How To Get Noticed By The Search Engines

Just submitting your web site information and URL location to the search engines (SE) isn't enough. You must understand how the major search engines work and how they rank your site. This is the key to taking advantage of the awesome benefits you can reap from employing proper site relevancy techniques!

Since each SE has their own specific criteria which changes constantly, it would be impossible to discuss each here. The important thing to remember is that what may work for one SE, won't work and, in fact, may actually disqualify you, on another. There are, however, numerous simple, basic enhancements you can make to your web site which can greatly enhance the odds that search engines will put your site near the top of your category, therefore increasing the odds that your customers will find you. What follows are some of those.

TITLE your web site with a great deal of consideration!

The TITLE is the text that appears on the title bar of the browser. It will be what appears in people's bookmarks to identify you also. The title not only has to appeal to the "person" who is seeking your information, product or service -- you must also appeal to the search engine (SE) computers.

When a "search" is requested through any search engine, the SE looks for the search word(s) contained within the title first. Preference is usually given to web pages that have specific word(s) within the title of each of your web pages. It is extremely important to insert as many of the "search words" (aka, "keywords") your potential customers are likely to use when looking for your service into your title. Your title, however, must make sense and should be relevant to the content of the web page.

For example, if you own a Restaurant on Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusetts that is called "Harry's Grill"" do not use Harry's Grill as your title. A better title would be: American Cuisine Restaurant Martha's Vineyard - Cape Cod - Massachusetts

Make sure every word in your title is one that is likely to be used by a person when doing a keyword search for your business or service. AND... unless the name of your business is prominently recognized -- something like "CENTURY 21 or IBM", it does NOT belong in the Title.

Caution: Do not use "stop words" or "dead weight words" in Titles:

A stop word or dead weight word is a keyword or keyphrase that has become so common on the internet that search engines either ignore it or return hardly relevant results when they are used.

Some examples include Homepage, Home Page on the WWW, web, webpage, and in some cases, even the word "sex". For instance, if you are in the business of webpage development the TITLE -- Webpage Design and Development -- will more likely land your pages in a "design" or "development" search than in one for "webpage" services. "

Use KEYWORDS

Many search engines and directories count the keywords contained throughout your web pages and use the information to identify and catorgize its content and purpose to determine the ranking it receives on that particular SE. Since placement in a SE's database is critical to traffic, or viewers to a site, the use of relevant keywords is a priority.

BEFORE you design your web page (site), make a list of every possible "search" word and phrase that your potential customers might use when looking for your information, product or service. It is critical.

Next; Use these "search" words and phrases to "find" your competition on the top eight search engines. (For a List of these top eight SE's, see Which SE's). Once you find who you will be competing with for the Top Ten positions in your "keyword" search, review THEIR web pages for more "search" words that you may have overlooked.

Tip: If you want to be in the "Top Ten" of a search engine, find out who is on the Top Ten of each of these SE's and then build a better page.

Brainstorm keywords!

Keywords can be individual words or groups of two or sometimes three words. For example: (ice, skating, rinks) or (ice skating rinks).
Make a list of about 50, seperated by commas and a space! From that create a top 20 list and a secondary list of an extra 10
Make this list from your customers point of view, taking into consideration what they might start off with to find a company like yours. Keep in mind that using the plural of the words can be helpful, for example if someone did a search on skating rink you business would be displayed, but if you do not use the plural and a viewer searches on ice skating rinks you would not be displayed, but your competition might!

Tip: Try not to repeat keywords in your list more than 5 times each. Limit your total number of characters, commas & spaces to less than 1000. Use capital letters only where appropiate.

Always include a DESCRIPTION for each web page

A "DESCRIPTION" is used by some SE's as the "summary" for this web site or page. That means that people will see it... and use it to decide whether or not to "click" on this link.

You enter your own summary because some SE's will otherwise pull a random paragraph from your text as a summary unless there is an alternative. In some cases that means that the person who is "searching" could get a "nonsense" description of a web page pulled from internal programming of the document.

Enter a DESCRIPTION for your business using as many keywords in "Plain English" sentences as possible and limit the "content" to just less than 250 characters (counting all spaces and periods). Prioritize the keywords in the description because some SEs use alot less than the 250 characters. For instance, Alta Vista will only use 150.

Be patient with the various search engines and directories.

It can take anywhere from a few hours to several, up to 6, weeks to be included in the best search engines and directories on the web! Reason being, they are simply SWAMPED! For example, Yahoo! Currently receives somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 URL registration requests per week, and our sources claim they only have the ability to process about 10,000 per week. As you can tell that creates a huge backlog quickly. Many of these companies are diligently trying to combat this problem with newer and faster technology, but until their systems can handle the influx of registrations patience is a virtue! The source of the URL request, whether it is input directly from the search engine's site or via a registration service seems to have no bearing on the time required to process the requests. When dealing with such numbers of incoming requests a few slipping through the cracks will occur. So be prepared to re-register as necessary.

Which Search Engines to use

Over 95% of all people on the World Wide Web (WWW) use only eight search engines. These are the only SE's that you should focus on. However, if you decide you want to register with others, you may... but, we are telling you that your results will probably not be worth the effort it takes to analyze these engines ...because hardly anybody uses them. If you do a good job with just these eight, your site will be successful... provided that people are interested in the topic, product, or service that you are offering.

Here is what are considered to be the TOP EIGHT search engines and Internet catalogs;
Infoseek, Excite, Alta Vista, Lycos, Webcrawler, HotBot, Open Text, and Yahoo

Tip: As you begin the follow-up registration process of your web pages / site(s), it will be helpful if you open a "text editor" and list URL's for each of your pages, the description of your web site, and the keywords.. This way you can accurately copy & paste this information into the search engine submission form -- decreasing the chance of typos and mistakes. In addition, you will need it as you continue to do the follow-up maintanence with the SE's.

Likewise, keep a record of the dates your information was submitted with each SE. That way you will be able to recall what you registered, with whom, and when. This "log" will become valuable later when you draw conclusions about how long it took to be "indexed" by each SE as well as what worked and what did not work with each web page on any particular SE.