Of Special Interest
National Teen Courts home Page
How Much Should I pay to get listed in the top 10? $0.00!
How much should I pay to be listed in the top 10 web positions? Nothing! The National Teen Courts of America paid nothing to have the following web page positions, as of the ti me this article was placed on the web:
1) netfind..aol positions: 1, 2, and 13 under "teen courts" and 2 and 12 under "teen court"
2) altavista positions: 2, 18, 31, 47
5) hotbot positions: 11, and 17, although it has been in the #1 position
6) snap positions: 1, 4, and 18
7) yahoo positions: 2 and 7
You might say that you have never heard of The National Teen Courts of America, so that it is easy to be number one (1) when you have no competition. That is far from the truth, however, "netfind.aol" found 715,274 matches for teen courts and The National Teen Courts of America was still listed in positions 1, 2 and 13 when looking up "teen courts" and position 2 and 12 when looking up "teen court." This means that over 12 million households with membership to AOL can locate The National Teen Courts of America by simply seaching for teen court or teen courts. When they do that, they will learn that a teenager can undergo a trial by their peers in a Teen Court Program. The judge, prosecuting and defense attorneys, jury , bailiffs, and clerks are all teenagers.
The above web positions only illustrate a few of the web positions on some of the major search engines. There are, of course, a few other major search engines and thousands of minor search engines. There are even search programs that will search several engines at the same time to find you information. Most people have already experienced the frustration of finding worthless sites when searching for particular subjects. In fact, often times, search engines will display porno sites long before individuals find the sites that they are really looking for. It really is frustrating to find that a porno site with no relationship to a searched object has a better ranking than the web site you have been working hard to place on the internet.
To pay or not to pay for web position is an individual one. For example, if you know absolutely nothing about web pages, how to set them up and how to submit them to search engines, then you have only two choices: stay off the web or pay someone to get you on the web.
If you know enough to set up a web page and to began submitting your site to search engines, then you are half way there. The main thrust of positioning is to "not" submit until your site is ready. If you submit a site that is under development, a search engine may ignore it. If it doesn't have the key features that a search engine is looking for, it may be ignored completely. It may, however, be listed in position "zillion and one" like many others, for all the good it will do.
If a search engine checks your site when it is not ready, it may be a long time before you will have an opportunity to have it re-evaluated and repositioned. In some cases, it may not even be your fault. A search engine staff member may send you an email stating that your site is not ready yet or not viewable, when it is ready, but your server is down or acting up. When you try to resubmit your improved web page, the search engine may tell you that it already has it, but in position 50,647. Now what do you do to correct the problem.
You can buy "secrets of web positioning" or you can learn them on your own with a little effort and hard work on your part. You must remember that a "secret" is nothing more than knowledge that one person has, but not another. High school drop outs, for example, often wonder what the secret to a better life is, but it was always in their hands - education, which they ignored in favor of rushing to drop out of school. Don't rush out to get a web position before you are ready.
There are a number of free "tools/methods/procedures" available to you to help you attain a good or better position on the web. It is important that you use a combination of all of them. For example, do not limit yourself to one web site.
You can set up identical "mirror" web sites at other locations. Remember, however, that a mirror is not really an identical reflection of you, but rather the reverse reflection of you. The scar or freckle on your right cheek is on the left cheek of the reflection facing you. In other words, the mirror site does not have to be an identical site - only a secondary site. The major portion of information on your web site can be on your primary site with additional identical or different information on secondary sites. Theses secondary sites should then have links back to your primary site.
The purpose of having secondary sites is to provide you with an opportunity to reach your web surfing client target through different "web highways" which may be followed. Everyone does not look for information in the same way. For example, to learn about The National Teen Courts of America, a web surfer may have looked up "teen courts" (note the quotations), teen courts (note: plural), teen court (note: singular, court has no "s"), juvenile crime, juvenile laws, student court, peer court, or any number of other related subjects. In other words, the key words play a role in how the web surfer will find your site. The key words, however, should be found in three locations: your meta tags, your heading, and your text. If your company name is used as your web page title and it has no connection to what your company does or sells, the use of key words in your title are lost, unless your company name as well known as brand names and visitors will look for you by your name. It has been said that more and more search engines are ignoring meta tags and key words. Actually, they are not ignoring them, but rather looking at them differently than before. That's okay, for as long as your site is recognize today, it will probably continue its ranking in or near the same place until someone else comes along with a better prepared site.
You must also remember that your web page may be suitable for one search engine, but not another. For this reason, additional web sites will be beneficial for you to get better positioning. In addition, different pages within your primary or secondary site can contain additional information that may be more readily accepted by one search engine or another. This does not mean that you have to make major changes in your secondary sites that are different from your primary site. You only need to make enough changes to allow the search engine to recognize it as a different page. In other words, the changes of a "near identical" mirror site usually only have to be made in the first 150 words of your web page, in your key words, and your meta tags.
Other important considerations include the following. Your site may or may not have frames. Frames actually cause problems for some search engines and also for web surfers that do not have the capability to view in frame mode. Another consideration is your load time. If your web site takes too long to load, you will loose a lot of viewers. You might want to have a lot of artwork or information on your web site, but don't place it all on your first page. Your first page can serve as an introduction to your site that can easily be loaded by search engines and web surfers. This introduction page can have a link to the rest of your site, but first you have to get your web surfer's attention. Studies/surveys have shown that most web surfers don't want to wait more than 20 seconds to view a site. To paraphrase, if there are a lot of fish in the fishing hole and the one fish you are trying to get is just swimming around without taking the bait, you cast off to another location. Don't loose those web surfers because of a minor problem that can be fixed.
If a web surfer is definitely interested in your particularly site for one reason or another, the surfer will wait a reasonable time for your site to load. Otherwise, the web surfer will go somewhere else. To illustrate load times and to give you a better picture of how a web page will load under different modem speeds, the following illustration is provided for you. A web page with 144, 207 total bytes of which 15,956 are HTML bytes and 128,251 are image bytes, the following load times are provided:
1) 99.04 seconds with a 14.4K modem
2) 54.40 seconds with a 28.8K modem
3) 46.60 seconds with a 33.6K modem
4) 36.44 seconds with a 56K modem
5) 12.90 seconds with an ISDN 128K
6) 3.33 seconds with a T1 1.44Mbps
In other words, your web page better catch the surfers interest as soon as possible, otherwise, they will be going somewhere else. While on the subject of being frustrated by a web site that is taking up your time, don's use the "web lock" used by porno sites. In other words, if your web visitor is trying to go to a new site or a previous site, don't force the surfer to stay at your site or link to another page on your site. Even a surfer interested in your site will usually not return, if you have prevented or misdirected his efforts to go somewhere else. After all, there are probably other sites to go to. This is simply web internet courtesy. If you don't have it, you will loose visitors and the referrals they may give others about your site. What good is it to get a visitor to your site, just to loose them for lack of respect for their time.
Please take this time now to visit The National Teen Courts of America web site at https://www.angelfire.com/biz/nationalteencourts and view the different web pages. You need to view them in two ways. Read the content and look at the layout. You will find the information very useful to you as a "new" or experienced web master. While you are at it, take a few minutes to read about The National Teen Courts of America and forward information about it to individuals or organizations in your city that would be interested in developing or improving teen courts in their area. We are living in a time where countries are trying to reduce juvenile crime and improve youth leadership and this site has the resources to do both. Secondly, as you view the material, click on the left or right side of your mouse, depending on whether you are left or right handed. When you do this a bar should pop up that will allow you to click on "view source" or "view information" for the purpose of looking at the html language
of the web page you are looking at. You can also go to the tool bar on the top of your web page and click on "view" to find your web source.
This viewing capability is a very important tool in your arsenal to a good web page and web position on the internet. Use it to study how different web pages are done. View the National Teen Courts of America web pages to see how the different meta tags are listed/shown. Once you see them, take notes and make appropriate changes to your web page. It doesn't matter the web page deals with teen courts. What does matter is the use of the meta tags. Look and study the use of key words, content, etc. Once you follow the methods used by The National Teen Courts of America, and make appropriate changes for your site, you can then compare them with your competitors web positions. The comparison of the two is necessary as simply copying your competitors format will not necessarily place you ahead of him.
Networking can also provide you with an indirect web position that is higher than yours. Not all web sites are competitors, many sites work together. If, for example, you find a site that has a better position on the internet than yours, and it offers linking abilities, you need to submit to it through that web site's form or through a very polite and cordial email request to be linked. In some cases the link back to you will be easily located by web surfers on that site. In other cases, your link may be buried underneath a great many links, but some surfers may still find you. Additional ways to promote you web site after it's ready, and already submitted to the major search engines, is through free or low cost banner exchange, classifieds, free for all links, announcement lists, associations, news groups, groups interested directly or indirectly in your product or service, discussion boards, reciprocal links, newsletters, free reports, giveaways, and a great deal more categories.
You can get additional information on the National Teen Courts of America web site to help you on your quest for a better web page and position on the net. There are also a number of additional links located on the site that will assist you further in developing your site and web position. Once you are "really ready" you should also apply for awards from different location. These awards will provide your web surfing visitors an idea of the type of web site they are visiting. For example, if a teacher visits your site and finds that other teachers have found your site commendable, they are also likely to find your site helpful. If a doctor finds that other medical professionals find your site worth visiting, your site becomes more appealing. Remember to keep your site family friendly. A site suitable for all members of the family, as they say in the circus "for children of all ages."
