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There are quite a few questions there, so I'll try and answer as many as I can, as best I can.
Those PPC listings on the right of the google listings are AdWords, and this does NOT change any of the information or advice exchanged around WebmasterWorld.
There is no need to spend money on PPC programs in order to drive traffic to your website. Search around the forums to find lots of information on FREE optimizing tactics. All it takes is a little time, effort and willingness to learn. Here are a few to get you started:
Newcomer's Guide [webmasterworld.com]
Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com]
WebmasterWorld Google Knowledgebase [webmasterworld.com]
To find out the PageRank of a website, simply download the google toolbar and install it.You can find it here. [toolbar.google.com]
Finally, it's going to take time. If the company you work for is going to fire you if you can't provide results in a couple of weeks, it might be advisable to "freshen up" the resume. If all goes well, you're probably looking at about 2 months before you start seeing the results of the work you are starting now.
Hope this helps.
- Chad
Anything that you do today will not make any difference in your google results till February. You might be able to get some small jumps by keeping your content fresh and keeping the freshbot happy, but you need to have high enough rank before the freshbot will even pay any attention to you, and it will only be a small increase in traffic.
They only way to drive traffic quicker is to pay for the traffic.
Just remember that it is easier to get another job while you still have one. Look before they fire you.
I'm sorry you find yourself in such a bind, but I can only back up what Slyguy and Big Dave have said.
You really can't expect to achieve significant results in two weeks without a budget. In all honesty, if these people have put that sort of an arbitrary deadline on you, then I would expect that what they would see as significant results may not be achievable even with a modest budget.
The best thing I can suggest is:
1 Spend some time reading here and write up a plan for the website from what you learn, including timelines - and be generous with the timelines.
2 Tidy up your resume.
3 Organise a meeting with the bosses and put yourself in the authority role, present your plan, tell them what you expect to achieve and how long it will take.
4 Show them this site and let us kick their butts for you for a bit. :) No... really... we will. :)
5 If they still won't come to their senses, walk out the door with your head held high, and your traffic development plan under your arm.
Good luck.
Game on khaskins. Welcome to Webmasterworld.
Two weeks here and you won't need em. ;)
Your boss sound like a tyrant who wants everything done yesterday.
Tell him to give you more time or you will sent the Webmasterworld boys around! :)
Managing expectations could go a long way toward keeping your job. A 2 week notice is laughable.
If you can I think it is always best to plan seo, usability and design from the outset of a project. This is easier than trying to SEO an existing site and you get exactly what you want. The only caveat is that if the optimisation strategies you use don't work, you only have yourself to blame... :(
btw- the job- lock them in a room with a computer and some choice webmasterworld threads- try starting with this one- [webmasterworld.com...]
<edit>commas, commas, commas...</edit>
Your boss is asking the impossible. No site can be turned around and reap the benefits in just two weeks. If he does in fact fire you, you may have grounds for unfair dismissal. I'd see a lawyer if it comes to that.
Try to sit down and talk to him. Give him a reasonable time line in which you feel you can produce the traffic and sales he is looking for. He is going to have to start over anyway ... and that's time lost training someone new. If he won't listen to reason, send him here to read this thread.
Its not possible boss! Give khaskins a break and give him some time to serve up what you want. Now that he's found WebmasterWorld, it won't take too long! :)
Does your company have anything you could give away as prises? if so place that on your site then submit your site to all the free comp portales this drives plenty of traffic.
next spend a couple of hours on a viral e-mail (something X-massy maybe?) send that to all your mates and beg them to send it on and click through to your site.
next hit all the forums that are related to your site and if it's not against TOS place a little piece abount your site in some.
and keep asking for thoese links!
This might keep you your job long enough for your SEO work to start driving custom to your site.
...after reading these forums I almost wish I had done the SEO and advertising first. What is the best sequence of events?
We took the same approach here. In truth none of us knew anyting about SEO or what an SEO is. Once we had a "finished product" it was tossed at my feet to promote it and learn the business of SEO while I'm at it. It took us 3 months of redesigns and PPC advertising to start getting traffic and 6 months to show a presence on the standard search engines.
My one advantage is that the CEO of the company I work was also part of the design team and I worked diretly for him while learing the SEO position. I basicly had to teach him while I learned the job so he understood why it was taking so long. Good luck khaskins you have a tough job ahead of you! ;)
I have a couple of other questions. If I go to google,MSN or Yahoo and do a search for our company, and if it shows up at all is there any reason to do a submission? Doesn't that mean that we are already in their database?
I did see in the stats that Inktomi visited my website. How do you know what effect it had? Also I loaded the google bar. The PR rating changes from day to day somedays it's 3/10 other days it's 2/10. Some pages are 1/10. Why does it vary?
My ISP told me that I couldn't capture email addresses from people visiting my website (my boss wants to followup with people that visit our site). Is this true?
And another thing........ :-)
I'm still employed:)
Submit your site to the ODP if you haven't. If you're already listed in a search engine, then submitting is a waste of time. Get incoming links from relevant high-PR sites with relevant link text, and forget about "submitting" - It's an almost-dead practice, except for directories.
The Google PR changing is called "everflux" around here. Lot's of threads on it... Try a site search. Remember that your PR today is based on what your site looked like around December 4th. There's a one-month minimum delay, which is why everyone said it was an impossible schedule in response to your first post. Once you hit PR4, the freshbot will help you keep more current. Freshbot is another deep subject to search for here.
You can't automatically "capture" e-mail addresses. You can ask the visitors to enter them and collect them with a script on an opt-in basis, though. Not sure what your ISP meant exactly... It is possible to ask for e-mail addresses as described, unless it is against your ISP's rules for some reason. (?)
HTH,
Jim
Is the site you are talking about the one in your email address? If so I would start by working on the title and description of your website. Also, give each page a title and description. I will add your link to my site to help you get started. Sticky mail me your site if its different than the one I think it is.
Good luck, it is unfortunate you are in such a position.
[edit]AdWords on the keyword I suggested would drive traffic, I believe[/edit]
I tried an experiment a couple of days ago. I did a search on google for our main Keyword and started paging through the results to see how far back in the listings we were. I looked through 50 pages of listings and never saw our site listed even though I know google has our site in their database. Even though there is a lot of competition in our industry, my company's URL never appeared even though page 50 listed other stuff that was vaguely related to our industry. Why wasn't my company's URL listed at all? I saw several references to the top 10 guys a few listing of other companys, off the wall stuff, etc. and it seemed to rotate. Any clues?
I'm going through the document "Successful Site in 12 months with Google alone" trying to systematically cover each line. I have a few questions on it. What is meant by hit the density between 5 and 20%? What is meant by Directories? I listed in DMOZ.org are there others that I should list in?
Make sure your keyword phrase is in title, heading, and inbound anchor text (including the text links on your own subpages), this should help a lot. Try to get links with keyword in anchor text.
Keep reading Brett's doc over and over, every time I read it I get something more out of it, and I would swear I had it memorized. I don't always agree about everything (for instance, Brett says that speed is almost the only thing, but I find that looks count for a lot too), but if you follow it, you should do well.
This is just speaking from my own limited experience, I only started learning SEO a few months ago too, but I've been following the advice on ww and doing pretty well so far. Traffic to my main site has at least doubled since I started working on it, and I now have another site which gets a lot of cheap traffic (many people, but very few want to buy).
Basic strategy: build lots of new content, get links whenever you can, research keywords with wordtracker or other tool and put keywords in title, heading, text, and inbound anchor text. Works so far for me.
Also, what is an inbound anchor text and can you give me an example?
Is there a software tool that you can run against your website and let it tell you where your problems are? Sort of a "Pet Spyder"?
In Brett's document, I got the impression that you should attempt to get some links but not to over emphasize them. But from the above posts it seems that they are VERY important. I have a few links but not many. Large web sites are not interested in exchanging links and small web sites don't have a good PR value so I looked elsewhere. Will the sheer number of insignificant links boost your ratings?
Anyway there seems to be a disagreement on this point between the veterians and the junior members. Could some of the "Keepers of the Flame", "Pillars of the community", weigh in here and set us right?
If you have any control about the text othe sites use to link to you, try to get them to use your primary keyword in these links.
EXAMPLE:
<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Primary Keyword Phrase</a>
If you can get lots of other sites to link to you like this, it gives you a huge boost for "Primary Keyword Phrase". Your own internal text links count for a lot too.
Links are pretty important but you probably shouldn't obsess about them too much, spend more time building content. Lots of little links might still be a good idea if you can get them, though, if they contain your keyword phrase.
Also, I read the BIO of the Editor. He's definitely a competitor of ours. Has anybody had any problems with conflict of interest out of the editors?
Still curious about the "Pet Spyder".
1) Go here and explain your situation on the submissions board. [resource-zone.com...]
2) Send an email to the next category level up, he is basically the boss of the deeper editor.
I would execute both and go from there. Also, make sure they did not place you in another category. Do a search for your site. Just because you submitted to the category you think is right, doesn't mean the editor thinks it is right.
DMOZ is done by editors for free. So be patient and persistent, but not annoyingly persistent, then you will see results.
