# General Business Category > Marketing Forum >  More Tips on web marketing

## Ryss

Having spent the last couple of months looking at one web site after the next here are some tips that I can recommend and would be glad to hear comments as to how other people feel about these points.

*1. Choice of Domain Name*
It's useful to choose a domain name that matches your business activity, and contains at least one of the major keywords. This is not always possible, but it helps.

*2. Register domain name*
Register your domain name NOW, even if you have no intention of creating a website just yet. There are companies in RSA that specialize in registering high and not so high profile domain names. They then hope to sell these to rightful owners at inflated prices.

*3. Website developer*
Choose your website developer carefully and check their performance, in terms of search results for targeted key words of the sites they have created for their other clients.

Understand that to be listed in a search result is no mean achievement and can be very costly to achieve and more costly if your website does not get the traffic.

The website and the material and source code used therein belongs to the owner. Make sure the developer understands this and gives you ALL the source code, so that in future you can, if necessary get another company to make changes and additions. Web Developers are not immune to insolvency.

*4. Target Market (viewers)*
Understand your potential visitors and purpose of your new website, which can be to communicate with existing clients or to gain new ones. If the later make sure the home page conveys exactly what the website is about and who is represented. I have come across many sites and even after 5 minutes I am still unsure what the site is about. Is it a club or a business or a private website. Most internet users are not that patient. They just move on.

*5. legal status*
Clearly state your legal status and owner of the site as well as location. The internet is a big place and a number of searches are area specific. e.g. "ABC services pretoria." Any way even if I found your site, I may be more inclined to take an interest if I know that you are able to be of service and if you are an online service provider why should I order online, if you are in the next street. Secondly I would never do business on line if all I knew about the seller was that they have a website titled "buyonlinenow.co.za"

*6. Bank Account details*
Bearing in mind the number of scams that abound, if you must publish a bank account detail on the internet, I would not publish the detail of my main current account, but use a deposit account that is cleared of all funds at least daily.

*7. Search results*
In order to maximize search results arrange services or products into groups that are likely to be the target of a search query. Deal with each on a separate WebPages that are all uniquely titled and set up to maximize a return on the targeted key words and content that address the keywords and subject matter and content of the page.
Some say content is king. I would say specialized content is king.


*8. Avoid Duplicate sites and Content*

Do not be tempted to create two websites on the assumption that this will double your chances and a have essentially the same content in both. Google is hunting these sites and removing them from their index.


* 9.Most Popular Internet Search engine.*
Do we all agree that it is Google, MWeb and 24.com ( both seem to be running on the Google engine but contained different results) and lastly our local search engines.

The rest including some of my pet hates will have to wait for part 2.

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## Dave A

> * 9.Most Popular Internet Search engine.*
> Do we all agree that it is Google, MWeb and 24.com ( both seem to be running on the Google engine but contained different results) and lastly our local search engines.


Google is the biggie - no doubt. I've been suprised by how much search engine traffic Mweb generates, not to be ignored here in SA.

I'm interested you've left out Yahoo and Live in that list.  :Whistling:

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## Ryss

Hi Dave A,
Well I left out Yahoo and Live becuase they are not geared to search SA only.

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## Dave A

Aha. Thanks. Yet another area where Yahoo and Live are behind the big G.

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## Chatmaster

Just a correction. Live does have SA only results.

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## Dave A

Double Aha!

Thanks Chatmaster.

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## Ryss

Hi 
So it does. Sorry should have checked instead of runny off the memory banks. But still... Live WWW useage is less 10%, so not really a player

see source http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156451 

It is, however, a pity that Yahoo do not have the ability to search RSA. Its a pain to have to type search term and add site: co.za or "AND co.za" and in doing tis missing all the RSA sites that re not .co.za

True about MWeb, They appear on my site stats as Google but their results, although good, are different from Google. Would be interested to know which engine the are using.

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## Chatmaster

Just shocked at the poor relsults Mweb and 24.com has in their search results. Try looking for a bookkeeper and keep on finding jobs! It is so frustrating Grrrrrrrr.

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## Dave A

Out of interest, how much more relevant were the Google results?

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## Chatmaster

Much better! But if you didn't know that the results were different you wouldn't even have tried Google. I am just shocked that MWeb and 24.com would go and tamper with the results in such a way. I mean, if I was looking for a job I would have included it in my search!

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## Dave A

And people wonder why Google rules  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## Ryss

Chatmaster,

With due respect you did include it by default.

If you were looking for bookkeeping services then that's what your search term should have be built around, otherwise anything with the word bookkeeper is fair game.

Search for bakkie for LDV canopy and not just canopy etc. as canopy will give one every type of canopy under the sun and not a canopy for yoiur LDV or Bakkie.

However, the reverase also applies, in that at times one must not be specific. Eg Tyres. Tyres fit all cars so why specify the model.

While on the subject more and more people are doing searches such as Trailer hire roodepoort. i.e. specific to suburb. and how many websites have suburb as keywords and in opening preamble.... very few.

I am busy with an artcile on the subject and will let you know when I have finished the research.

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## Chatmaster

Sorry Ryss. I do not get the point you are trying to make. The Google technology is specifically designed to give accurate results based on what the user is looking for. By choosing "bookkeeper in sandton" I specified that I am looking for a bookkeeper in sandton not a bookkeeping job in sandton. The Google technology is intelligent to realize this. It is clear that Mweb has no clue what they are doing and therefore they return completely invalid results. They should rather leave the Google algo's the way they are Google knows what they are doing.

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## Chatmaster

Lets stick to the topic of bookkeepers. SA Search
Do the following searches without "" on Google.co.za and then on the MWeb group of sites...
"bookkeeper in randfontein"
"bookkeeper in krugersdorp"
"bookkeeper in roodepoort"
"accountant in roodepoort"

In all these examples the Mweb results are jobs related. What also becomes clear is that there are very little competition on these terms...

If you take for example "attorney in roodepoort" you once again get very relevant serps on Google and jobs in MWeb.

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## Ryss

Well I have just done a search as suggested and about 50% of the first 10 are all job related.

I want the Google you are using. LOL.

Do you have a profile with Google to limit your search results or something?

If I search for {"bookkeeping services" +randfontein} I get 33 returned.

 Google 1

If I search for {bookkeeper in randfontein} I get 389.

 Google 2 

So I understand what you are saying but this is not normal, which is that any site that has any one of the words searched for will be returned and this therefore, includes all bookeeper jobs and anything with randfontein.

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## Dave A

> If I search for {"bookkeeping services" +randfontein} I get 33 returned.


I think the idea was to drop the quote marks, ie _bookkeeping services randfontein_.

The quote mark issue is an interesting aside. I confess I hardly ever use them, unless I'm not getting the results I want and I get desperate because I've run out of other options/relevant keyword selections.
Does anyone use quote marks much in their search queries?

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## duncan drennan

If I'm looking for a specific phrase (quite often with engineering gobbledygook) I use them. I often use site:za, and almost never use a - (google doesn't care about +'s btw). One that I've recently started using a little is the filetype:.pdf.

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## Ann Williams

The reason why there are probably more pages with bookkeeper as a job up for grabs is because the job sites are more likely to be large. The size of the site is just one of the factors that get weighted by the search engines. So sites with thousands of pages are more likely to float to the surface with more general (think one word rather than specific phrases) searches.

NB! But please note that the size of your site is not the only factor; so putting together a site of 20 000 pages is not going to ensure that you get to the top.

(If anyone would like to know a bit more about factors that affect your search engine rankings I am running my next course on electronic marketing on Wednesday, 6 February 2008 in Centurion, Gauteng.)

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