Search Engine Submission Basics
There are millions of users using search engines to find information. The chances of increasing your visitors is high if your site is positioned well in the search engines. However, you first need to learn about search engines, keywords, META, site submission and of course "Real promotion!".Search Engines and Directories
Website promotion mainly focuses on search engines. Generally there are two types. A search engine is a software compiled Index (like Google, Hotbot etc.,) or a human compiled directory (like Yahoo ,dmoz etc.,). In other words, it's a huge database which contains links to all the websites that have been submitted to them including a few details about each site. The main difference between the two is that one is reviewed by a human being and the other by a spider.
In some cases the person who reviews your site
may reject it because it is not of the type or
quality that is interesting to them. But in the
case of a computerized search engine, a program
called a Robot is sent by the engine to
visit the submitted site, collect the information
about the site and then include it in the search
engine. These Robots are faster and not as discriminating
as human beings.
Preparing your Site for Submission
Before submitting your site to any search engine you'll need to make sure it is ready. You may need to do some things to the webpage title, META tags and some of the first few paragraphs of the site.
Title
The title I am referring to here is the one you see in blue at the top of the browser. It is not the one which appears on your web page. This title is the most important source of information for any search engine. In other words the search engine will place a high degree of importance on the words in the title. Therefore, if someone is searching for Indian Coffee and Indian Coffee is in the title of the site then there is a good chance of the site appearing on the first page of a search. If you open the HTML source of this webpage you would find something that looks like this.
<title>website promotion fundamentals for beginners </title>
You need to type your title of your site in the place between <title> and </title>.For example,If you are selling fish online through your site it could be,
<title>Sahara tropical
fish</title>
META tags
META tags announce all the details about your site to a search engine. They are hidden in the code of the website and can give different information to the search engines for example, keywords, description, author and more. Though these are all optional in any web page it's a must for marketing your site through search engines. Each search engine gives its own weightage to each META tag. It is therefore important to know some of the things that interest these search engines.
- META Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases which are used by search engine to locate a site. It is really important to phrase the keywords carefully so that any user who is using a search engine may find your site when he/she enters the appropriate keywords or phrases.. You should come up with a set of keywords that exactly fit into the content of your site and its goals and purpose. If you view the source of this page you'll be able to find the keywords which I used. The example below gives you an idea of what the keywords would look like for the page you are now reading.
| <Meta name="keywords" content="website promotion website marketing site promotion"> |
- META Description
This is also a META tag that tells the search engine about your site. It is the description that appears below the title in the search results. This should be around 50 to 60 words. The description is often difficult to prepare. On one hand it needs to be very appealing and cause the person to click and go to your site. On the other hand it should contain good keywords and phrases to get a high ranking in the search results. To get a good ranking it is necessary to prepare a very good description which repeats your title and at least one or two keywords on which you want to focus.. This META tag like the others should be added in the HTML source, may look like this:
| <meta name="description" content="We sell beautiful tropical fish for less as well as high quality fish food to keep them alive."> |
You can find a good overview of
all sorts of important meta tags at www.webdeveloper.com.
You can read more on the Vancouver-webpages dictionary
of meta tags.
Spamming?
Search engines are very sensitive to the data that you feed them. The keywords that you use might be repeated in the title, keywords, description and in the content. This is OK but you should not go too far. Be really careful of how many times you repeat them. All the search engines will allow a certain level of repetition of keyword. However, if it is higher than what they permit, it will be considered spamming and your page will never get indexed. Also do not use keywords which are not related to your site.
Submitting your site (Registering the webpages)
Submitting a site to any search engine is fairly simple. On the home page of the search engine locate the "Add your site" or "Register url" link. Simply follow the instructions to add your site. Some of the search engines may ask you to submit all the pages that you want indexed, for example Altavista. Some ask that you submit only one page URL of your entire site and all the remaining pages will be spidered. This means that the search engine will automatically add the remaining pages. Google is an example of this.
Submitting to the directories like
Yahoo!,
dmoz,
and Looksmart
is a bit tiresome. Since they keep web pages under
separate categories (directories), you will need
to find the best category under which your site
will fit. Remember, these are viewed by human
beings. If you submit to irrelevant categories
it may be considered spamming causing your site
to be disregarded.
Getting indexed
Now you know that submitting your site is not a big deal, but how sure are you that your site will be indexed? Getting indexed is nothing but getting a place for you site in the search engine's database. How do you find out if your site has been added to the search engine? It's easy. If you search with your URL or domain name as the keyword and the results of the search will show whether you are indexed in that search engine.
Each search engine has its own policies (secrets!) to accept URLs that have been submitted. Some search engines take less time than others to get you listed. Be patient.
Directories take more time since they need human intervention. It is good practice to resubmit the pages once in thirty or forty days regardless of whether the site has been listed or not.
AltaVista
In the search box enter host:hostname like, host:saharafish.com
HotBot
Enter your domain and subdirectory in the form given.
Infoseek
Select Advanced Search.
Select the option "URL must contain the phrase" and enter the URL, like, saharafish.com
Lycos
Enter the complete URL, like http://saharafish.com/
Where are you?
If your site has been listed then you may want to know where you rank. If you can find your site in the first 20 positions you have done a good job. However, if you are not ranked in the first 20, then you need to do some more work. To save time finding your rank you can use a position analysis tools. We recommend Rank this!
You can submit your site but in
my opinion, if you are not in the first three
pages then there is no benefit. If this is the
case then you need to start thinking about Real
promotion!
Real promotion
This is nothing but result oriented promotion. It takes a lot of effort and understanding of the inner workings of search engines as well as fine tuning your site. Here are some steps that you can do to improve your rankings.
- Try again with the keywords you used before.
- Visit 4 or 5 competing sites ranked at the top.
- View their HTML source and understand how
they used their title and META tags.
This will give you an idea of how they got to the top. After this you may need to tweak your site. You may need to change the content to make sure the keywords are in the content with the allowable repetition. Do not hesitate to modify your content.
You can learn the latest search engine strategies from articles available online. Try to subscribe to some newsletters with search engine news. You can use web based site promotion tools like Selfpromotion.com. This is a great tool that can help you a lot. At the bottom of this page I mention some other useful sites.
Some Resources
Here are some good links to promotion resources which you can read or use.
Selfpromotion.com
This is one of our favorite sites. A great site
containing a lot of information. It has a web
based tool developed by the site's owner Robert
Woodhead which is really helpful. You can read
his article on Yahoo
in our site. You can avail his secret tools like
"Rankulator" for a small fee.
Searchenginewatch.com
Great tips and news about each search engine's
characteristics. Secret tips for paid subscribers.
A must read for all web masters.
Searchengineforums.com
An archive of all the search engine message boards
and some site promotion forums. You can post your
questions at the board and exchange ideas with
other like you.
Linkpopularity.com
Link popularity is the total number of web sites
that link to your site. It's important because
good link popularity can dramatically increase
traffic to your web site. Well placed links are
an excellent source of consistent and targeted
traffic. Due to recent developments, they can
even generate additional search engine traffic
to your site. You can check your link popularity
here. We feel some search engines give weightage
to link popularity too.
Laisha.com
This is a good place to go for an easy explanation
of site promotion. She also describes each major
search engine in detail with pointers on how to
submit to each.
Kresch.com
I like the guest articles on website promotion
and website design that are on this site.
Bruceclay.com
Plenty of good information about site promotion
and site promotion tools.
http://stylusinc.com/website/promotion_article.htm
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© 2002 Ashley Preston