Using Search Engines

You've got a great idea, a terrific product and an impressive website. The problem is, nobody knows you are out there. Finding customers is one of the biggest challenges for E-Commerce sites. Studies consistently find that 85% of Internet users use Search tools to find what they are looking for.

The major search engines often generate more targeted traffic than an expensive banner advertising campaign - and, a good search engine position is like highly targeted advertising that is both FREE, and effective! So, with limited advertising dollars, your obvious choice is to make sure you are found by the search tools. This involves the submission of your site to the Search Engines.

Most Popular Search Engines
Although there are 1,000's of search engines, over 90% of the search engine traffic to most Web sites comes from the major search engines. Below is a description of these major players.

Google is by far the most used search engine. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. The system works so well that Google has gained widespread praise for its high relevancy.

Yahoo is the web's oldest directory. Yahoo uses its own search technology. In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the Yahoo home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo's excellent shopping search engine.

Ask Jeeves depends on crawler-based technology to provide results to its users. These results come from the Teoma search engine that it owns. Ask Jeeves is doing innovative things with invisible tabs and with what it calls Smart Search.

MSN Search is in transition. It provides access to Yahoo listings but MSN is developing its own crawler-based technology and planning other changes that should revitalize the service in later 2004.

AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come from Google's crawler-based index. The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL and the entire web at the same time.

Netscape Search, owned by AOL Time Warner, Netscape Search uses Google for its main listings, just as does AOL's other major search site, AOL Search. The main difference between Netscape Search and Google is that Netscape Search will list some of Netscape's own content at the top of its results.

AltaVista is the oldest crawler-based search engine on the web. It remains strong in terms of some of the specialty searching it offers. It provides a good image search service, and you can look for video and audio clips, as well. It also has an outstanding news search service.

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the web, launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999 and instead uses crawler-based results provided by FAST with features that Lycos provides that it believes enhances the search process and display.

LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. The company does operate its own web site, but this really is not intended for the public to use. Instead, similar to Inktomi, LookSmart provides its results to other search engines that need listings. LookSmart gathers its listings in two ways. Commercial sites pay to be listed in its commercial categories, making the service very much like an electronic "Yellow Pages." However, volunteer editors also catalog sites into non-commercial categories.

How They Work

The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways. Crawler-based search engines create their listings automatically. They "crawl" the web, then people search through what they have found. If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

It extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another.

Search Engine Indexing Tips

None of the search engines work exactly alike. They each look for different bits of information in different places. There are, however, some common tips to increase your chances of being listed successfully.

The most important features of any website for search engines are the page title, description and keywords. These are referred to as META tags. They appear in the coding of your page and are not visible to your visitors with their browsers. They look something like this:

TITLE: Bell Rock Web Design - Specializing in website design services for the small business.
META NAME="description" CONTENT="We are a website design service specializing in proven and unique website designs for the small business. We utilize the latest in web page development technology to get your website noticed."
META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Website Design, Webpage, Internet, HTML, JAVA, CGI, Publishing, WWW, Web Site Development, Domain Name Registration, Scripting, Security, Encryption, Service, Graphic, Logos, Banners, Email, Graphics, Homepage, Multimedia, Forms"

Here are some tips to keep in mind when designing your page identification for search engines:

• Make sure your strategic keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page title is most important. Failure to put strategic keywords in the page title is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked.
• Changing your page titles and adding meta tags is not necessarily going to help your page do well for your strategic keywords if the page has nothing to do with the topic. Your keywords need to be reflected in the page's content. In particular, that means you need HTML text on your page.
• Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. It looks pretty, but search engines can't read those graphics. That means they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. Some of the search engines will index ALT text attached to graphics. But to be safe, use HTML text whenever possible.
• They may not read image maps or frames. You need to anticipate these problems, or a search engine may not index any or all your web pages.
• Expect that some of the search engines do not index database-delivered pages. Consider creating static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the fly.
• Meta tags help you control your site's description in engines that support them. You should use meta tags, but keep in mind that they are NOT a guarantee that your site will appear first.
• Most search engines will index the other pages from your web site by following links from a page you submit to them. But sometimes they miss, so it's good to submit the top two or three pages that best summarize your web site.
• Once your pages are listed in a search engine, monitor your listing every week or two since they may mysteriously disappear. Watch for trouble, and resubmit if you spot it.
• Resubmit your site any time you make significant changes. Search engines should revisit on a regular schedule but since many sites only change content once or twice a year they may not do their revisiting as often as you would like. Resubmitting after major changes will help ensure that your site's content is kept current.

Do It Yourself or Buy It

As you can tell from the above, search engine submission is extremely important to the success of your site. You can submit your own URL to these major search engines. On the home page of each search tool you will find an "Add URL" link. Each site has specific instructions detailing exactly how to get listed. But remember -- you must resubmit often if you want to guarantee your listing! Or, you can use a service that offers you a range of services such as:

• Evaluation and optimization of your site to ensure proper placement and content of your title, description and keywords.
• Submission of your home page to the the most used search engines.
• Checks and reports to insure that you are still listed.

Learn more about Bell Rock Search Services.

Paid Placements

So much for the "free" listings. Every major search engine with significant traffic accepts paid listings. This unique form of search engine advertising means that you can be guaranteed to appear in the top results for the terms you are interested in within a day or less. Given this, paid listings are an option that should be explored by site owners who wish to quickly build visibility. They may also be a long-term advertising option for some.