Checking and improving your ranking -some techniques
Is your site listed yet? With search engines you can generally
see if your site is listed. Try typing your own URL in the search
box of www.google.com.
You will see how it appears, and other useful info like which
sites link back to you. Google is very special, as its primary
method of ranking is how many other related sites link back to
you. Better still if they have a high ranking, then you too get
a better score, and some observers believe that Google gives
higher importance to links from academic sites. I suggest you
also try some searches using your keywords and unusual words
to see how your site is ranked.
Another useful site for checking
backlinks to your site is Link
Popularity -you can find out how many people are linking
to you from Google, Alta Vista and Hotbot. Alternatively a Free
link popularity checker is provided by Support Link Consultancy.
Because your google ranking is
dependant on links back to you it will take at least a couple
of cycles of re-indexing before Google has both your web site
and those linking back to you in its index.
Keywords -what are other people looking for? Go
to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
and type in your key words -you can see how many people did a
search on those terms at Overture in the last month plus what
related searches are they doing.
Changes -have at least one page, possibly the home page
that changes regularly. Include the month on it, so that the
engines know it is a date related site -it may be crawled by
robot automated searches more often.
Unusual words -unusual combinations of words can pick
up traffic that is less obvious.
Counters -Put a counter on each page so you can see how
much traffic it gets and from where. I suggest www.sitemeter.com
which has a free simple counter suitable for all pages. Set yourself
reasonable targets -maybe 50 visitors per day after 6 months
and maybe 200+ after a year, but of course this depends on the
popularity of your site and what's going on in the world. Sites
on skyscrapers rocketed to many thousands of visitors after September
11th. Look for counters on rival sites and check how much traffic
they get, and if possible where it comes from.
