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Step-By-Step Guide To Using Search Engine Power Pack Software
Use the links below to find the information you need.
If you're just getting started with search engine optimization techniques, you may want to read NetMechanic's online search engine optimization and promotion tutorial before you begin using Power Pack. The tutorial describes how search engines work, why they're a valuable source of site traffic, how to get listed in search engines, and how to improve your search engine rank.
NetMechanic's free Webmaster Tips newsletter is also an excellent source of in-depth information. Past issues are archived at the Webmaster Resources section of the Web site.
Once you're familiar with search engine basics, then you're ready to begin optimizing your site with Power Pack.
Search Engine Power Pack contains a full set of optimization and promotion tools that help you optimize your site, submit it, and track its rank.
Keyword Popularity: Before you spend hours optimizing your site for a certain set of keywords, make sure that you're targeting keywords people use for their searches. It doesn't do you any good to be ranked first for the keyword phrase "fried purple onions" if nobody is looking for that term! The Keyword Popularity tool tells you how many search queries are made each month at the Overture search engine.
This tool helps you narrow your keyword options and more effectively target the keywords that best fit your site. Use the tool to search for individual keywords, keyword phrases, and variations of keywords.
META Mechanic: Only 25% of Web sites use META and TITLE tags, even though many search engines use them to rank Web sites and to display search results. META Mechanic automatically generates META and TITLE tags customized for your Web site based on the information you provide. Then you can easily cut and paste your new TITLE and META tags into your HTML code.
A good descriptive TITLE tag and useful META keyword and description tags will give your site an advantage over competitor sites that ignore these important page elements.
Page Primer: Every search engines uses different criteria to evaluate and rank Web pages - and each engine changes its algorithm frequently. Techniques that worked last month may not be relevant today - or may even get you banned from some engines! Page Primer analyzes your Web site and gives you tips to boost your ranking in individual engines, personalized recommendations for individual pages, and alerts you to problems that could get you banned.
Engine Starter: Easily submit your Web pages using Engine Starter. Select any page in your site and choose which engines you want to submit to. Use the deep submit option to submit your important content pages, not just your home page. After you submit, you'll get a full report that tells you if the submissions were successful.
Engine Tracker: Since 75% of searchers never go past the first 2 pages of search results, your search engine rank is critical to your success. Engine Tracker tracks your site's performance on 15 top search engines and directories. Schedule an automatic report each week for up to 20 keywords and keyword phrases. Get special alerts if your site drops out of the Top 40 listings.
It's important to use these tools in order because each one builds on the results of previous tools.
To use Engine Starter, you need to submit the pages you optimized for particular search engines using Page Primer and you need the keywords you selected and the META tags you generated with the Keyword Popularity Tool and META Mechanic.
If you skip any steps, your pages may not be optimized properly and may be missing other important information that is critical to achieving a high search engine ranking.
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How To Use Power Pack's Tool Set
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Sign in screen: http://www.netmechanic.com/login.htm
The Account Home Page shows all the NetMechanic tools you've purchased and the URLs that are associated with those tools. For instance, if you purchased Power Pack for one site and HTML Toolbox for a different site, you'll be able to see that on the account home page.
In the first section, Account Management, you can choose to add a new URL, change the personal information on your account, get help in managing your account, or contact technical support.
Unless you have changes to make to your account, you can skip down lower on the page to find the URL Table of Contents section. Click on the URL you'd like to optimize, and then select the tool you'd like to use.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and it's the same as your domain name. NetMechanic.com is NetMechanic's URL address.
Click on "Check Keywords" and then enter the keyword or keyword phrase you'd like to use. The Keyword Popularity tool will show you how many searches are made for it on Overture in a typical month.
The Keyword Popularity Report shows you the number of queries made on your selected keyword. It also shows you the number of queries made on variations of your keyword or keyword phrase.
For instance, if you enter the keyword phrase "natural pet food," the Keyword Popularity Tool also reports results for "all natural pet food," "California natural pet food," "natural balance pet food," and "natural life pet food."
Don't try to rush this step: you have an unlimited number of searches available. Take your time to make sure you're selecting the very best, most targeted keywords for your site.
You may want to read our Webmaster Tip "How To Select Your Keywords" for more in-depth information about this important page element.
META Mechanic generates TITLE and META tags for your Web page. Click on "Generate Tags" to get to the Meta Mechanic tool.
It's a 6-step process:
- Enter the keywords you selected based on the Keyword Popularity Tool results. Place your primary keywords first because search engines will consider them more important. Then include your other keywords and keyword phrases separated by commas.
- Create your page TITLE tag by entering the title of your page. Be sure to include keywords in the title. Your page title is more important than you may think. Many search engines display the page's TITLE text in the search results section and most browsers will display your page title at the top of the browser window. Make your title attractive and understandable to human visitors.
- Create a short description that describes the purpose of your page. Be sure to include your page's primary keywords. Some search engines will use your META description tag in the search results section along with the TITLE.
- Select your preferred results format. META Mechanic will generate the HTML code you need to cut and paste into your Web page or will give you a copy of your existing page with the TITLE and META tags already inserted.
- Click on the Create Tags button to generate your META and TITLE tags.
- Cut and paste your new META and Title tags into the HEAD section of your page. Save your page and re-publish your new page with the META tags and Title to your Web site.
Important! Create individualized META and TITLE tags for every page in your site. Webmasters often think that only their site's home page needs TITLE and META tags, but that's just not true. Since search engine spiders crawl through your site and index all your pages (you hope!). When you have a lot of pages indexed by search engines, visitors are apt to enter your site from any page - not just your home page.
Page Primer reviews your page and gives you tips on how to improve your page rank in search engines for a given keyword or keyword phrase. Note that if you'd like your page evaluated for several different keywords or keyword phrases, you'll have to set that up in Page Primer. Click on "Optimize Page" to get to the Page Primer Tool.
It's a simple 4-step process to set up a page to be graded by Page Primer:
- Enter the URL address of the page if it's already on a live server. If you haven't posted the page yet, use the "Browser" button to tell Page Primer where to find it on your computer.
- Select the particular search engine you'd like to optimize for or get general search engine tips relevant to the top search engines.
- Enter the keyword or keyword phrase you expect searchers to use if they're trying to find your site.
- Generate your report and Page Primer will take you to the Results page.
Look over the results page carefully. You'll find that it's broken into separate sections where your page TITLE, META tags, header tags, ALT descriptions, page links, and content have been analyzed.
Each section contains two columns:
- Findings - Page Primer advises you if your page contains certain important elements and explains why these elements are important. If your page contains the important elements, Page Primer will advise you if you're using them to maximize their full potential.
- Fix It - Page Primer gives you advice on how to correct problems it finds on your page. Click on the "Want more information on this topic?" link to view the information in a pop-up window.
Once you've corrected the problems Page Primer found, run the tool over your page again to make sure that the content is optimized correctly.
Important! You'll probably optimize your site's home page first, but don't stop there. Since most search engines spider deep into Web sites, visitors are apt to enter your site from many different pages, not just the home page. Optimize your important interior pages with Page Primer and you'll increase your overall site traffic.
Use Search Engine Starter (SES) to select which search engines you'd like to submit your site to.
After you have used the Keyword Popularity tool, Meta Mechanic, and Page Primer, then click on "Submit Your Site" to get to the Search Engine Starter Site Description information. Take your time with this: the information you enter helps determine your search engine rank! Look back at your META description tag. The site description information you enter on this page should match the description you generated with META Mechanic.
You'll need to have the following information ready to enter:
- Page URL
- Your name
- Site Title
- Descriptive keywords (limited to 255 characters - SES will count them for you and alert you if your keyword string is too long.
- One-sentence site description (should be the same as your META tag description)
- The most appropriate country for your site
- Channel. Some search engines assign Web sites to specific categories like Entertainment or Health or Sports. Select the best category for your site from the list of categories provided.
- Your email address. NetMechanic will notify you by email if the search engine submission was successful. Search engines also require an email address, but that's often a prime source of spam emails. If you want NetMechanic to use a substitute email address (one we generate) when submitting to search engines, select the option "No, don't give out my email address." NetMechanic will contact you at the email address you enter, but won't share it with any search engines.
When you've finished with the site information form, check it carefully for completeness and typos, then click on the "Next" button.
Then, you have to select from two options:
- Blanket Submission submits to all 100 top search engines. It's the default value.
- Targeted Submission lets you select the particular engines you want to submit to.
When you've finished selecting search engines, click on the "Submit Site Now" button to send your submissions directly to the engines.
You'll receive a complete submission report by email that tells you which submissions were successful and provides you with information about what to do if there were problems with the submission process.
Search Engine Starter is the only Power Pack tool that doesn't give you instant results. Even if every submission is successful, you can expect to wait anywhere from four weeks to months for your site to show up on some search engines! Thousands of sites get added to the World Wide Web each day and search engines struggle to keep up with the submissions they receive daily.
The confirmation email we send to you lists the estimated amount of time it takes to get listed on the engines you submitted to. Watch for your site to come up in the search engines and resubmit if it doesn't appear within the expected time frame.
One thing to keep in mind - if you don't see your site show up in a search engine, you may need to use Page Primer again to optimize your page. We recommend you always check your page with Page Primer before you submit to any search engine.
Before you can generate reports with Search Engine Tracker, you'll need to set up the keywords you want it to evaluate.
- Return to your Account Home Page.
- Skip down to the Search Engine Tracker section.
- Click on the "Edit Search Engine Tracker" link.
- Enter up to 20 keywords and keyword phrases that you want to track. These should be the same keywords that appear in your META tags and the same keywords that you used for Page Primer.
- Decide if you'd like to receive weekly email reports. If so, enter your email address and select the email format (HTML or text) you'd like Search Engine Tracker to use.
- Click the "Update" button and you're ready to run your first report!
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Search Engine Tracker Reports
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Executive Summary: This gives you a general overview of how your site is performing. A star next to the search engine name indicates at least one page in your site has attained a Top 40 listing in the search results.
Remember it can take time (weeks or months depending on the search engine) before your site might show up in the search engines. Patience is important.
If your site is in the search engine's database (meaning if you time the name of your site in the search query and your web site shows up in the results), but is not high in the ranks, you need to optimize your site more. Do this by running pages through Page Primer.
Page Primer will tell you things to do to your pages that will make search engines like your page better. After you finish making changes, re-submit your pages and wait. You should see your site raise in the rankings in a few weeks.
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