Picture, if you will, a Rocky-style montage. A team is involved in website creation from the ground up. A driving, inspirational song begins. The first scene is a highly contentious meeting, with a sweating and nervous marketing executive frantically drawing away at a whiteboard in front of a hostile audience. Flash to copywriters, fingers cracked and bleeding, churning away at their keyboards. Jump to web designers, sporting blurred eyes rimmed with dark circles, peering into their monitors in obvious discomfort. Finally, we see signs of it all coming together. A beautiful home page briefly appears. The music ends. A bell rings. And...

Nothing happens. The website would seem to have tripped over its own shoelaces and fallen right through the canvas, disappearing into cyberspace. The credits roll, to the eternal shame of those whose names appear.

What went wrong?

The team engaged in website creation without any regard for the role of the search engine spider. You see, there is quite a difference in what is seen by humans on a website and what is seen by a search engine "spider" (a program that routinely combs the Internet indexing websites). There are an untold numbers of expensive websites out there that are beautiful to behold from a human perspective, yet all but invisible to search engine spiders (and thus searchers), just as there are untold numbers of expensive, beautiful yachts silently and pointlessly resting on the ocean bottom in the Bermuda Triangle.

What follows is a small list of common website elements, broken into two categories: what search engines can see, and what they can not.

Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can't See

Graphic text - Most professionals involved in website creation take great pride in their work, which is obviously a desired trait. Occasionally, however, this can present problems. When a web designer decides to use text in a graphic form (meaning that the text is actually an image), the search engine spider can not read what that text says. A common reason for a designer to use text in a graphic is because he or she wants to use a rare font that most visitors won't have on their machines. Another reason is that the designer wants to have absolute control over how the website text renders. When faced with the choice over which kind of text to use, it is important to weigh the aesthetic choice against the potential loss of search engine visibility.

Images - As touched upon above, a search engine spider is not yet able to look at images or pictures and determine what they are (although you can and should attach a tag to them which the spider can read - commonly referred to as an "alt" tag). A spider will skip directly over your logo and masthead, any pictures, and most other graphical elements.

Flash - Search engine spiders will not read through the text in any Flash animation on your site (or any other animation). This does not mean that using Flash elements will render your site invisible; it merely means that you should not count on the text that appears in any Flash animation on your website to be indexed. If the team responsible for your website creation decides to build the entire site in Flash, however, you will encounter unique problems. While some search engines are getting better at trying to index websites built entirely on this platform, it is still an overall rankings killer. If you must have a website created entirely in Flash, it is wise to also have an alternate HTML version for search engines and people who prefer HTML sites.

Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can See

HTML text - A search engine spider relies heavily on HTML text to determine what a web page is about. Spiders, therefore, index HTML text and will even make distinctions between differences in how the text is presented. For example, text that is in a headline or is bolded is assumed to be slightly more important than regular text.

Links - Outgoing links on your pages are easily understood by the spider, especially if they are text links. The wording of these links (or the alt tags attached to them) can, like HTML text, give the spider an idea of what your page is about. However, there are certain types of links that are not easily indexed. If your website creation team embedded your links in a pull-down menu that utilizes JavaScript or other scripting language, most search engine spiders will not see them.

Tags - There are many kinds of tags, but not all are important for search engine optimization. Meta tags include the "keywords" tag, which should list keyphrases that describe the page. Another meta tag is the "description" tag, which should be one or two brief sentences that describe the page. Another tag, which is not actually a meta tag, but which has significant importance to search engine rankings, is the "title" tag. This tag contains the words that you will see in the blue bar at the top of your web page.

This list is by no means comprehensive - there are many other attributes that aren't mentioned in this article. The primary message here is that companies should do their homework before engaging in website creation. There are thousands of resources available on the Internet that can answer your questions about any element you are considering adding before you build (or redesign) your site. Take the time to study each so that you can be sure you aren't sacrificing your search engine rankings for the sake of something largely unnecessary.

As for the downtrodden website creation team mentioned earlier in the article, let's remember that Rocky has been known to get beat down in the first fight but then to pull himself up from the floor and triumph in the end. The team will go back into training and eventually understand the Eye of the Spider. Cue the music...

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1. Robots.txt file:
   Ensure that the folder you are storing your images in is not blocked by your robots.txt file. Prior to the rise in popularity of image search, it was common practice to block the folder images were stored in. Helpful hint: Store your navigational and "structural" type graphics in one folder, and block that from the spiders, store the pictures of products, events, or news related images in another folder and open that one to the spiders.
2. Image File Names:
   Name your images in a way that describes what they are. Don't get carried away though. If it's a picture of a purple widget, name it purple-widget.jpg, rather than leaving it whatever your camera or photo editing software wants to name it. Helpful Hint: Use dashes between the words, rather than underscores.
3. Use the Alt Attribute of the IMG tag:
   Make sure you are using the "alt" attribute of the image tag. Again, like the image name, don't over do it, but ensure that it describes the image you are trying to present to the user. The attribute should describe the image in a short "to the point" way that reads naturally to the viewer. Helpful Hint: Utilizing the alt attribute also helps visitors who do not run with images on, as well as visitors with disabilities that utilize screen readers to understand what the web page is about.
4. Use a Caption By Your Image:
   Placing a small caption directly under, on top or on the side of your image will help queue the search engines what the image is about. Helpful Hint: With a caption, you can be a little more descriptive about the picture than with the alt attribute, but again, make it flow natural.
5. Include Images With Articles, & Press Releases:
   If you are sending out an article or a press release, don't forget to include an image, or a url to an image that the news outlets can utilized for their version of your news. By supplying the link to the image, it can encourage them to link to the image itself straight from your own website. Helpful Hint: Adding images to articles and press releases makes them more appealing to the reader.

Search marketing has become an expensive endeavor. This is especially true if you are in any kind of a competitive industry. Good search engine optimization can be pricey (we charge $200 an hour). As pay per click advertising continues to attract more and more advertisers, the cost of bidding on keywords will continue to rise as well. Most web directories and other web site listing services now charge for inclusion where it used to be free. The list goes on and on. So how does a company with practically no budget compete in an online world?

I was recently asked this very question after putting together a proposal for an SEO campaign for a small locally based business. Turns out that the company had a mere $300 to spend on increasing their site's visibility. That was not their monthly budget or else we could have done something with it. They had $300 period! After looking over my proposal which was more in the neighborhood of a few thousand dollars, they wondered what they could do (if anything) with such a small budget. My initial though was "not much" especially seeing that $300 doesn't even meet our minimum requirements of engagement. However, I reflected back to when my company was starting out on the web, a time when we had very little money to spend on advertising and yet we managed on a shoestring budget.

Now to be quite straight forward with you up front, if you have a mortgage company and you want to market yourself simply in your own state, $300 is not going to do much for you. Broaden your focus to a national scale and your chances of success are really slim. In most highly competitive markets, it is going to require a significant amount of money as well as an exhaustive effort to experience any measure of success.

That being said, there are still things a small locally based businesses can do to increase their web site's visibility, even on a shoestring budget. Using the example of the company I mentioned beforehand, let's look at what $300 can get you.

1. One Month Subscription to Keyword Discovery - $69.95

If you are going to market your site via the search engines, you need to have a good understanding of what keywords and phrases people will search for to find your business. Developing a list of keywords to target will lay a foundation for you to build a marketing strategy on. Effective keyword research is going to require some knowledge of your industry, recognizing who your target market is and a whole lot of common sense. Back that up with actual data on what people are searching for here and now and you have a solid foundation to start with.

2. Buy Jennifer Laycock's Small Business Guide to Search Marketing - $79.00

This eBook will not only teach you about keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), link building, pay per click advertising and viral marketing techniques - pretty much everything you need to know how to market your small business online. You will have access to free lifetime updates of the eBook as well as access to a support forum where you can ask questions.

Yes this will require you to "learn how to do it yourself" but if you cannot hire someone to do it for you because you have limited funds, then your only other choice is to do it yourself. Remember that search marketing is not rocket science. Most anyone can learn it. It is more time intensive than anything else.

4. Get Listed in Best of the Web - $79.95 (annually)

If your site is going to be found and indexed by search engines, you need links from other sites. Directories can be a good starting point. Why Best of the Web? Because it is one of the oldest directories that can actually benefit your site and best of all, you can afford it with your limited budget. Yahoo! Directory is still a great one to get listed in but at an annual cost of $299 annually, your entire budget would be spent. Business.com is also a great directory if you are B2B focused but again at $199 annually, it would eat up most of your budget.

A listing in the right category at Best of the Web will help to establish link popularity for your site which in turn will help engines to find and keep it in their index. You can also submit your site to GoGuides.org, JoeAnt, Skaffe.com and Web Beacon but will have to sign up as an editor in order to have the opportunity to gain free inclusion.

5. Get Listed in Local Search Engines - FREE (basic listings)

If you are a locally based business, you should submit your site to Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, SuperPages.com, Local.com and other local search engines that offer free listing service. It takes but a few minutes of your time to create a listing. The result is that your business will be visible when users are using a local search site and best of all these local search services provide a link to your web site.

6. Download and Read Social Media Daily by Michelle MacPhearson - FREE

Social media is the next big thing and has the potential to not only help increase your site's link popularity but drive lots of traffic from the millions of people that are using social media sites daily. Most social media sites are free to use and utilize. It will require a lot of time on your part but if you have a small budget, you most likely have more time than money anyway. Otherwise you would hire someone to do all this stuff for you.

Social media present so many opportunities to market your site and there seems to be no slowing as to the amount of social media sites that keep popping up as well as existing sites that are implementing social community aspects to them. My best advice is to read this 26 page guide and then decide how far you want to take it.

7. Gain Exposure on Sites Related to Your Niche and/or Geographical Region - Remainder of Your Budget

At this point you have exactly $71.10 left to spend in an effort to increase your site's visibility. I recommend that you look for opportunities to gain exposure on sites that are either closely related to your niche or somehow related to the geographical region you serve.

For example if you had a construction or home improvement based company n Arizona (where I reside), you could get a listing on The Arizona Builders' Zone, a resource site that also contains a directory of Arizona based construction and home improvement companies. It will cost you a one time fee of $25 which still leaves you $46.10 to spend elsewhere.

There are many of these types of sites and can include niche directories, trade association sites, resource sites, etc. Sometimes you can even obtain a free listing if you ask politely. The main idea is to locate sites that are already attracting traffic and ensure you have some visibility which will help you to draw some of that traffic your way.


These are just some ways you can market your site on a shoestring budget. Keep in mind that as your business grows, you will probably want to increase your budget to advertise in productive ways so as to keep the momentum going. I don't recommend operating on a shoestring budget forever but sometimes that is necessary to get things rolling along.

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• It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.
  
  Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.
  
  
• A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
  
  
• If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
  
  
• If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.
  
  If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.
  
  During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.
  
  Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.
  
  Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www..com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.
  
  Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.
  
  Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.
  
  
• Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.
  

1. Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
2. Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
3. Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
4. Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
5. Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.
   
   

1. Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
2. Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
3. If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.
   
   

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With Wikipedia results dominating the search engines, webmasters are interested in knowing more about this resource site and the opportunities it may offer.

The good people at Marketing Sherpa have put together the first of a two part series on how to get a company listed on Wikipedia, it's a good read for anyone serious about becoming part of this online phenomenon.

SUMMARY: Wikipedia has surged to become the No. 1 reference site, making the appeal for marketers to get their companies listed irresistible. The process is complex, and rules must be followed. In fact, several companies were criticized recently for whitewashing their entries.

We put together this two-part Special Report to help you become more famous by creating a Wikipedia entry the proper way and avoiding being placed on their list of shame.