There are a disturbingly large number of marketing "gurus" out there advocating that it is not necessary for a web site to be listed in the search engines in order to be successful. Putting rhetoric aside, my response to this suggestion is simply: Hogwash! Your site must be listed in the search engines in order to be successful. Internet usage is growing at an incredible rate. More and more users go on-line every day. And how are those users finding what they are looking for? Search engines! One only has to look at the success of the scores of search engines to see that this is true.
The real issue at hand is how important is placement in the search engines? My answer is that placement is the most important issue related to the search engines. Many surveys and studies reveal that if your site is not in the first three pages of search results, it may as well not be there at all! How's that for important?
Here is where the debate gets fiery. How much of your web promotion campaigns resources is it worth to get a good placement in the search engines? And how do you go about getting this type of placement? There are many theories floating about out there, theories about META tags and keywords, content and descriptions. In future articles, I will explore these theories and attempt to make some sense of them. Until then, it will have to suffice to say: Register your sites with the search engines! This may be the most important single component of your web promotion campaign.
Copyright 1998, 2002 Tony L. Callahan All Rights Reserved
Tony L. Callahan, is a successful Internet Promotions Consultant with more than twenty years of industry experience and is president of his own Internet marketing company, Link-Promote. He also publishes Web-Links Monthly, a newsletter full of tips, tricks, tools and techniques for successful web site promotions. To subscribe, mailto: Web-Links-subscribe@topica.com. For an online archive of Tony's articles available for reprint, visit: http://www.link-promote.com/articles