Search Engines
Search engines use crawlers to
travel around the web locating all of the web sites they can find. The
web sites found by the crawler are placed into the search engine's
index which contains a copy of every web page found by the
crawler. The search engine uses proprietary software to
sort through the huge index every time a user makes a search request.
Each search engine's software uses different criteria to rank the
hundreds or thousands of pages that have some relevance to the terms
used in the search request. The search engine presents its results to
the person conducting the search in rank order with the most relevant
web pages listed first.
You usually don't have to submit your site to a
search engine to get listed in it, provided there are links from other
listed sites pointing to your site. However, many search engines have a web
page that allows you to submit your site, usually for free, if you feel a need to take an active role. We do not recommend using any of the services that offer to list your web site on hundreds of search engines. The only search engines of importance to you are the biggest ones. Most likely all you'll get from the services that offer you listings on hundreds or search engines is an unnecessary hole in your pocketbook and spam in your e-mailbox.
Directories
Directories are populated via human
decision-makers. Directories are organized into main categories and many
branching subcategories. To place a web site into a directory, you must
first determine the category in the directory that is most relevant in
your site (e.g. Arts:Crafts:Quilting:Patterns). Then submit your site
providing the directory with your URL (e.g. www.yoursite.com), a title,
and a short description. A human reviewer will go to your site and,
using the directories own criteria, decide whether or not to place your
site into the directory. Some directories charge a fee to be listed
while others are free.
Combination Search Engines and
Directories
Many of the major search engines and
directories actually provide hybrid results to searchers. Although
Google is best known as a major search engine it also has a categorized
directory you can use. Although Yahoo was once known primarily as a directory,
it now has its own popular search.
Major Search Engines and Directories
Just a few of the major search engines
and directories account for a large percentage of the searches
conducted on the Web. The biggest players, by far, are:
- Google (www.google.com, Google's
search engine and directory)
- Yahoo (www.yahoo.com, a search
engine and directory)
- MSN (search.msn.com)
The Open Directory (www.dmoz.org) is a volunteer-operated directory that is an important place to list your web site. Listings are free, though it can take a long time to get your site listed.
The popularity of different search
engines and directories may increase or decrease over time. An excellent resource for finding out about and keeping
track of the different search engines and directories is www.searchenginewatch.com
The ranking your pages are given by the
search engines are determined by a specific algorithm (like a formula).
Although each search engine has its own proprietary algorithm, there are
some general design principles you should use in designing web pages
that will improve how your pages rank on the search engines.
Selecting Key Phrases
The first step in optimizing a web page
for the search engines is to figure out what key phrases you want your
page to emphasize (e.g. quilt shop). When people are conducting web
searches they enter a key word or phrase into the search engine and the
search engine pulls up what it considers to be the most relevant sites
for that word or phrase. What are the search phrases that you want your
web pages to show up for?
In selecting key phrases you want to
pick phrases that your prospective customers would be likely to use to
search for a business like yours. However, you don't want to select a
key phrase that has also been used by a huge number of your competitors.
For example, you probably wouldn't want to have your primary key phrase
be "quilt". Although many, many searches are conducted each
day for the word "quilt" there are also thousands and
thousands of web sites that come up in any search done for that key
word. What are your chances of being one of the top 10 or 20 sites
listed in a search engine out of 30 or 40 thousand competing quilting sites? It
is best to focus on fairly specific key phrases rather than single key
words.
There are a number of tools available
on the Web to help you select key phrases. The Overture search engine
allows you to query its search engine about the popularity of any key
phrase. Go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
to see how many searches have been
conducted over the past month for key phrase you are considering. You
probably won't want to select key phrases that have very few searches done, nor
will you want to select key phrases that generate thousands upon
thousands of searches.
Another useful tool that gives you an
estimate of both the number of searches and the number of competing web
sites for a given key phrase is available at WordTracker. WordTracker provides
this information for a very low fee and has a free trial also. It's well
worth checking out their free offer, at least. If you do use
WordTracker's service what you want to find is key phrases that are
popular, but that have relatively few sites competing for them.
Google has recently revised the keyword tool they provide businesses using Google's pay per click advertising option. As part of the revision they've made the tool available for anyone to use for free. Trying out Google's tool is well worth your time. Access it at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. The tool will give you information on relative quantity of searches on Google for a given key phrase and also the degree of competition for the term. The competition information reflects competition among advertisers for the key phrase, but this information gives you a good clue about competition for their unpaid search results as well.
You will probably want to customize
each of your web pages for different key phrases. For example, if you
have a shop selling quilt kits, patterns and fabric, customize your home
page for the key phrases quilt shop, Florida quilt shop, online Miami
Florida quilt shop. Then customize a catalog page focusing on quilt kits
for the key phrases quilt kits, baby quilt kits, queen size quilt kits.
And so on for the patterns page and the fabrics page.
Page Design
Once you have settled on your key
phrases, you'll want to make sure that the key phrases you have selected
for a given web page appear a number of times on that page. Don't go
overboard with this to the point of creating meaningless text, but do
make sure the phrases repeat on the page. Some search engines will rank
your page more highly if the key phrase is repeated more times on the
page. However, if you overdo it, some search engines may penalize you
for what it considers a spam attempt (an attempt to fool it). Because
each search engine has its own rules, there's no way to know where
exactly you cross over the line from having a nice high number of
repeats and into being penalized for spam.
Some search engines will give you a
higher ranking if your key phrases appear near the top of the page (in
some cases the first 200 characters), or if they appear in larger type,
or inside a major heading HTML tag. On some search engines it may help
your ranking to include your key phrases inside HTML comments, or HTML
ALT tags (used to indicate what text should appear in place of a graphic
on browsers that do not show graphics). Some web developers have
resorted to including invisible text on their web pages (text the same
color as the background), but most search engines are wise to that
strategy and consider it spam. If a search engine believes your site is using what it considers illegal techniques, it will penalize you, possibly even removing your site from its index.
Designing your web pages can get a bit
tricky once you start taking into account how the search engines will
interpret your pages. For example, how do you arrange to include your
key phrases near the top of your web pages if, for appearance's sake,
you need to have your logo and/or other graphics at the top of your
page? What if you've finally figured out that using tables is a great
way to help you lay out your web pages, but the use of the table also
has the effect of moving your text further down on the page? What if you
really like using frames, but now realize that most of the search
engines are not very good at reading the content of frames-based pages.
There are no easy answers to these design issues. All you can do is
design the best pages you can while simultaneously optimizing the page
for the search engines.
Meta Tags and Title
There are several lines of HTML coding
that can be advantageous to include in the heading area of each of your
web pages. The content of your actual web page is specified within the
<BODY> and </BODY> HTML tags. However every web page has a
heading section that precedes the body section of the page. Many search
engines will look at three particular lines of code, if they appear in
the heading area. A sample of these three lines is given below:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="keywords"
CONTENT="large online Miami Florida quilt shop, quilt store,
quilt, Hoffman fabrics, Indonesian batiks, kits, notions, frames,
books, sewing machines, Meet Me in Miami Quilt Shop,
meetmeinmiamiquiltshop.com">
<META NAME="description"
CONTENT="Quilt shop in Miami Florida featuring largest selection
of quality fabrics in the state. Shop at our online quilt shop for
fabrics, kits, quilting frames and more. Secure ordering.">
<TITLE>Online quilt shop
featuring Florida's largest selection of quality fabrics, unique quilt
kits, quilting frames and more</TITLE>
</HEAD>
The META keywords tag allows you to
specify a long (up to 1000 characters) list of keywords for your web
page. In creating this list, you will want to repeat your key phrases,
but also limit the number of repetitions to avoid spamming. There are no
hard and fast rules as to what constitutes too many repetitions. An
important trick is to embed key phrases in larger key phrases. For
example, quilt shop is one key phrase, as is Florida quilt shop, as is
Miami Florida quilt shop, as is online Miami Florida quilt shop. Thus,
the example above is getting a lot of mileage out of one appearance of
the term quilt shop. The META keywords tag is no longer used by most search engines
so there is no need to spend a
lot of time and effort developing this tag.
The META description tag allows you to
specify a 200 character or less description of your web page. Some of
the search engines will use this description, if you have included it,
as the description shown in your search engine listing. As with the META
keyword tag, include, but don't overuse, your key phrases in the
description. For the description tag make sure that the description is
accurate and enticing to prospective customers who will read it. You
want the description to generate click throughs to your site.
The TITLE tag appears in the title bar
at the top of the browser window. Thus, the people visiting your site
will see the title you specify. In addition, the search engines consider the
TITLE tag very important in ranking your page for key phrases. You will want to work
one or more of your key phrases into the TITLE tag, preferably at the beginning. Keep the title
meaningful and appealing.
If you are creating a web site yourself
and don't know HTML, don't panic about the thought of these three tags.
Check the software you are using to create your site to see if it gives
you an option for adding the tags without actually diving into the HTML
yourself. If not, then try copying and pasting the tags we've used as an
example into the HTML code for your web pages. Your software will have
already generated the <HEAD></HEAD> tags so don't copy
those. Just paste the three tags above the </HEAD> tag on your
page. Then substitute your keywords, description, and title for the ones
we wrote. Save the page and you should be fine.
In determining what ranking to give a
web page most search engines rely heavily on analyzing the links that
lead into the page. It is possible to have an extremely well optimized
web page and still receive low rankings from many search engines because
there are not any links leading into the site. In fact, if there are not
links leading into your site the search engines will not be able to even
find your site (except possibly through your proposing the site to them
via an add url facility, if they have one).
Registering your site with directories
such as Yahoo, other general directories, and some of the quilt-related
directories will provide you with some links, but you will have to take
the time to locate lots of additional links to your site. One primary
way to acquire links to your site is to offer to exchange links with
other sites. You will want to find quilt-related sites that have a
reasonably high ranking on top search engines. The search engines do not
consider all links as equal and will give your site a higher ranking for
having links from sites that 1) share a focus with your site (e.g.
quilting) and 2) that have a high search engine ranking.
To improve your ranking on a given
search engine do a search on that engine for one of the key phrases you are
targeting. Now go and look at the sites that came up in the search
results. Is this a site you would like to exchange links with? Do you
like the way it looks? Does it have a
links page? If you would like to link with this site, then look for a
contact page on the site or an email address. Write down the email
address and the URL for the site.
At this point you can either contact
the other site and ask for a link exchange or you can first add a link
to their site on your links page and then contact them. You may get more
positive responses if you first add your link. On the other hand, if you
add your link before you contact the other site, you'll end up having to
remove some links for sites that do not respond to you.
Try and include a description of the
other site with your link to them. The search engines frown on pages
that are composed of nothing but links, so make sure that your links
page has additional text on it in the form of these site descriptions.
Try and get your link exchange partners to include a description of your
site too. Include your best key phrases in the description of your site
as this will be helpful with your search engine rankings. Also, make
sure that at least one, perferably more, of your major key phrases is included in the text
that composes the actual hyperlink leading back into your site from the
site of your link partner. This hyperlink text is currently considered
very important by the search engines.
When contacting another site for a link
exchange, your email should
say something about the site you are contacting, at least giving their
URL. Tell them a little bit about your site and why you think their
visitors would appreciate having the connection to your site available.
Don't go overboard here and give a big promotional rap. Respectfully ask
if they would be willing to provide you with a link from their site to
yours. Don't be afraid to ask a second time.
The links you add to your site will not
especially benefit you with the search engines, though your visitors may
appreciate the extra links. The links coming into your site will benefit
you with the search engines plus they may provide you with additional
traffic from your link partners.
Getting links is a lot of work. But, if
you want to rank well with the search engines without spending a lot of
advertising money you will need to get the links.
If you can find other ways to get links from other sites, by all means do. If you can think of content you can add to your site that would make other sites want to link to your site, then by all means add this content. Professional search engine optimizers call this "link bait" and it is an excellent way to get links without having to do a link exchange - if you can come up with a great idea and find a way that other sites will know that your great content is there on your web site.
