You're wondering why, right? Well, one or more of the following reasons might apply:
1) Your submission was not accepted by the
Search Engines. If you used spamming techniques, such as:
* Repeating keywords in the keyword meta tag or using text in the same color as the background, some Search Engines might refuse to index your site.
* Page redirection -- including cloaking -- or building artificial links farms can sometimes be seen as spam by some Search Engines. These links farms involve building Web pages for the sole purpose of creating links to the targeted site. For more about spam please read my article:
"Search Engine Spamming Sucks!"
[ http://www.web-design-in-new... ]
Some Search Engines also have difficulty in indexing pages that use frames or Flash.
2) Your submission was accepted, but your site is not listed in the Top 10-30. Because very few people check pages after the first 30 results, you want to be in the Top 10-30. There are many reasons why a site is not listed high.
The most common reasons are:
* The lack of your main keywords in the content of the page and in the Description and Keyword meta tags. It all depends of the Search Engines' algorithm- the criteria used by the Search Engines to rank pages.
* HTML errors. Examples include unclosed tags, unquoted attributes, improperly nested tags, missing the ALT attribute on images. Any of these will affect your site's accessibility, reducing your potential client pool.
A Web site with HTML errors can look fine in Explorer, strange in Netscape or Opera and totally unreadable in a text browser. Although Explorer has the largest market share, an important percentage of net surfers use other browsers. Don't forget the more than 50 million people in the USA with disabilities. Many of the latter use text/voice browsers.
HTML coding errors are very important, but the structure and the layout of the pages are equally important. I saw sites without ANY way to contact the company: no email address, no "contact page". I saw sites so crowded that it was almost impossible to find my way around. I saw sites with ugly color schemes. I saw a site so "heavy" that it took nearly three minutes to download the Home Page.
According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave. And we all know what that means or the success of a Web site.
I not only saw all those errors in sites that are now gone but I also found them in sites that are still alive, including, incredibly, some Fortune 500 companies' Web sites.
So, do we dot-com or not? The answer is a resounding YES! But with one condition, learn from your predecessors.
How can a dot-com become profitable? I don't pretend to know ALL the answers. If I did, I would be millionaire by now. Here is some good advice for forming and managing your company:
* Develop a sound business plan, with clear, credible ways to get to profitability. Venture capitalists are much more cautious than a few years ago. They invest less and are more selective in this risky business. They want value returned for their money. After all, statistics show that 9 out of 10 startups fail.
* Handle your money wisely. Enough said.
* Hire only the people you REALLY need and be sure ALL of them are professionals.
Daniel Bazac
Daniel Bazac is the Web Marketer for Web Design in New York,
( http://www.web-design-in-new... ),
a site design, Search Engine Optimization and promotion company. He's been online from 1995 and he's also a seasoned Internet Information Researcher. He can be reached at mailto:danielbazac@hotmail.c...