MARKETING ARTICLES

Optimizing Your Site for Maximum Search Engine Exposure

1. Search engines get tons of traffic. Because there are billions of web pages online, surfers need a way to find what they want quickly. Over 85% of surfers start with the search engines to find the products or information they are looking for. Being listed in the search engines means you'll benefit from the millions of surfers who search for products and services online everyday.
   
   
2. Targeting is the cornerstone of the search engines! It's true that being listed can bring your site traffic, but you don't want just any traffic. You want targeted traffic. When surfers use search engines they type in keywords or phrases that will help them find what they want. If your site comes up when someone does a search, chances are they are looking for the products and services you offer! It doesn't get better than that.
   
   
3. Ease of entry. With pay for inclusion programs, pay per click search engines and paid directory listings, it's easier than ever to get your site indexed by the major search engines. Some search engines still offer free submissions as well.

There is not another online marketing method that compares to the sustained, targeted traffic you'll get by attaining top positions in the major search engines. Here is a list of the search engines you should be listed in:

There are hundreds of other search engines begging for web surfers' attention, but the 4 search engines above provide results to 95% of all the other search engines out there.

It is not only important to be listed in the search engines, however. Where your site ranks when someone types in a keyword phrase is just as important as having your site listed in the first place. If someone does a search for model airplanes and you sell model airplanes, you will want your site to come up somewhere in the first 30 matches for that keyword phrase. What happens if you're site is 42, or 60 or even 500? Your site may never be found. Why? Most web surfers don't look beyond the first 30 matches when doing a search. If they don't find what they're looking for in the first 30 matches, they'll do another search.

So how do you make sure that your site gets listed and appears in the top 30 listings? To answer that question we'll need to take a look at how search engines rank sites. Understanding this will give you some clues on how you can optimize your site to show up in the first 30 matches.

First, search engines have gone through quite a transition in the last several years. It used to be that you went to the search engine of your choice, submitted your site and that was that. Now search engines, in an effort to stay in business, have employed various ways of ranking sites based on a number of different criteria. Some of the listings shown on search engines are a result of pay for inclusion programs, pay per click campaigns and the like. Many search engines are no longer search engines in the traditional sense, but have transformed into portals. That is they show the search engine results from other search engines at their sites. In fact web users have more choices than ever when it comes to finding the information they want. The lines between search results and sponsored listings have blurred in recent years and all the search engines seem to have partnerships and agreements with one another. Every search engine gets their information from a different place and presents that information differently.

Still even with all the confusion, there are still some very basic things you can do to ensure that your website gets indexed and found in the major search engines.

Most search engines rank sites with little or no human intervention. They use computer programs called robots or spiders, to "crawl" websites and index their links. Here's how it works. You go to a website and type in your web address to announce your site to a particular search engine. The robot then goes to that address and takes a look at the page. It reads all the text and follows all the links that lead to other pages in your site. Each time it finds a new page, it reads that page's contents and looks for more links. How deep into your site will the robot or spider go? Well that depends on the search engine. Some search engines crawl deep into your site, indexing every single page, and every single link; others index your main page and 1 or 2 levels of links below that.

So what does all this crawling accomplish? The spider or robot attempts to categorize your site's pages so that they can be found when someone does a search. The process of indexing your pages makes it possible for the search engine to find them if and when these pages are relevant to a keyword search done at the search engine.

Not all search engines use robots and spiders to index pages. Some sites, like Open Directory, employ human beings to look at your site to determine the appropriate place for it in their index. Sites that use human evaluators are most often called Directories. When you submit your site to a directory you fill out a form containing information about your site. A human evaluator then looks at your site and determines what category to place it in, or whether to index it at all. As you might imagine, it is much more difficult to get listed in a directory than in a search engine.

Now that you understand the difference between search engines and directories lets talk about the best ways to get your site listed in both.

Optimizing Your Site for the Search Engines:

1. Create the main pages of your site carefully.
   
   
   1. Be sure to create a good title for each page that emphasizes one or more keywords you'd like to score well on. Be sure to include the keywords you want to score on as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Swimming Pools by Smith Pools is better than Smith Pools - Swimming Pools, Accessories and More.
      
      
   2. Use the <meta description> tag to briefly describe your site's content. This will serve as the description of your site should it come up when someone does a search. Make this copy as enticing as possible and use your most important keyword phrase somewhere in the copy.
      
      
   3. Next place other keyword phrases that describe your business in the <meta keywords> tag. This is the place to put common misspellings, synonyms and other keywords that are relevant to your business. Do not put words here that have nothing to do with your business or your site could be penalized. Some search engines do not recognize <meta>
      
      
   4. tags at all and will simply ignore these tags, however having them in your pages will help you in the search engines that do support these tags.
      
      
   5. Next concentrate on your body text. Try to use the same content you used in your <meta description> tag in the opening paragraph of the body text. Why? Well some search engines ignore meta tags as we stated earlier. When a search engine doesn't recognize meta tags it normally uses the first few lines of body text as its description for the site.
      
      
   6. If both are the same then the description will be the same no matter which method the search engine uses.
      
      
   7. Finally make sure your most important keywords are present in the main links and headings of your body content. This creates an overall theme for the page that the search engines will appreciate. Don't repeat your keywords too many times. A good rule of thumb is to read your copy aloud to see if it makes sense. If it does, you're probably OK. If you do find yourself repeating a phrase excessively, try using a synonym of it instead to minimize your repetitions.
      
      
2. Include relevant content on every page that you write. The importance of great content cannot be emphasized enough. Make your pages as long as you need to fully explain your products, services and subject matter adequately. Incorporate as many keyword phrases into your content as you can without making the copy sound forced or repetitious. Add articles, how-to tips, and additional product descriptions to offer the most information you can for both human and search engine visitors.
   
   
3. Finally, you can greatly improve your score by getting other sites to link to you. Find other sites that complement the content you carry on your site and offer to trade links with them. Search engines reason that if other sites link to you, your site must contain relevant content worthy of being included in their index. In fact link popularity is becoming more and more important every day. Just make sure that you only exchange links with websites that relate to the topic of your site in some way. Having 10 links to your site from relevant sources that are close to your site topic are better than 100 links from unrelated sources.

Optimizing your Site for Directories:

After you have your categories chosen, go to the category you wish your site to be listed in. Then find the submit site, or suggest site link on that page. It is vitally important for you to submit your site from the category page you wish to be placed in. Otherwise your site will be rejected entirely.

Fill out the submission form carefully. Avoid using phrases like "the best site in the world" or sales copy of any kind. Simply state the title of your site (usually your business name) and briefly describe what your site offers without being too cute.

Do not exceed 25 words in your description. Make sure you fill in all contact information as accurately as possible.

Once you have the form filled in, submit it and you're done. The good news is that if you manage to get listed in the directories your listing will stay there indefinitely. Your site will also be listed in alphabetical order in the category you chose. So choosing a domain name as close to the beginning of the alphabet can give you a slight advantage in the directories. But again, don't get too cute. AA Lawyers.com will probably be seen as a deliberate attempt to score higher and may cause your site to be rejected, unless of course the name of your business happens to be Advantage Associate Lawyers or something similar.

One last thing.... Submitting to Open Directory is free, but will take at least 3 weeks to list your site, if they list it at all. If your site is not listed after 3 weeks time, you can resubmit it to be considered again.

Yahoo charges business sites $299 for their business express service. Once it was free for businesses to submit their sites, but it took over 6 weeks to get listed, if you got listed at all. Now they charge $299, but guarantee they will evaluate your site within 7 business days and will either accept or reject your site. They also charge a renewal fee of $299 each year. So if you want your site to stay listed in the Yahoo directory you will need to pay this recurring cost. As of this writing, being included in the Yahoo directory is not as big a bargain as it once was. Web users at Yahoo now see regular search engine listings from Yahoo's spidering search engine before they will see results from Yahoo's own directory listings. To find your site in the Yahoo directory a user will need to click on the Directory link at the top of the page. Still, Google considers Yahoo an important site to be listed in, so your search engine placement in Google could be enhanced by being included in the Yahoo directory. We still recommend getting listed, evaluating your traffic and then deciding the following year whether you're getting enough traffic to justify the expense.

Now you know the basic guidelines for getting your site listed in the major search engines and directories. The process requires work, but we believe the work is worth the effort. Where else can you expose your business to millions of people for virtually no money at all? We should also point out that the search engines change almost daily. They often decide that certain placement tactics and strategies are no longer acceptable to them. You may be wondering how you will keep your site competitive and on top... The answer is uncertain, but we do believe that if you follow the general guidelines we've stated here, avoid repetition and other tricks, and focus on creating quality content that your site will score well in the major search engines, now and in the months to come.