Search Engine Secret #1 – Ten Years On

Tidying the garage recently I came across a document I had printed off on 6th June 1999 entitled:

“11 Power Packed Secrets For Using Search Engines To Build A Consistent, Steady Flow Of Traffic To Your Site”

Naturally intrigued I took a look through to see if any of it was still relevant, and was mildly surprised that amongst the dubious tactics which are likely to get you penalties these days were a few gems which can be adopted, adapted and utilised, over the next few weeks (months) I will revisit some of these gems of 10 years ago … * note I have edited out some of the waffle usually by putting …

Secret #1 What to “name” your site to draw traffic like a magnet.

The name of your site has a dramatic effect on the number of visitors your site receives. Let’s do a brief exercise to see how this works. Let’s say you are surfing and would like to find out more about accounting tax laws, and ways to save money on your taxes …

… take a look at the following website “titles” and determine which site you would click on first.

1. Waterman, Jewel, Rathburn Accountants Home Page Statewide Financial Management
2. Frank’s Accounting Practice. Accounting Office Reception.
3. Jealously Guarded Accounting Secrets The IRS Prays You Never Find Out!

Which one did you choose? Did you want to know more about the Waterman, Jewel, Rathburn Accountants Home Page or Frank’s Accounting Practice? I suspect like most people you probably wanted to know what the Jealously Guarded Accounting Secrets were. Of Course!!

The article continued in the same vein for a couple of pages giving several more examples.

So how can we use Search Engine Secret #1 in 2009?

At this point its worth mentioning that when the article mentioned to the “name of your site” it was referring to the <title></title> and not the url, this was originally published on www.hotyellow98.com/secrets.html (surprisingly the domain still exists although the content is long gone).

Basically the piece is telling us to be keyword rich in our page titles, today we can take that a step further and grab a keyword rich domain to suit, make sure the homepage has a good title and do the same with internal pages and posts.

Say you have a website about men’s flip flops you don’t want to choose an obscure name like Andy’s  Flip Flop Emporium andysflipflopemporium.com pick a name more fitting to what you are selling like Mens Flip Flops (obvious eh) incidentally mensflipflops.org.uk is available and there is nothing of worth on the .co.uk or .com “Mens Flip Flops” gets 9,900 exact searches according to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Give your site a good title such as:

“Mens Flip Flops – Where To Buy Mens Flip Flops online”

and finally make sure your internal pages and articles have good titles too:

“Men’s Havaianas Flip Flops World’s Best Rubber Sandals”

Thats it for now hopefully I can get around to revisiting another ten year old search engine secret before too long.

If you want read more about buying domain names that are relevant to your niche take a look at the marathon thread on affiliates4u.com help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009 where Smingle (Frank Paul) gives a lots of sage advice, I suspect all his domain suggestions will be long gone but its not difficult to research your own.

PS: if you use mensflipflops.org.uk please link to my main Fashion Website.