FOOL'S GOLD FOR YOUR WEB SITE Anyone with a web site knows that lots of visitors can be as good as gold. And where are some of the best places to "strike gold"? Search engines. But staking your claim isn't that easy. There's a lot of Fool's Gold to trip you up and take your money. ..and Fool's Gold is not that hard to find. It comes to you in the form of search engine posting schemes that look good, but are actually valueless. These schemes are the "spam" or junk e-mail offers flooding many, many e-mailboxes, offering web site posting to the "top 500" or "top 400" search engines for only "$39.00" or "$49.00" or "$99.00" ! If you have an e-mail address and you haven’t gotten this spam yet, you will. Very simply..... these offers state that they will "post" (remember this word for later) your site to so many "search engines" (remember this too) that traffic to your site will increase dramatically. For only "$39" or "$49" or "$99" it sounds like a good deal, right? Although it never hurts to have your company’s name in as many places as possible (so long as it’s not a negative situation) how much benefit do these offers really have? Surely, there are chance occasions where someone finds a link to your web site on a list or in a directory where it’s totally out of place, and the viewer still clicks on it. But, if your marketing strategy relies on more than chance, these submission gimmicks are of no value. In fact, they can hurt your web success. How? The gimmick submission companies also post to the "majors" - Yahoo!, Infoseek, Excite, etc. - and they don’t do a good job. They can both knock out your existing listing, or post your site so poorly that the results are disastrous. ...and if that happens, the cost of damage control is guaranteed to be more than the cost of the service. ...and try this experiment: Stop reading at this point and try to name 10 search engines yourself. Did you do it? If you did, congratulations! Most people can name only 5-6. If you didn’t get 10 don’t think that your not as savvy as other ‘net surfers or that you’re just an exception. The point is.... very few people know of 10, let alone USE 10, search engines. In fact, there are probably only between 20 and 30 ACTUAL "search engines" on the net....NOT 500! There are hundreds of DIRECTORIES, but not hundreds of search engines. (remember that phrase?) The difference is: a search engine usually generates query results by assembling relevant data from an archive of all web sites it has indexed. A directory is usually a searchable listing of sites pertaining to a category or categories of information. Yahoo! in fact, is not a search engine, it’s a directory. The distinction is critical because a directory that focuses specifically on a field unrelated to your company will gain nothing but the chance visitor, if your site is indeed listed. Remember the word "post" from above? Well, that is another way of saying "submit".....meaning: a site posted to a directory is not necessarily listed, just submitted to it. A very important distinction. ...and how do you know it really was submitted to 500 directories? But please, make up your own mind. Here is part of a list of "500" sites (we didn’t verify the number) one of the submission services boasts about. Remember the test from above for search engines? See how many of these quality listings your familiar with: A1 WEB LINKS A i R ' s Internet Links A N A N Z I Internet Directory [South Africa] A Thousand Points of Sites A#1 Quality Directory A1 Web Comunity AAA World Announce Archive Access Business Online Accomodation Search engine Accounting Firms On the Net Active Internet Links ADLinks Web Directory links Adult Ori Internet Links - Adults Only Advanced Computers AEIOU Africa Search AGNI AIP Aladin[Germany] Aladin-Suchdienst Alan Jordan Publishing AlcanSeek Aliweb Allworld Internet Links Always On The Move American Business Classified Amorn & Siripong WWW Links Anounce it UK Anzwers Web Crawler Apollo Internet Directory Appolo Internet Links April Internet Links Ardy Ardvarks Internet Links Arianna Arrowweb Internet links Most web users are no different than you. If you don’t know about these or most of the other "500", they likely don’t either. And if you do know of "AEIOU", does it have anything to do with your business? If not, will "AEIOU" (or any other from this list) actually list your business? ...and even if they do, will anyone using a directory with an unrelated focus visit your site? So where does this leave you in the quest for site promotion? It should leave you ready to formulate a REAL promotional strategy to produce results without gimmicks. It should leave you looking at the big picture and the picture over time. It should leave you ready to utilize the Internet with the same commitment and vigor reserved for more traditional means of promotion. Remember: the best results come from the best focus. Knowing what your expectations are and knowing how to achieve them is the true path to success. If you do need help, choose a company that’s reputable, that can quantify results, and doesn’t promise the world. This article was provided by ScreenPlay InterActive Corp. Contact ScreenPlay for more information on this and other web related subjects. © 1999 ScreenPlay InterActive Corp. - All rights reserved. No part of this document may be used, reproduced, or distributed without express written permission.