mails.
first of all, people must subscribe to your mailing list on the net.
best way to do it is using a database. use a host witch offering a
database or at least php. there are lot of programs that cost money.
but you can use also the free ones. yes, free ones. I preffer Dcp
mail. DCP-Mail is a PHP based Mailing List Manager which does not need
any SQL servers and uses a text file as database.
Main features are:


Subscribe/Usubscribe to list 
View members from admin area 
Table font and color configuration 
Sending mail in Text or HTML format 
 you can download it from
http://linux.tucows.com/internet/preview/241707.html
and a good shareware program is massmail express. you can buy or
download it from: http://www.mme2000.com/
you can use also a free program called phasma 3000. for anonnymous
mail sendings. download it from
http://213.112.232.113/downloads/phasma3000.zip
 
3- for learning more about pay per click look at the following
picture: https://www.adwords.google.com/select/overview.html
 
4 - the answer is in answer number 1 and 2 and 3. Read it again
carefully and don't forget: don't use tricks on engines.
 
5- and in the end of this answer, try to make a professional site. use
"live support" application on your site. more information is on:
http://iaxx.com/LSscript.asp , it's free.:)
and if you want a marketing application , you can buy
http://www.maxit.biz/xcart.html xcart.
I hope you got your answer.