Replies

1. 
   IMERC | Mar 31, 2004 12:55pm | #1

   Put a call in for Luka over in BT....

   Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming....

                                           WOW!!!   What a Ride!
   

2. 
   RMillard | Mar 31, 2004 12:58pm | #2

   I used Front Page 2002 to make my website. It did not require any knowledge of HTML ( good thing, since I know nothing about it), and the results were pretty good. I don't know how many hits my site gets a week, but I'm sure it is no where near 750, so you are doing extremely well already. I get calls from organizations who say they will list my site on search engines, but I have not taken "advantage" of this. There is advise in the Front Page instructions on how to title your index page so that it will show up on search engines, after a spider has found your site. I've found that a website by itself is pretty useless in attracting business, it still takes old fashion ads in magazines and such to get things going. In fact I view my website as a online brochure, and not a way to reach customers in and of itself.

   Rob Millard

   http://www.americanfederalperiod.com

3. 
   BenchMarkPhil | Mar 31, 2004 02:44pm | #3

   HTML is a pretty barbaric coding language, you’ll probably save yourself some grief and time by going to a real editor.  As RM says, the web makes for a pretty good brochure but is not necessarily good at generating business itself.  I don’t know how big your audience would be for this sort of thing, 750 may be a decent number – it would be nice to know what the competition is doing.

    

   PMB

   http://benchmark.20m.com

1. 
   MichaelPB | Mar 31, 2004 05:58pm | #5

   I am using hotdog pro as an editor, but it is really built for someone who knows alot already.  I don't want to switch as a dear friend gave it to and was teaching me to use it but he died and so I want to learn to use it.

   Anyway, I post on a lot of boards and that really spikes my traffic.  But I don't think any of my orders have come from someone running across the site and ordering anything.

   Michael

4. 
   forestgirl | Mar 31, 2004 05:54pm | #4

   Wow, you really aren't showing up!  I Googled using the META keywords in your list, and only got a couple of forum posts.

   Disclaimer:  I'm not a web-design expert.  However, a couple of ideas here, FWIW.  First, take a look at your keywords and rearrange them in order of importance.  As I look at them now, you have "GI, WOOD, FURNITURE, GERMAN, BRITISH, CANADIAN," all occuring before "gunstock."  Seems like you'd want "gunstock" and other very specific words to be first, just in case that makes a difference.

   Second, take a look at this Google page.  There's information there on their AdWord program.  Give them a call, see if they can help.  Looks like a reasonable program to me.

   forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
   Another proud member of the  "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) 

5. 
   WorkshopJon | Apr 08, 2004 09:00pm | #6

   Mike,

   Read this

   http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2004-02-04-google-cover_x.htm

   BTW, my wife is The Director of E-commerce for a billion $ company,......and should shortly have Her Master's Degree in that area.  So.......from what she's said to me, today it is just too hard (expensive) to do it the way you are trying.

   Jon

   
   

   ---

   Edited 4/8/2004 2:06 pm ET by WorkshopJon

1. 
   yotonyb | Apr 08, 2004 10:27pm | #7

   OK...a Google on these search terms together...

   "authentic reproductions" "historic firearms"

   ...places you fourth which means your home page has been cached by Google.  

   It would be helpful to know exactly what keywords your prospective customers are using for search.  I can tell you that "gunstock" (or "gun stock") is extremely popular.  You make gun stocks and that word doesn't appear anywhere on your home page!  It needs to be there.  Knowing what combination of words gets used with "gun stock" would be helpful.  Winning the one-word or two-word battle is very difficult.  If you can find a combination of THREE popular keywords, you stand a better chance of scoring high.  None-the-less, you make gun stocks and that doesn't appear anywhere on your home page.

   Search engines still look for keywords used in the context of a complete sentence on your home page.  Repeating keywords and phrases ad nauseum is interpreted as keyword spamming and might be looked at unfavorably by a search engine.  It needs to be in the context of a sentence.  Compose a paragraph on the home page that incorporates all of the most popular keywords and use them several times.

   Consider these topics when composing a paragraph for your home page:  the words "gun stock" and "gunstock;"  the most common types of material used in construction (walnut, maple, etc.);  the nature of your work, like "antique" or "restoration" or "refinishing" or "reproduction" or "replacement" (hint, hint!);  specific construction techniques (hand carved, shaped, engraved);  and any other descriptive words and phrases common to your craft should also appear on your home page.

   Here's another tip.  Change the metatitle tag...the title of your web site that appears in the bar across the top of your screen.  That's an important element in getting your page recognized.  "Gun Stock" or "gunstock" should definitely appear in the metatitle tag.

   There are still plenty of things you can do to your site right now to help your cause.  There are no guarantees you'll get top page, or even first page.  But you can do better than the results you're getting now and you can do it with only the investment of your time.

   Good suggestion by ForestGirl...if you have a few dollars, you can set-up a Google AdWords account with a monthly cap.  That will definitely buy you a good placement and may not cost you as much as you think. 

   tony b.

   Edited 4/8/2004 3:31 pm ET by YOTONYB

   Edited 4/8/2004 3:34 pm ET by YOTONYB

   Edited 4/8/2004 4:29 pm ET by YOTONYB

1. 
   MichaelPB | Apr 09, 2004 03:49am | #8

   Tony,

   Thanks for the tips!  I am redoing my page and I had already incorporated new keywords.  I have a free "web statistics" package that monitors my site.  I am building in the key words that seem to be used to hit my site plus others I want to rank high on.

   I had heard that inbound links helped so I did a bunch of that, then I found out that none of them were ranked by google so it was wasted effort.

   Then I found I could get the google toolbar and see who ranked high for each search word, and I then started hitting those sites up for links

   AND...it is working, I went from zero to a 2 out of 10.  Highest gun sites are 5s but most of the big ones are only 4s so I figure that was good work.  I am now going to get my new site up and that should help a lot.

   Thanks for all the advice and encouragement!

   Michael

1. 
   tjh | Apr 09, 2004 04:09pm | #9

   you also might try visiting other sites similar to yours (that get listed with google) and at their home page do a rite click with your mouse somewhere in open space and select "view source" this will open notepad (or you can choose to open in notepad) and reveal their HTML coding.  by looking at their metadata you might get some good ideas for terms & order to include in your <meta> tags.  of course if you're not using windows you have to modify all this to fit your OS.

1. 
   MichaelPB | Apr 09, 2004 04:20pm | #10

   Good tip, I will try that.  I have done that to see how some people set up their pages but hadn't thought about checking their meta tags!

   Michael