ADVICE_MARKETING A WEB SITE

How to tell the world about your web site

Part 3: Turn Internet search engines to your advantage and go to the top of the listings

Marc Holt

Marketing your web site also includes registering it with search engines and indexes. If you want to find a web site on the Internet, you would first use a search engine like Dogpile, Altavista or Hotbot. Then type a word or phrase associated with the site or business you are looking for.

If you wanted to find a webmaster in Thailand you would probably search for "webmasters thailand". Or if you wanted a lawyer, you would look for "lawyers thailand".

You don't need to use capital letters. Just type the word or phrase in small letters and the search engine will display a list of web sites that contain that word or phrase.

There are hundreds of search engines around, many you will probably never hear of. But this doesn't mean that other people don't know about them. The more search engines your web site is registered with, the better chance you have of being found.

But being registered doesn't end there. A search for "webmasters thailand" will list hundreds or even thousands of web sites. At 10 listings to a page, you may have to view a lot of pages to find what you are looking for.

This is where the search engine battle begins. If your site is not listed close to the top of the results, it is unlikely anyone will bother to view many search result pages to find your web site.

To get listed in the top 10 or 20 you need to employ a web promotion professional who knows how search engines rank web sites. The professional will advise you how to write your HTML code to take advantage of the algorithms the search engines use to rank web sites at or near the top.

Getting listed at or near the top today doesn't guarantee that you will be there tomorrow. Search engines often change the algorithm they use to rank web sites, or someone else might register a site using even better methods than yours.

Or your site could just disappear because the search engine technician deletes you. Getting listed and staying there is an ongoing battle, and that is why it takes a professional to do the job regularly.

Indexes are a little easier, because you register your web site once and it stays there. Indexes list web sites by category. So if you have an online music store, you would list your web site under "Entertainment/Music". Some Indexes give you several sub-categories to choose from to make it even easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. Yahoo! is one of the most popular indexes on the web, and one of the hardest to get listed in.

Getting listed at the top of an index is not always possible. It depends on how the index works. Some list alphabetically, some list the latest sites to register at the top, others at the bottom. And yet others, like Yahoo!, visit each site and assess it before listing.

The web site promotion professional will visit each index and register your site in all appropriate categories and as close to the top as possible. They will know the correct way to register your web site to ensure you get listed effectively.

If all this sounds difficult and confusing, don't despair. Even if you don't get a high listing in a search engine or index, people might still find you, simply because they need the product or service you offer and are willing to search for your web site. But don't leave it to chance. Hire a professional to help.

MAINTAINING YOUR WEB SITE

Imagine a TV station that airs the same programmes every day. You might watch it once, but that would be all. Why go back for a second look if nothing has changed since your first visit?

A web site is the same. To attract lots of visitors, your web site needs to change. The more often the better.

That is not to say that all web sites need to be changed. One of my clients is a law firm. His services remain the same year in and year out. So he uses his web site much the same as a brochure.

People looking for a lawyer in Thailand will find his web site and then be able to read about his services. As a consequence, he gets very few visitors. But those visitors are usually interested in what he offers. He is looking for quality rather than quantity.

In contrast, a toy manufacturer or a music store change their products all the time. They need to update their web sites regularly. As a result, they will get many more visitors than the lawyer because people will keep coming back to see what is new. Do you have a new product or service you are introducing? Use your web site to announce it.

Has the government brought out new legislation that will affect your industry? Publicise it on your web site.

Add a bulletin board, chat room, guest book and tell everyone about them. Change the pictures, add a new section, delete an old one. Tell everyone about the changes.

But who makes all these changes? You need someone to do it, because you are unlikely to have the time and patience to do it yourself. That is why you should include the cost of a monthly maintenance contract when considering the total cost of setting up a web site for the first time.

What should a webmaster supply in a maintenance contract? This will vary according to the webmaster and your needs, but the basics should include:

1. A maximum number of changes to existing text and graphics each month.

2. Regular updates with the search engines.

3. Registration with new indexes.

4. Access to web site statistics so that you can assess which pages are popular and which are not. Unpopular pages should be changed, or even deleted.

The maintenance contract does not usually include adding new pages to a web site, but this will depend on your webmaster and any agreement you make between the two of you.

E-COMMERCE _ HOW IT WORKS

So far, we have looked at the technical aspects of setting up a web site. But what about doing business on the web? How do you sell your products and services and get paid?

To date only one bank in Thailand offers what is called an e-commerce merchant account. The Siam Commercial Bank offers merchants a very professional service at an extremely competitive rate. Compared to many overseas merchant accounts, the SCB merchant account is very cheap to set up. There are no set up fees.

You just apply and if they approve your application they ask you to deposit a small amount into a savings account with them. They take five percent commisssion on every sale. This is slightly higher than overseas merchant accounts.

On average you pay just two to three percent to an overseas merchant account, but you pay a high set up fee first, plus monthly maintenance fees. The SCB processes transactions very quickly too. I have received an order from overseas in the morning and the money was deposited into my account within a few hours. Compare this to traditional payment methods such as cheque payments, cash transfers, money orders and letters of credit, which take days or weeks to clear.

Once you have a merchant account you need an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) server where you will place your secure order form.

This is a special server you rent from your server service. All orders sent to it are encrypted first, ensuring that credit card information is kept from prying eyes.

Visitors can see that the order form is on a secure server because their browser will show a logo of some kind. In Netscape, visitors will see a padlock highlighted by a yellow background. And most browsers will also notify you when you are about to enter or leave a secure server.

Web browsers (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc) have the encryption software built into them. When you send an order from an order form on an SSL server, your browser automatically encrypts the data for you.

If you buy your browser in the US you get better encryption than those of us overseas. But you can upgrade to the US version by visiting http://www.fortify.com to download their free add on encryption software.

After you have installed it you can click on Netscape ``Help/About Communicator'' and look for the RSA logo (press PageDown once). You will see this message under the product description: ``This version supports US security with RSA Public Key Cryptography, MD2, MD5, RC2-CBC, RC4, DES-CBC, DES-EDE3-CBC.'' I won't go into the technical details, but the US version uses a much longer encryption key (256 bit compared to 64 bit for overseas browsers), making anything it encrypts much harder to ``crack''. Using an SSL server and even 64-bit encryption technology is much safer than giving your credit card to the waiter in a restaurant. Who knows what the waiter is doing with your credit card while they have it? When a visitor to your e-commerce web site sends an order, you receive an automatic email notification from your SSL server. All you have to do then is log into the server, download the order details and give them to your merchant account bank. The bank will check that the credit card is valid and then deposit the money into your account. It's that simple.

CONCLUSIONS

Setting up a web site for your company can be a profitable experience, provided you put some planning into it. Like anything else you will only get out of a web site what you put into it.

There is no need for you to do the hard or technical work, but you do need to understand the process. I hope this article has done that for you. If readers need any further information, they are welcome to email Marc Holt at marc@holtww.com.