WebMama's Journal
November 2001 Number 25

This month:
- About the WebMama's Journal
- Listen to Your WebMama: A Perfect Error 404 Custom Page
- Search Engine Placement Tip of the Month: Pay to submit to Inktomi
- WebMama White Paper now available! Search engine optimization and positioning essentials in a concise & action-ready format
- Poll Results: What does your TITLE tag say?
- Search Engine Update: Altavista getting stale while Lycos freshens up
- Search Engine Positioning Events - Catch the WebMama in person!
- Webmama News and Notes - Gloss.com picks the WebMama

**********************************************************
Low Cost / High Gain Web Marketing Register early for the January 30th, 2002 WebMama seminar Save 20%.
>>>>

**********************************************************
About WebMama's Journal *******************************************************

The WebMama's Journal is a monthly e-newsletter, packed with tips and tricks about Internet marketing -- the low-cost way. You'll learn all about search engine and directory 'white magic,' new sites to watch for, new ways to drive traffic to your site, and html search engine optimization tips for your website. If you are an Internet marketeer, marketing programs manager, Webmaster, or are wearing multiple hats at a new or small company, this journal should be of value to you.

To subscribe, send mailto:subscribe-associates@topica.com.

To unsubscribe, send mailto:unsubscribe-associates@topica.com. If you enjoy the WebMama's Journal, why not pass it around for others to enjoy? Please circulate it intact or quote with an attribution to webmama.com Inc.

*******************************************************
Listen to Your WebMama: The Components of a Perfect Error 404 Page *******************************************************

While I am on my soap-box preaching about creating a custom-designed Error 404 page for your website, I think it only fair to list the components of a good error 404 page. Each component is geared toward letting a customer know where they are and helping them get there.

The perfect Error 404 page contains:
- high-lighted links to popular pages on your Web site
- your standard navigation bar
- your look, feel & branding of the company/site
- a search box to make finding what they were really after easier
- a friendly tone, with plain language -- no technical jargon

Consider presenting them with specials or free samples (white papers, seminar announcements, etc), but weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully. If they reached your 404 page, they wanted something from you and they are a captive audience. On the other hand, they were trying to get somewhere and are probably anxious to get there. Don’t hold them up, unless you are sure they’ll thank you for it.

Want to see these principles in action? Check out these URLs:

A perfect 404 page:
http://www.intel.com/err, http://www.apple.com/err

Good 404 pages:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/err, http://www.aps.com/err, http://www.whitehouse.gov/err, http://www.microsoft.com/err

Overly technical 404 pages:
http://www.cisco.com/err, http://www.oracle.com/err

Bad 404 pages:
http://www.Internet.com/err, http://www.exxon.com/err

No 404 page (believe it or not):
http://www.macys.com/err, http://www.nasdaq.com/err, http://www.ebay.com/err

Thank you to Rich Mironov (http://www.mironov.com) who submitted the best of the Error 404 pages sent in for my review. He followed the directions from http://www.plinko.net/404 for his web server software and had the page up and running in 1/2 hour.

Send me your error 404 pages and I may mention your Web site in the next WebMama presentation. Barbara - WebMama - Coll mailto:bcoll@webmama.com

PS - This month I am presenting at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Dallas at a session on site architecture for Search Engine Optimization. I highly recommend the conference.

If you can't make it, you may want to purchase a copy of my WebMama white paper 'Tactics for Search Engine Positioning' to learn all you need to know about optimizing and submitting your website for optimal postioning.
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com
http://www.webmama.com/seo-white-paper-webmama.htm

*******************************************************
Search Engine Placement Tip of the Month: Pay to submit to the Inktomi search database. *******************************************************

Is it worth it? Yes. It’s a small price and Inktomi's database feeds results to over 50 Inktomi Search/Web partners, including AOL, MSN & HotBot. The first page you submit is $30, after that it is only $15/page for 2-20 pages. Inktomi promises to refresh their index/database with the new content from your page every 48 hours. Use it for your most dynamic pages and you’ll be pleased with the results. This submission won’t guarantee where the page will appear in their results or under what keywords it will appear. But it does guarantee that the page will be there somewhere.

If you have an e-commerce Web sites whose content changes based on inventory or interest rates, this is vital. http://www.positiontech.com

**********************************************************
WebMama white paper now available!
Search engine optimization and positioning essentials in a concise & action-ready format **********************************************************

Capturing search engine traffic is the low-cost Internet marketing program for today's slimmer marketing budgets. Following the tips in this paper means you can make a difference to your website traffic without a big budget. See the overview and executive summary FREE at: http://www.webmama.com/seo-white-paper-webmama.htm

This is fully-detailed, 23-page white paper on how to optimize your website to drive visitor traffic from search engines and directories. Our 'Tactics for Optimal Search Engine Positioning' white paper is available from the Webmama website for $75 for a downloadable pdf and $89.99 for a printed report mailed to you.

**********************************************************
Search Engine Update: Altavista getting stale, while Lycos freshens up **********************************************************

Ouch! Altavista hasn’t refreshed in months and the search results are getting stale. Here’s a quotation direct from the San Jose Mercury News - SiliconValley.com October 23, 2001

You know things have gotten really bad at AltaVista when a typical search query turns up month old results. This has been the case since midsummer, the last time the company fully updated its search index. "A full refresh has not been done since July," AltaVista spokeswoman Kristi Kaspar told Infoworld. "We have crawled, but we have yet to publish the results. Pretty much everybody is working on it, it is our No. 1 priority." http://www.altavista.com

Meanwhile, watch for the return of Lycos as a big player in the search engine wars. Lycos recently freshened up--they changed their look and feel and have started using FAST results (http://www.alltheweb.com). Check it out. http://www.lycos.com.

***************************************
What does your TITLE tag start with? - WebMama.com poll results. ***************************************

As expected, most websites TITLE tags reflect the website's owner’s name rather than the keywords searchers might use to find them. The TITLE is one of the most important source code elements search engines use to index you under keywords? Your important keywords/phrases need to appear in the first 6 words of the TITLE tag.

How can you find out what’s there now? Do a 'right-click' and select 'view source' on your home page. Look for the word TITLE in the first few lines of code. Does your TITLE start with 'Welcome to ...' or 'Company name:'? If so, you are missing an opportunity to be indexed under something other than the word Welcome!

WebMama.com visitors told us their TITLE tag started with:
- Welcome to (2)
- Company name (13)
- Marketing tag line (6)
- Included words like best, premier, #1 (2)
- Other (6) (note: these are probably the best ones!)
- What's a TITLE tag? (2)
(total responses: 31)

I would like to use these statistics in a talk I'm giving in New Orleans at the end of November, so I'm leaving the poll up for another month. If you haven't told me what your TITLE tag starts with please visit http://www.webmama.com this month and let me know.

***********************************************************
Search Engine Positioning Events - Catch the WebMama in person at any or all of these ***********************************************************

Search Engine Strategies - Starts tomorrow in Dallas! You'll learn how search engines interact with your Web site & ways to improve your listings. Sign-up for 1 day or both! Check out: http://seminars.Internet.com/sew/fall01/index.html

Web Design World - New Orleans November 28. WebMama and Eric Ward team up for a full day workshop on Search Engine Marketing. http://conferences.devx.com/webbuilder/web.asp

*******************************************************
Webmama News and Notes - Gloss joins our client list *******************************************************

Congratulations to Chicago Mercantile Exchange on the launch of their new site - fully search engine optimized by WebMama.com Inc. (http://www.cme.com)

- We are excited to have Gloss.com as a Search Engine Marketing client. Gloss is the home site for Estee Lauder, Chanel, Clinique and others. (http://www.gloss.com)

*******************************************************
Missed a few issues of the Webmama's Journal? Looking for a low-cost marketing tip that's stuck at the tip of your tongue? Need a new traffic generation program to give a boost to your visitor numbers? Read the archived editions of this Journal

*******************************************************
WebMama is a registered trademark of WebMama.com Inc and Barbara C. Coll. Comments, feedback and questions always welcome at info@webmama.com. Reproduction/forwarding of this newsletter is OK--just forward it in whole or quote with attribution.

Visit my website at (http://www.webmama.com) for a client list and history of the Webmama.

WebMama.com incorporated
info@webmama.com
http://www.webmama.com
650.289.0701

================================================================== EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8PGP.a9LLJN

Or send an email to: associates-unsubscribe@topica.com