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promoting your website: continued...
How do search engines work?
Search engines help people find relevant information on the Internet. Major search engines maintain huge databases of web sites that users can search by typing in some text.
To compile their databases, search engines rely on computer programs called robots or, more specifically, spiders. These programs "crawl" across the web by following links from site to site and indexing each site they visit. Each search engine uses its own set of criteria to decide what to include in its database. For example, some search engines index each page in a website, while others index only the front (home) page.
Also unique are the criteria each individual search engine uses to organise information for its users. Some list the results of a user's search according to which sites have the most links from other sites - a system known as link popularity. Other search engines prioritise results according to the summary information contained in sites' meta tags and still others look for common themes used throughout a site. There are many other ways to organise results, and most search engines use a combination of several of them.
Web Directories
Web directories are often confused with search engines, but they rely on a completely different principle when helping a user find a site on the Internet. Instead of using spiders to crawl the web, directories such as Yahoo! and Open Directory Project have staff who review and index their links. They also require web sites to adhere to rigid guidelines in order to be included in their indexes. As a result, directories' indexes tend to contain a comparatively small number of links, but these links are usually very high quality.
Rather than look into a site’s code to find the information a user is looking for, web directory editors look at the quality of a site, ie its functionality, content and design. That means webmasters (website creators) hoping to see their sites listed on web directories have to use very different strategies than they would for search engine placement.
Hybrid Search Engines
Hybrid search engines combine a web directory with a search engine to give their visitors the most relevant and complete results. Today the top ten search sites are hybrids. For example, Yahoo! started out as a directory, but now it supplements its manually compiled listings with results from Google, a search engine. On the other hand, Google uses Open Directory Project's directory to enrich its automatically generated listings.
how to get your site further up the tree
Search engines and directories, while being different in their basis, both rely on three main aspects that determine the likelihood of your website rising above the competition and being found first:
- DESCRIPTION
Search engines will ask for a brief description of your website - usually 25 words or less - so the user knows exactly what the site is when it is found by the search engine.
Tip for being found faster: An Internet user will likely scroll past a corny catchphrase or a brash claim like “we are the best site on the Internet”. Summarise your website in your description - if it even comes close to what a user is looking for, you have a 90% chance they will at least visit your front page.
- KEYWORDS
A site submitted to a search engine’s directory will be found if it contains keywords. These are words that match the words a user will type into the search engine when looking for your site.
Search engines may place a restriction on the number of keywords you can have in your site, or they may only allow words relevant to your site and the business you do. The more specific your keywords, and the more of them, the better chance your site will be found.
Tip for being found faster: If the search engine will allow you to get away with it - and usually they will - include words and phrases like “search”, “find”, “look for” etc in your list of keywords. A surprising amount of Internet users type these phrases into search engines expecting the search engine requires them, when in reality it does not.
- SUBMISSION
While most search engines accept sites submitted to their directory for free, this does not guarantee they will ever be found when a user goes searching for a site.
Literally thousands of websites are submitted to search engines from all over the world every single day. In order to be placed at the top of the list, search engines will usually charge either a monthly or a once-off fee when submitting your site.
The advantage of this is that your website has infinitely more chance of being found in amongst the thousands of other similar sites on the Internet. The disadvantage is an ongoing cost to your business, and the chance that within a few months another site may take priority over yours and push you down the order.
Tip for being found faster: A lot of major search engines offer a number of different listing plans nowadays. Look over each one carefully. Avoid any deal that supposedly offers a “top 5” listing as not even the big-money sites like Yahoo! can guarantee that. If the deal sounds genuine but the price seems a little steep, chalk it up as an advertising expense. What price would you pay for 490 million potential clients?
Netsell can assist you with this procedure. Once your website is built, we have the facilities to submit it as a high priority site (ie, more chance it will be found) in over 200,000 search engines and web directories in Australia and around the world, including well-known search engines such as Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and AltaVista.
Netsell can submit your business website to these popular search engines and web directories,* plus literally thousands more:
Netsell’s affiliate, SEBlaster, will sort through all the forms and costly overheads involved with submitting your site to a search engine, and will place it in a high priority in over half a million search engines and Internet directories.
* PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING: Search engines can take between 2 weeks and 3 months, sometimes longer, to register a submitted website in their database. For instant traffic to your site an extra fee may need to be paid individually to a reliable search engine such as Yahoo! or Excite, who have a large employee base and can therefore guarantee same or next-day submission.
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