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Why
Search Sites
Are Important To You.
Traffic you
receive from search engines is already targeted. Visitors arriving
at your site from search engines have entered a keyword relevant to
your site, so they are already interested in your product or
service. This is the best source of potential customers you can
have.
Search engines
are the number one way users find new sites. Surveys show that over
85% of users rely on search engines to locate information on the
Web. If you optimize your site to do well on the engines, then
register your site with search engines, you should see increased
traffic to your site.
The
Basics
Before you can
position your site to do well in the search engines, you need to
understand search engine fundamentals. A search engine is a giant
database that lists sites on the Internet. You access the database
when you enter keyword searches and receive a list of relevant
sites.
Search sites are the
Internet's Yellow Pages.
Think of a
search sites as a giant, automated version of the yellow pages. If
you need information on "party planning" from the yellow pages,
there are several steps to retrieving it.
Search Engines Versus
Search Directories.
People use
both search engines and directories without ever realizing there is
a difference between the two.
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Directories
(Yahoo, LookSmart) have human editors who review web pages, rank
them, and then organize them into categorized lists with brief
descriptions. The categories and descriptions are based on
submissions, but are edited by professional editors (real people
in the loop reviewing the sites being submitted).
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Search
Engines (AltaVista, Excite, Google) have automated programs called
spiders that index sites and score pages based on proprietary
guidelines. There is no human judgment involved. Search engines
index all the information on all the Web pages they find. The
indexes are generated automatically, based on the words and
phrases that are found on Web pages.
What is a Search
Engine?
Search engines
send automated computer programs (called robots or spiders) to crawl
the Internet in search of Web pages. Basically these spiders follow
links to travel from URL to URL. When they visit your Web site, the
robot indexes (or records) the text of your page or pages (if it is
a deep crawling spider) and stores it in the search engine's index.
Later, when a user enters a search query at the search engine's Web
site, the search engine scans Web pages in its index for pages that
provide the best match.
In theory, the
search engine spider is supposed to be able to find all the sites on
the Internet. However, since new sites are being added daily, it's
risky to assume that the spider will find you. Expedite the process
by submitting your URL to the search engines.
What is a Directory?
Unlike the
automated search engine process, each entry in a directory is first
reviewed by a human being. You submit a short description to the
directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they
review. A keyword search will only look for matches in these
descriptions, so be careful how you describe your site. Techniques
to receive a high search engine rating will not work with a
directory. While good content is necessary for search engines, both
good content AND visual appeal are mandatory in human-edited
directories. Remember, manual review takes time! The typical time
lag between submission of a site and its actual listing in Yahoo is
five months. You can speed up the process at some directories, but
expect to pay for that service. This trend will probably continue.
Search Engine and
Directory Hierarchy.
There are
literally thousands of search engines on the Internet, but naturally
you're most concerned about your ranking on the high-traffic sites.
Some of the smaller search engines may not bring you a lot of
traffic, but your listing gives you another source of links (which
can help in your overall link popularity building).
How to
get listed
Don't wait to
be discovered! Submit your URL directly to the search engine or
directory.
Search
Site Submissions
There are two
ways to submit to search engines and directories, manually or using
an automated submission tool. Here is a summary of both methods.
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Manual
Submission - Use the Add URL form from the search engine site
itself. This way, you have absolute control over where your site
is submitted. However, this process is that it is a very time
consuming and labor intensive activity. Some search engines bury
their Add URL form so far down in the site that one wonders if
they are intentionally trying to thwart potential applicants.
How often do I submit?
Your best
strategy is to submit every month or so. Search sites frequently
have multiple versions of their databases and they aren't always in
sync. You may be listed in one version of their database and not in
another. Your only recourse is to resubmit your site. To see if you
have even been picked up in a search engine, go to the search
engine's site and do a search with your company's domain name as the
search query.
How long does it take
to get listed?
These times
vary with search engines and directories. The search engines will
optimistically report a very short time, but most sites get listed
within 4 - 6 weeks. The reality is
that most search engines and directories are very backlogged and
slow to get listings added to their databases. Don't be surprised if
you experience waits much longer than these. As mentioned earlier,
you may wait over 5 months to see your site get listed.
How to
improve your ranking.
How do search engines
rank pages?
Search engines
use a ranking algorithm to determine the order in which matching web
pages are returned on the results page. Each web page is graded on
the number of the search terms it contains, where the words are
located in the document, and other criteria that changes frequently.
All search
engines have a different method of ranking. That's why you might
rank number 1 on one engine and number 25 on another. Robots look
for relevance and rank results on a secret ever-changing algorithm.
Some look at TITLE, some look at META tags, some look for link
popularity. Search engine optimization means optimizing the Web site
for the best possible positioning based on the page's keywords and
description.
General tips to get a
good ranking.
1. Create a
good site with good content.
This is
critical, especially as search engines grow in sophistication. If
your site contains worthwhile material, users will return to your
site and will recommend it to others. Other sites will link to you -
which will in turn help you by improving your link popularity.
2. Pick
keywords visitors will actually use on a search engine query.
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If you have
keywords that are very competitive, consider narrowing your focus
to improve results. The keyword "travel" will return thousands of
responses and may not place you near the top, while "Plymouth,
Massachusetts" is more focused and targeted to a particular query.
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Consider
using a keyword phrase instead of just one keyword. Visitors to
search engines use phrases to narrow their searches. For example,
instead of using a keyword like "travel" that would return too
many responses, use a more specific keyword phrase like "Caribbean
travel"
3. Include
keywords in your TITLE tag.
Pages with
keywords appearing in the TITLE are assumed to be more relevant to
the topic than those without.
4. Use
keywords in META Keyword and Description tags.
Using META
tags will not hurt you in search engines that don't use them, and
they can definitely help you in search engines that do index them.
While they are not as important as the TITLE tag, META tags can give
you the edge over your competition since most web sites don't even
use them.
5. Use your
keywords throughout your page.
Search engines
will check to see if the keywords appear near the top of a web page,
such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They
assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words
right from the beginning.
6. Have a good
keyword density on your page.
Keyword
density is derived by dividing the frequency of that word by the
total words on the page. Frequency is a major factor in how search
engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often
keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with
a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web
pages. This can turn into a balancing act as too high a density can
be considered spam by some engines. Usually you are safe if your
keyword density falls between 1 - 5 %.
7. Continually
work on improving your link popularity.
Listings on
any site can increase your traffic significantly. Links TO you:
* Give
potential visitors multiple paths to your website.
* They can
increase your ranking in search engines that use link popularity as
part of their formula.
Most search
engines use link popularity as relevance criteria. For example, the
Google search engine (not their new directory) is based almost
entirely on link popularity.
Summary
Success with
search engines and directories is not one magical thing you do
specifically. It is the culmination of your whole strategy.
Done by yourself, it is a time consuming,
labor intensive activity. However, by
utilizing attracthits.com you save a boatload of time, money and
effort.
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