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On these pages we will try to give some helpful
information about search-engines and site promotion.
First some statistics
- Estimated number of webpages on the World Wide Web: over 30
billion pages
- People who spend five or more hours a week online spend 71%
of their time searching for information.
- 85-90% of all Internet users rely on search engines to
locate sites.
- 7% of Internet users look past the first three pages of
search results.
Conclusion: If you want to have a successful website, you
should do your level best to get into the first three pages of as many search engines as possible.
Contents:
What is
Search Engine submission all about?
When you submit your web site URL to a search engines, you
basically ask the search engine spiders to visit your web site and to evaluate it. If the
search engine spiders cannot find anything useful on your site, they won't list your web
site. It doesn't make sense to submit your web site again and again if it isn't search
engine ready.
Search engines must be able to find out what your web site is all about. They need to find
text and links on your web pages and they also need to find the keywords for which you
want to have high rankings on your web pages.
Submitting alone doesn't guarantee visitors
Submitting your web site to search engines is important, but it is not the most important
step in your search engine marketing campaign.
It's much more important that your web pages are optimized for search engines.
Many web sites are designed in a way that prevents them from showing up in search engines.
If your web pages are not search engine ready, it's pointless to submit them. If the
search engines index your web site at all, it will be listed on position 17,352 or worse.
With a listing on that position, you won't get any visitors.
The key to successful search engine submission
Before submitting your web pages to search engines, you must make sure that they are
optimized for your important keywords and for the special search engine you target.
If your web pages are prepared for a special search engine and for a special keyword then
it's much more likely that your web site will receive high rankings.
Make sure that your web pages contain enough text and that search engine spiders can find
the pages of your web site trough normal text links. Don't use web site intros and don't
use too many Flash elements on your web site. It is extra work to optimize your web pages
for search engines but it is well worth the effort.
Professional search engine submission takes some time
Invest some time in optimizing your web pages before you submit them and then submit your
site to important search engines. You'll get much better search engine rankings
Deep search-engines
Only one type of search engine really comes out to your pages and "spiders" it,
that is searching down every link and page on your site and storing and compressing every
word of it in the database. We are speaking of Deep Search Engines, and there are not many
around, but here are some of them:
I have noticed that there are conditions that can make the spidering robot confused and
stop indexing your pages, like pages using scripts to automatically redirect you to
another page (and even frames). So you better keep your default startpage (index) as
clean as possible. Here are some hints:
All the spiders "deep crawl", which means that
they crawl several layers into your website. The exception to this from the above listed
search engines is the spider of the search engine, Go.
On Alta Vista your submission will generally be evaluated within four to six week. Other
search engines might be quicker or slower.
Excite Inktomi, Go and Lycos cannot crawl nor index frame pages. Alta Vista, FAST,
Northern Light can. It is possible to circumvent the problems with framed pages of some
search engines by using the
<NOFRAMES> tag.
If you have an image map as one of your main pages for links to other areas of your
website, you will have problems indexing your pages with the spiders of Excite, FAST,
Google, Inktomi and Lycos. They cannot follow the links in an image map. However, links in
an image map can be read and followed by spiders of the following search engines:
AltaVista, Go and Northern Light.
All robots will read your robot.txt page.
If you have Meta Robot Tags in your code all but Excite's spider can read it. Google may
not support checking it.
Work hard (and smart) to have as many well regarded websites linked to yours, known as
Link Popularity. Link Popularity is extremely important because all search engines can
determine how many links are going to and from your page. Some decide to "index or
not" based on this attribute of your website. If you do this, then you will be
rewarded by the Inktomi and Lycos spider's deep crawling your website and therefore
indexing more of your pages. Additionally, AltaVista, Excite, FAST, Google (very
important), Go, Inktomi, and Northern Light see this with the rationale that if there are
many links connected to this page, then it must be of more importance. This is becoming a
popular tweaking among the programming of many spiders.
Standard search engines or
directories
These "engines" don't search your pages. This is the reason why in some cases
you have to enter keywords and description of your pages. These engines don't extract them
from your metatags.
Nevertheless they are often more useful than the deep engines for finding useful, relevant
information on general or popular topics.
Categorized Listings
These sites are arranged much the same as the Standard Directories, except no database
search engine is involved. Information is held in categories. The categories contain lists
of titles, linked to the URL, normally with a short descriptions underneath.
There are thousands of examples of these listings, often called FFA "free-for-all
links pages". They don't get a huge amount of traffic, but if you submit to enough of
them the cumulative traffic could add up. You definitely need software to take advantage
of these, it's too much to do by hand. One more thing: as the use of submitting software
increases, your link on these pages very quick (sometimes in minutes) will roll over the
top of the page and be gone forever. Also bear in mind that you will get a LOT of emails
from these sites after submitting to them, and to avoid that you could use a special
mailbox if submitting to these pages.
Yahoo! and Open Directory Project
Yahoo and Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) need a dedicated chapter.
To get listed at yahoo first read on their pages about how to enter. Yahoo is
organized in Categories, Web Sites listed in yahoos' index and Web Pages from the Google
Database.If your site does not appear under the heading Web Sites, it isn't in Yahoo. This
might be confusing. A site appearing under Web Pages does not mean Yahoo has listed them!
If you are not in the index, find the category page that best fits your site. At the
bottom of the page will be a small "Suggest a Site" link. Click on it to get to
the site submission page.
Don't suggest your site if it's not 100% finished and "up and
running", the Yahoo staff are very critical about this. Good design and fast loading
are keywords.
Commercial sites: Yahoo requires that the site lists the physical
address of the business somewhere on the site (and the easier it is to find, the more
likely it is that the Yahoo reviewer will find it and you'll pass this test). This address
must be a physical one; a post office box won't do.
OK, those were some short hints on getting listed at Yahoo, and I am
getting rather lazy, so I will provide you with a link for further reading.
It will show up in a new window, just shut it down to return here.
It is very important also to be listed at the Open Directory Project. A
growing number of portals are using the largest human-edited web directory like AOL
Search, Netscape Search, Yahoo, All the Web, AltaVista, Lycos, Hotbot and other sites. To
get listed you need to read this
carefully.
Some words about Linkpages (FFA:s) and
classifieds
Some years ago Linkpages (FFA:s) and classified ads used to be a good webmaster
resource. In the last years though they tend to become more email harvesters with few
actual visitors. We provide links and tools to submit to linkpages, the data for the
submission forms can be entered with clicks of the mouse. As these sites will generate
lots of confirmation emails and other unwanted mails we STRONGLY advice you to use the
junk email that you are asked to set up in the project window. We will keep on adding
links if we find any new useful FFA submitters.
Metatags
Our robot Butler will fetch all metatags to store in our database before submission
and give you a chance to correct/change them. Here are some hints about how to
optimize your metatags:
- Title: This Tag should contain enough characters or
keywords to be catchy enough to draw some attention, will show up on the first line on
many search engines. The recommended maximum number of characters for this tag is 60.
Example: <title>TopSitePromote, Topranked Site Promotion and
Submission</title>
Note! Altavista does not index pages without the title metatag or pages
with same title!
- Description: A brief description of your site, containing
keywords that you want to promote. Shows up under the title on many search engines. Our
recommended maximum number of characters for this tag is 150.
Example:<meta name="description"
content="TopSitePromote is the free topranked site promotion and submission engine.
Submit your site to the top of the most popular search engines for FREE.">
- Keywords: A maximum of 255 chars are stored in our
database. Choose with care, try to avoid repeated words (maximum 3 are recommended).
Keywords and keyphrases should be separated by commas.
Example: <meta name="keywords" content="site
submission, website submit, site promote, web site promotion, submission, promotion,
registration, free, advertising, marketing, searchengines, website promotion, website
submission, internet marketing advertising, url, search engine submissions, search engine
registration, search engine secrets">
- The following tags are optional:
<meta name="revisit" content="14 days">
- tells the spider/robot to return for reindexing every 14 days.
<meta name="robots" content="index">
- tells the spider/robot to walk down every link on your pages.
More hints
All of the major search engines' databases will index the
full body text. There may be certain words missing that are called "stop" words.
These stop words are words that many spiders skip in order to move faster. The spiders who
do skip words belong to AltaVista, Excite, Inktomi, Lycos and Google. FAST, Go and
Northern Light's spiders do not.
Concerning your meta tags, all search engines index Meta Keywords except Excite, FAST,
Google, Lycos and Northern Lights. Additionally, all spiders will index Meta Descriptions
with the exception of: FAST, Google, Lycos and Northern Light.
If you have alt tags for your images on your pages that are being indexed then, AltaVista,
Go, Google and Lycos will read and index them but Excite, FAST, Inktomi and Northern Light
will not.
Any comment tags that you have in your web page code can only be read by the spider of the
northern California baby and powerhouse, Inktomi.
Note! Altavista does not index pages without the
title metatag or pages with same title!!
Ranking
If you're hoping that your Meta Tags will boost your ranking for all search engines, this
is not the case. Although all major search engines spiders read and index meta tags, only
Go and Inktomi do give a boost to meta tags. AltaVista, Excite, FAST, Google, Lycos and
Northern Light do not.
Link popularity
What is link popularity? It's the total number of websites that link to your site.
Many search engines now analyze link popularity in addition to keywords and content when
ranking your site. The more popular your site is, the higher the ranking.
The important shift has been toward Link Popularity. As stated earlier, this is an
important point to several search engines insofar as indexing is concerned. Additionally,
it is also important in Ranking. Getting as many links of good sites linking to yours is
an important point with AltaVista, Excite, FAST, Google (very important), Go, Inktomi, and
Northern Light.
Chose descriptive keywords to reflect the content. Have great content and a really good
TITLE and Meta Keyword Description that entices people to click on your link when it comes
up in a search, then you win points with both HotBot and Lycos. You will be boosted in
rankings with those search engines. The height of the boost depends on the number of
people who click on your link.
One more point to remember is that search engines, like most entities, change..
Avoid spamming
This is a quote from AltaVista:
Some barriers to being indexed are due to the misbehavior of a handful of webmasters
who have tried to fool search engines into ranking their pages high on lists of matches
and including them as matches to queries they aren't appropriate for. This is one kind of
behavior that is known as "spamming." Spamming degrades the value of the index
and is a nuisance for all.
The logic that leads people to try such tricks is rather bizarre. "I figure
everybody searches for the word 'sex.' I don't have any sex at my site, but I want people
to stumble across my site. So I'm going to put the word 'sex,' three thousand times as
comments. And any time that anybody searches for 'sex,' my pages will show up first."
People have actually tried this. They have tried doing the same kind of thing in the
backgrounds of their Web pages. They have also created page after page of text that is in
the same color as the background color so visitors won't see the words, but search engine
crawlers will. They have tried everything imaginable to fool search engines.
If being found via search engines is important to your business, be very careful about
where you have your pages hosted. If the hosting service also hosts spammers and
pornographers, you could wind up being penalized or excluded simply because the underlying
IP address for that service is the same for all the virtual domains it includes.
Designing Your Website For Traffic
When developing a website, you must consider more than just its physical appearance. It
should be created so that it will attract as much traffic as possible.
The goal here is to teach you a bit about how to increase your chances of getting traffic
from the search engines like Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite and Lycos. Remember, search engine
services exist for one reason, to make it possible for "surfers" to locate
information on the World Wide Web. They do not create information, they only file it and
serve it up as answers to inquiries.
When designing each page, do so with "a search" in mind. Do not entitle your
home page "My Cool Home Page" unless that is ALL your site is about. If there is
a purpose for your page, state that reason in the name. The search engines will make
extensive use of your page titles. Keep reviewing each page's title to find more
meaningful titles.
The proper use of META Tags in each page will drastically help your site obtain good
position with the search engines. Do not use words in your META tags that have nothing to
do with the purpose and content of your site.
While placing words like "sex" into your keywords might bring you some extra
traffic for a while, it will not last.
Search engines will catch on and drop you, and the people visiting your site will be
upset, that type of traffic is of no use to you.
Figure out exactly what type of audience your products or information will attract and
design content that would appeal to them. Focus more on content quality, rather than
looking cool. You do not need all of the latest gadgets to entice visitors to your site,
give them what they are looking for.
Since there are many search engines which will not utilize your META tags, it is important
to put your important data early on the page, as specifically as possible. The search
engines will index your page and look for keywords.
If your site is about selling information, don't start off by talking about pianos. You
could be listed under pianos or categories relating to pianos.
To get an idea of how each search engine works, visit them and perform many searches, then
study the results. You should also visit many sites that you consider to be in competition
with your product. Study their structure and what keywords are used.
Many of the search engines are working on eliminating keyword loading. You may have
seen search results where the titles of pages come back as nothing but a list of keywords.
Loading lists of keywords into your title tag, putting in long lists of invisible key word
repeats at the bottom of your page, among others, will now get you "dropped"
from several of the search engines, or at least put at the end.
Design your pages to be as clean and efficient as possible. If you go overboard with
graphics, tables, Applets and animations, you not only make it difficult for search
engines, but confusing for visitors. Use your own experiences. Watch what you do when you
visit websites. Some sites keep your interest as you go deeper and deeper into their site,
while some sites do not even give the opportunity to finish loading before you exit. Keep
all that in mind because that is exactly what others will be doing to your site. Take the
time to develop your site correctly the first time. It will save you time and money.
Keywords Search Engine Design Tips
Performing a search using a search engine often turns up hundreds or thousands of matching
web pages. Only the 10 or 20 most "relevant" matches are displayed on the first
page. Naturally, anyone owning a website wants to be listed in these pages. This is
because most users will find a result they like in the top ten. Being listed after that
will cause many people to bypass your website.
The following tips will help you come closer to this goal. "Keywords" are
words that describe the information that is contained on your web pages. These keywords
are
indexed by search engines and saved in their database. Now when a person performs a search
on that search engine and enters the same words as your keywords, your web page will
appear in the results of that search. It is important to use keywords that you believe
people will use when performing a search. If you have a page devoted to "government
auctions", you should use the words "government auctions", if that is what
you think people will use for their search.
Make sure your keywords appear in several locations on your web page. The page title is
very important. Failure to put keywords in the page title is one of many reasons why
perfectly relevant web pages may be ranked poorly. Search engines also like pages where
your keywords appear close to the top of the page, such as headlines. You should also have
them appear in the first paragraphs of your web page
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