Whatever happened to...

[Ayrhead]

You know the phrase "If you build it, they will come"? Well, that doesn't seem to work for my website. How do you generate traffic for a website when you have no $$$ for advertising??? :shrug: I've been trying like mad to get the word about about a workshop, but whenever I go someplace piping-related and mention it, few people have heard about it, and about nobody knows about the website. :( :( :( What's the secret???

[KiltSwinger]

Kay,

I was going to go check out your website and see if I could come up with any suggestions for you. However, you didn't post the link. THEN I went to your profile and you don't have it in your profile either. :wave:

[Ayrhead]

Weeellll... the site would be http://www.buckeyepipers.org I've posted it in the announcements forum, but never thought to put it in my profile. Guess I'll go do that now. :)

[Iain Sherwood]

Submit your site to every search engine known to man. That usually works in about six months or so. Without bux for adverts, you have to bide your time.

[MacDhughaill]

Hi Kay,
Since the website is very specific with regard to an event, why don't you just post in the announcement forums-- with a link to your webpage there. That might get the word out. :wave:

[Ayrhead]

Originally posted by Iain Sherwood:
Submit your site to every search engine known to man. That usually works in about six months or so. Without bux for adverts, you have to bide your time. Not that it will help me any now, but how do you do that? I'm not very internet savvy; I only know the stuff I taught myself.

[repipgab]

To submit your site to search engines, they usually have a page somewhere to type in your URL. Here is the link for Google's: http://www.google.com/addurl.html and for Yahoo's: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/. (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/) Those are the only 2 I've done, I assume others have similar pages.

Good luck!
Graeme

Louisville Pipe Band (http://www.louisvillepipeband.com)

[Kevin M. MacHeffner Conquest]

Kay,

The Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org - is a great place for you to submit your site. Most of the major search engines (such as Google) pull content from this directory.

Hope this helps!
Kevin

[Ayrhead]

Thanks! Your suggestions should help me for next year - if I have a workshop next year after losing my shirt this year. Ah well, all in the name of continually improving piping.

[SDS]

Search engines are limited in the fact that people have to be looking for something in the first place. They don't really do promotion.

Think of a phone book. 1000's of companies are listed in there, but you don't know about them until you go looking for something.

The announcement forums were good places to start, but I would also think about the Usenet newsgroup (not quite as busy as it used to be), any piping related email lists (I know one is out there, but don't know much about it), some associations (WUSPBA for example) have email lists as well. Make sure your association links to your site too!

[Ayrhead]

That's what I don't understand; I did all that. I posted to the announcements forum here, to RMMB, to the MWPBA mailing list, and there's a section on the MWPBA News section - all with a link. Why aren't people seeing it??? :shrug: Is there anything else I'm missing?

The announcement forums were good places to start, but I would also think about the Usenet newsgroup (not quite as busy as it used to be), any piping related email lists (I know one is out there, but don't know much about it), some associations (WUSPBA for example) have email lists as well. Make sure your association links to your site too!

[Marc]

Are the links you posted okay? Did you control that by klicking on them?

Maybe a lame question, but I know about some times it happened.

[Ayrhead]

Yep, I checked them each time. Not lame at all - I've seen it happen often enough, and as a programmer, I know that you gotta check your work, always. Perhaps I'm just a poor marketer. :( :shrug:

Thanks for trying, though. :)

[Drew McPheeters]

Originally posted by Ayrhead:
That's what I don't understand; I did all that. I posted to the announcements forum here, to RMMB, to the MWPBA mailing list, and there's a section on the MWPBA News section - all with a link. Why aren't people seeing it??? :shrug: Is there anything else I'm missing?
Perhaps it's not what you're missing after all.

When you posted the notices, may have ended their interest based upon the information you provided in the message. Perhaps the dates were bad, perhaps the distance was not good for them.

If this happens, they got everything they needed to know before visiting the web site. Doesn't mean they didn't get any information.

Don't be too frustrated. That's why very few web sites that intended to garner revenue from ad sales have actually turned a profit or survived.

The web is a good venue to service the needs of people seeking information, not marketing to those who don't know they need the information.

[Rojellio]

Actually a little known fact for getting picked up in the search engines... (aside from being in the Dmoz directory which helps tremendously)there is a great place to be. That is in Bob Dunsires directory. :wink:

When the Spiders & Robots from major search engines make a routine (weekly, bi-monthly, monthly etc) check of Bobs site, it will follow the link from Bobs site to yours and pick it up. This might be more of a long term thing, but it will work like a charm. OF course, yours being the smaller site.. a person searching for "Columbus Piping Workshop" Bobs site will come up as the #1 result, and your site will come in below that somewhere.

[Piperkronie]

what about meta names. (see below for examples that I use). (I had to substitute an x for m in 'meta)

<xETA NAME="Title" content="Feadan Or's Home Page">
<xETA NAME="author" content="Chris Thomas">
<xETA NAME="description" content="A competative, contemporary Bagpipe Band based in Penfield, NY">
<xETA NAME="Keywords" content="Feadan Or,Faedan Or,Feadan Or Pipe Band,Pipe Bands,Pipebands,Bagpipe,Bagpipes,bagpipe band, Penfeild NY,Rochester NY">

I was told that items like "keywords" help the engines search for your page (I'm assuming that once the search engine knows about you, it uses this information when people enter a query). :shrug:

I noticed now that in google, searching on the keywords in the meta name "keywords" now comes up with hits to feadan or (I did submit the URL directly)

As far as websites go, I'm just a hack. :eek: Any comments on this?

[Rojellio]

The MEta Names serve different purposes, "Author" would be more one that people look at if they want to know who authored the page.

"Description" in some search engines the text you put in this block will come up word for word in the description displayed in search results.

"Keywords" these are keywords. It is your attempt to help out the search engine, sort of give it a shove in the right direction. :rolleyes: "oh how helpfull this webmaster is in helping me catogorize this site" In reality, I think that keywords are factored in with a grain of salt, and actuall content will prevail in the search engine determining keywords.

Search engines are sort of like chanter reeds, they all accomplish the same task, but they dont all sound the same. When it comes to meta tags, there is a lot of "sometimes does, sometimes doesnt" going on.

[Ian Nelson]

I know that Google is now using a program to spider sites that compares meta tags, descriptions, and text content then forms a consensus as to the pages ranking.

I have used a program called WEBGold in the past I saw hits jump 300-400%. Fortunately in piping we, for the most part, don't have to compete against any major commercial sites for ranking. It doesn't take much (except time) to improve your ranking.

[Bob]

Interesting Ian, my understanding has always been that Google (and a few others search engines - now) doesn't even look at Meta tags :humm:

My understand of Googles ranking is that they have their own formula / methodology and it works with their incredible DB, basically looking at the number of links to each site, in order to rank for any keyword(s) / search strings.

FWIW - for a few years now the only search engine I personaly use is Google (and not just because of how they rank 'bagpipe' sites :D )

But, my experience is that search engines really don't actually help much at all in our world of piping.. As an example, my directory see 5-6000 people a day on busy days, and typically less than .5% of those come from search engines.. I realize that web site is (probably) a special case, but it illustrates to me that most people don't use search engines to find piping sites..

[Rojellio]

I realize that web site is (probably) a special case, but it illustrates to me that most people don't use search engines to find piping sites.. Much of this special Case revolves and YOU Bob. :thumb:

A Person who plays Pipes is only going to link through a search engine to your site IF they are in their first week or two of Internet use AND if their Piping friends have not already told them exactly where to go for Piping sites.

People who know bugger all about Pipes on the other hand.. they are the ones that generally wander through from a search engine.

Everything On the net that is Piping related tends to be in your directory. Except of course in special cases where a webmaster does NOT want their site to be seen.

[Speeder]

Originally posted by Bob:
As an example, my directory see 5-6000 people a day on busy days, and typically less than .5% of those come from search engines.. I realize that web site is (probably) a special case, but it illustrates to me that most people don't use search engines to find piping sites.. But Bob, how many of those 5,000-6,000 found you through a search engine to start with?? I'll bet you if you ran a poll (have you already?), you'd find the majority did.

As a webmaster I most humbly disagree. Regardless of the topic, most web sites will be located the first time via a search engine. Granted a lot of hits will come via "word of mouth" but I'll bet if you followed the "word of mouth" back to the source, you'd find it was a search engine that started it all.

FWIW, I've found countless piping sites via search engines that I would never have known existed (this one included) :) :) .

[Bob]

Thanks Rodger :D

Interestingly, there have been a few cases where people have asked me not to list their piping related sites :shrug: ..

And Bob - yours is a great question, and we can't of course know the real answer..

My guess is.. mostly not from search engines..

The Directory started (whew.. 5 years ago this coming summer) as a spare time effort, just to help locate current / real piping sites, and the only thing I did to publicise it was post a note every now and then on the old RMMB.

Since that time the growth has been consistant, and the only real jumps I have seen happend with print stories.. the three I remember are: Yahoo - Internet Life, USA Today, and last month the Piping Times..

Personally, when I was building the Directory (and for 3 years I used to actively search out new piping sites), I seldom if even used search engines.. they are great for specific thing, but not so good for generic searches I think.. So with that as my 'method'.. I tend to thing others would do the same.. but of course I can't really think out of my 'box'..

But, over the years the growth I've seen has been slow and steady.. and the number coming from search engines has always been stunningly small..

:humm:

[Victoria Crowe]

Bob,

I found your site the first time via a search engine. I think it was google. Since then, however, I've told just about every piper I meet about this fabulous place. So.... :lol:

[mosafef]

I went to the Red River pipes and Drums specifically because Allison B had a notice in her sig line. Trolling(not to be confused with being a troll) the beginner forums and providing helpfull advice and kind words to us beginners, her sig line continually reminded me that there was something going on in this area that I might want to consider. Decent website, convenient payment method, directions and everything posted with yahoo maps and all. So I went, just a thought. FWIW it looks like you have a phenominal deal going on in Ohio, wish I could make it, but I got my first little girl on the way and that deserves some :wink:

[Bob]

Umm.. I understand what you're suggesting John, and to a point I don't mind.. (each post - real information, etc..) but .. imagine how unhappy we'd all be (OK - maybe it would just be me?) if everyone posted in the YA forum in that way.. :rolleyes:

[Ayrhead]

Originally posted by mosafef:
... basically make everyone think "I wish she would <span style="font-weight: bold">shutup about that darn workshop."

:wink: </span>:lol: Actually, I was trying to avoid causing that reaction. And I wish you could come, too. It really should be a great workshop, if people would just show up! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a large last-minute turnout. At least I have learned a lot more about what to do and not do for next year. Thanks, Everyone, for your kind suggestions.

And Bob, I understand your point entirely, and have tried to respect the forum's rules on the matter.

[mosafef]

Well I wasn't trying to cause a fuss. I did say not to "withhold" information. Just periodic update would bump it. And that wink denoted some sarcasm.

I certainly wouldn't want to have the announcement forum degenerate into a bunch of junk and I can see how my earlier post might suggest just that. Sorry, but that's not what I intended and will try to be more concise and clear in what I say. (Boy this crow tastes good....)