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What are Search Engines and Directories?
Sites providing search facilities are of
two types. A search engine is a software compiled Index (like Lycos,
Hotbot etc.,) or a human compiled directory (like Google, Yahoo
,dmoz etc.,). In other words, it's a huge database which contains
links to all the websites that have been submitted to them including
a few details about each site. The main difference between the two
is that one is reviewed by a human being and the other by a Spider
or Robot.
In some cases the person who reviews
your site may reject it because it is not submitted in the proper
category or if the site is not good in its quality. But in the case
of a computerized search engine, a program called a Robot or Spiders
sent by the engine to visit the submitted site, collect the information
about the site and then include it in the search engine database.
These Robots are faster and not as discriminating as human beings.
How to prepare your site?
Before submitting your site to any search
engine you'll need to make sure it is ready. You may need prepare
the webpage title, META tags (keywords and Description) and some
of the first few lines of text of the page you submit. |
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<Title> Tag
The title is the one you see in the top
of the browser as your website title.. It is not the one which
appears on your web page. The search engine will give a high degree
of importance on the words in the title. Therefore, if someone
is searching for Alaska logistics and if the word Alaska Logistics
is in the title of the site then there is a good chance of the
site appearing on the first page of a search. If you open the
HTML source of this webpage you would find something that looks
like this.
<title>Alaska Logistic solutions</title>
You
need to type your title of your site in the place between <title>
and </title> as its is appears above.
META tags
META tags announce all the details about
your site to a search engine. They are hidden in the code of the
website and can give different information to the search engines
for example, keywords, description, author and more. Though these
are all optional in any web page it's a must for marketing your
site through search engines. Each search engine gives its own
weightage to each META tag. It is therefore important to know
some of the things that interest these search engines.
Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases which
are used by search engine to locate a site. It is really important
to phrase the keywords carefully so that any user who is using
a search engine may find your site when he/she enters the appropriate
keywords or phrases.. You should come up with a set of keywords
that exactly fit into the content of your site and its goals
and purpose. If you view the source of this page you'll be able
to find the keywords which I used. The example below gives you
an idea of what the keywords would look like for the page you
are now reading.
<Meta name="keywords" content="website
promotion, website marketing, site promotion">
You need to really work hard on finding the best keywords. Try
and put yourself in the shoes of the person looking for your
site. What words or phrases would s/he use?
Description
This is also a META tag that tells the search engine about your
site. It is the description that appears below the title in
the search results. This should be around 50 to 60 words. The
description is often difficult to prepare. On one hand it needs
to be very appealing and cause the person to click and go to
your site. On the other hand it should contain good keywords
and phrases to get a high ranking in the search results. To
get a good ranking it is necessary to prepare a very good description
which repeats your title and at least one or two keywords on
which you want to focus.. This META tag like the others should
be added in the HTML source, may look like this:
<meta name="description"
content="We ship goods from and to Alaska">
You
can learn more on meta tags at www.searchenginewatch.com,
read more on the Vancouver-webpages
dictionary of meta tags.
What is Spamming?
Search engines are very sensitive to the
data that you feed them. The keywords that you use might be repeated
in the title, keywords, description and in the content. This is
OK but there is a limitations in repeating the keywords. You should
be really careful of how many times you repeat them. All the search
engines will allow a certain level of repetition of keyword. However,
if it is higher than what they permit, it will be considered spamming
and your page will never get indexed. The spiders can calculate
the keyword ratios faster than you can.
Here are some tips to avoid spamming:
1. Do not use text color of same
as the page background color and hide text.
2. Avoid repeating keywords more than 3 times.
Do not dump page with keywords.
3. Do not try to create one page for promotion
to not change it with some other page after getting indexed.
4. Put only relevant keywords. Do not try
to use some popular keywords just to get hits which are related
to your page.
5. Form your keyword wisely. Do not use words
like "Great" "Extraordinary" or Sentences like
"we are the only one...".
How to Register your webpages?
Submitting a site to any search engine is
fairly simple. On the home page of the search engine locate the
"Add your site" or "Register url" or "Submit
your site" link. Simply follow the instructions given by each
search engines to add your site. Some of the search engines may
ask you to submit all the pages that you want indexed, for example
AltaVista. Some ask that you submit only one page URL of your entire
site and all the remaining pages will be spidered. This means that
the search engine will automatically add the remaining pages. Google
is an example of this. In google there is no direct link like "Add
URL", then where will you submit it? Just do a search at Google.
Submitting
to the directories like Yahoo!, dmoz, and Looksmart is a tiresome
job. Since they keep web pages under separate categories (directories),
you will need to find the best category under which your site will
fit. Remember, these are viewed by human beings. If you submit to
irrelevant categories it may be considered spamming causing your site
submission could be omitted.
How to get Get listed?
Now
you know that submitting your site is not a big deal, but how sure
are you that your site will be indexed? Getting indexed is nothing
but getting a place for you site in the search engine's database.
How do you find out if your site has been added to the search engine?
It's easy. If you search with your URL or domain name as the keyword
and the results of the search will show whether you are indexed
in that search engine.
Each
search engine has its own policies (secrets!) to accept URLs that
have been submitted. Some search engines take less time than others
to get you listed. Be patient. Directories
take more time since they need human intervention. It is good practice
to resubmit the pages once in thirty or forty days regardless of whether
the site has been listed or not.
AltaVista
In the search box enter http://mysite.com. You need to add the
promotion code which appears on the site.
HotBot
Enter your domain and subdirectory in the form given.
Excite
Select Advanced Search.
Select the option "URL must contain the phrase" and
enter the URL.
Lycos
Enter the complete URL, like http://www.mysite.com/
Overture
You have to pay per click. First you bid one your keyword and
pay. This search engine supports askjeeves,
lycos, msn
and more.
Where are you?
If your site has been listed then you may
want to know where you rank. If you can find your site in the first
20 positions you have done a nice job. If you are not ranked in
the first two pages, then again you need to do some work. To save
time finding your rank you can use a position analysis tools. But
we don't recommend any tools.
You can submit your site but in my opinion,
if you are not in the first three pages then there is no benefit.
If this is the case then you need to start thinking about professional
services!
What is Professional web site
submission service?
Professional services can offer result oriented
promotion. It takes a lot of effort and understanding of the inner
workings of search engines as well as fine tuning your site. Here
are some steps that you can do to improve your rankings.
1. Try again with the keywords
you used before.
2. Visit 5 or 6 competing sites ranked at the top.
3. View their HTML source and understand their usage of title
and META tags.
This
will give you an idea of how they got to the top. After this you may
need to tweak your site at a constant interval. You may need to change
the content to make sure the keywords are in the content with the
allowable repetition. Do not hesitate to modify your content.
You can learn the latest search engine strategies from articles available
online. Try to subscribe to some newsletters with search engine news.
You can use web based site promotion tools like Selfpromotion.com.
This is a great tool that can help you a lot. At the bottom of this
page I mention some other useful sites.
Do you want to learn more?
To understand search engines and their ranking
strategies you need to study their secrets constantly. The only
way to do this is through researching and listening to what others
say. Here are some links which can help you to learn more.
Searchengines.com
SearchEngines.com offers four highly effective
solutions to achieve targeted web traffic for your company's web
site
spider-food.net
This is a good place to go for an easy explanation of site promotion.
She also describes each major search engine in detail with pointers
on how to submit to each.Lots of resources and articles.
Searchengineworld.com
This site is the home of the widely read Search Engine World Quarterly
Magazine for webmasters and search engine promotion specialists
Selfpromotion.com
A great site containing a lot of information. It has a web based
application developed by the site's owner Robert Woodhead which
is really helpful. You can avail his secret tools like "Rankulator"
for a small fee. Robert unleashes the secrets of search engines.
Searchenginewatch.com
Great
tips and news about each search engine's characteristics by Danny
Sullivan. Secret tips for paid subscribers. A must read for all
web masters.
Searchengineforums.com
An
archive of all the search engine message boards and some site promotion
forums. You can post your questions at the board and exchange ideas
with other like you.
Linkpopularity.com
Link
popularity is the total number of web sites that link to your site.
It's important because good link popularity can dramatically increase
traffic to your web site. Well placed links are an excellent source
of consistent and targeted traffic. Due to recent developments,
they can even generate additional search engine traffic to your
site. You can check your link popularity here. We feel some search
engines give weightage to link popularity too.
Bruceclay.com
Plenty
of good information about site promotion and site promotion tools.
Bruce Clay shares his experience and he offers many paid tools which
can help you a lot.
How can we help you?
"For large and small companies optimizing
their web pages to provide top listing in search engines such as,
Google, represents a task to be outsourced to professionals. "
- says Darrell
Zahorsky of About.com. We have over 4 years of experience in
search engine optimization and look at our
services which you might be interested in.
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