web design, e-business, e-commerce solutions , Phuket, Thailand

Effective Search Engine Submissions

There are literally thousands of search engines but they all have one thing in common: they hold databases of information about a multitude of web pages. The things which make them vary wildly in popularity are:

1. The amount of information held on the database from each web page.

2. The way in which this information is collected.

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Search Engine Types:

Deep Search Engines:

This type of engine uses a robot or a spider which constantly roams the World Wide Web searching for new or updated pages. When the robot visits a page it reads the whole thing, including any sub-pages on the same server connected to the page it's reading, then it visits all the external links on the pages it's read...and so on. A robot can only follow links. It finds pages in two ways: by visiting pages it's been told about (i.e. on its submission form); by following links from other pages. So, if your page isn't linked from anywhere else and you haven't registered it, there's no way it'll ever be found — it'll be invisible.

The point is that all the while it's storing every word on every page it visits, then compressing the information down and storing it all in its database. Now, you may be thinking "Wow! I'll always use a deep search engine to find things in future" but in practice the deep ones are useful for finding specific or obscure information using long search strings, but if you're looking for something popular like 'internet' then you'll probably get a search results list running into the millions which isn't much use.

What this means to you:

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the robots will get to your site eventually. Register it. Normally, all you'll need to do is fill in your URL and nothing else. Easy. To attract the attentions of deep search engines (to put your page high on results lists) you need to tailor your page.

Examples of deep search engines are:

Lycos (http://lycos.com)
Webcrawler (http://webcrawler.com)
Alta Vista (http://altavista.com)

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Standard Search Engines:

Don't be put off by the heading, these are often more useful than the deep engines for finding useful, relevant information on general or popular topics.

The only information held in the database is what is input by the people, like yourself, registering their pages by the use of input forms provided by the administrators of the engine. This makes the standard search engines the focus of your attention when considering your promotion strategy.

Example of a standard search engine:

WWW Yellow Pages (http://yellowpages.com)

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Hierarchical Databases:

No search engine is involved. Information is held in 'categories' just like the directories on your hard disk, and the categories contain lists of titles, linked to the URL, with short descriptions underneath. The most important thing here is to place your page in the most relevant category where you think people will look for your product.

Example of a hierarchical database:

Yahoo (http://yahoo.com)

This is the undisputed 'king of the search engines' and deserves a section to itself. Yahoo started off as a hierarchical database which evolved by having a search engine added once it became mega-popular. Around mid 1996, they started getting worried about the popularity of the up-and-coming Alta Vista, so they pulled yet another master stroke by joining forces with them to form an alliance which is now virtually invincible.

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Preparing Your Website:

You need to convince the deep search engines to list you at the top of as many search results as possible. Secondly, you have to convince the human reader that your page is interesting and worth visiting. The only way to do this is to 'doctor' your page to make it look attractive to beings, both human and virtual.

<TITLE> Tag:

Robots consider the TITLE of a page to be the most telling description of the content of a page. Note: this does not mean the first major heading on the page itself, it means the caption which appears on the title bar of your browser (top left of the window in Netscape). It will look at this first, and if it finds a keyword here your page will be displayed above other pages which only have the keyword in the main body of text.

Therefore, choose your TITLE keywords carefully. Use a few of the most powerful ones and don't make your TITLE as long as your arm just to fit all your keywords in. Yes, a lot of people do this, but it's a bad idea. Trust me. Make your document TITLE short and to-the-point and include just a few of your most powerful keywords, for example 'Hotels in Phuket' - remember, it has to be attractive to a human as well.

If you have plenty of powerful keywords and a good number of sub-pages, remember that each of those sub-pages has TITLE and META fields lying idle. Keep each sub-page TITLE short, with a different keyword or two in each. That way, whatever search string the user inputs, there will be one of your pages near the top of the list.

Changing your titles regularly is a sneaky way to have your pages scattered all over a deep engine's results list. When the robot visits, it thinks the new title represents a new page and treats it as such.

<META> Tags:

Only certain engines recognize META tags, but these happen to be the important ones - Alta Vista springs to mind.

The deep search engines will store all the words on your page, but you can actually tell the META-enabled ones how to display your page in their results list (differently from your actual title for example), and also 'inject' keywords straight into the robot's brain. You're allowed up to 200 keywords and I would suggest using words which aren't already listed within the body of your page.

<BODY> of your Website

The deep search engines sort pages in order of the density of keywords in the document. For example, if my page contained just two words: 'Phuket hotel' then any search for 'Phuket hotel' would put my page at the top of the list because it has a 100% density of the keywords requested. In other words, it doesn't matter how many times keywords appear in the document, only the percentage. This also applies to the document TITLE (see above).

One way to capitalize on this is to saturate your document with invisible keywords. For example, I could type hotel phuket hotel phuket hotel phuket... a hundred times and enclose it all in <!-- --> but firstly it's not cool, and secondly the search engine administrators are getting wise to this and they're starting to actively penalize pages that use this method.

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The Strategy: Target vs Blanket:

This is something you have to decide right from the beginning. It's quite simple. If you have a large list of keywords, your pages will be found with a broad spectrum of search strings, but they're less likely to be at the top of the results lists. If you use a limited number of keywords, it increases the density of those few keywords and therefore puts them high up the list.

So, if your keyword list is naturally short (i.e. you're confident that users will search for these above all others) then the target strategy is for you. If you have a long list of products, then the blanket method is for you.

Empathy With Your Customers

Imagine that you're one of the people who's looking for your type of product. If you had to put a search string into a form, what would it be? Think of as many words as you can which bear even a passing resemblance to your product and list all these words, in order of priority, in your text editor.

Important: It doesn't matter whether or not you actually sell the product! Don't limit yourself by thinking "What do I sell?" Instead, think to yourself "What might a person be looking for?" If you have a pet shop that sells only hamsters and gerbils, use keywords like 'dogs' and 'cats' too. A customer can easily change his mind at the sight of a cute furry animal!

Describe Your Web Site, Not Your Company

The name of the game is to get the user to your Web site. Once they've arrived there, you can describe your company to your heart's content, that's what it's there for. Whenever you write a description, be it for the deeps or the standards, always tell the user why they should visit your site. They're searching for a Web site, not a company's annual turnover.

Plurals

When you've completed your keywords list, add the letter 's' to the end of every word (or add the plural of the word to the list in the case of words like cactus/cacti). Many people search for 'games' or 'hotels' and if your keywords are in the singular your page won't be listed and your efforts will have been wasted, whereas your page will be listed in a search for the singular. A search for 'hotel' will find your keyword 'hotels' for example.

Common words

Avoid words which have a lot to do with the Net in general. In the case of the standard engines, when a user searches for one of these words they get a huge number of results and yours is likely to be way down the list. In the case of the deep engines, they actively ignore common words.

If you think one of your keywords is a bit suspect, test it. Simply go to Alta Vista and type it in. If it says ignored: 15690326 services in very small letters at the top, this means that it found 15 million pages with the word 'services' in it, which is why this word is earmarked in the database to be ignored, so forget about using it as a keyword.

Spelling errors

If any of your keywords are routinely misspelled, include the incorrect version in your keyword list!!

Keyword phrases

This is a great tactic to use for your META keywords section. Think about when you search for something. You don't put just one word usually do you? Normally, users will search for a phrase like "hotels phuket". So, if your keywords section has the whole phrase within the commas - <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="hotels phuket "> then that "keyword" actually matches the whole search string, instead of having to match three different ones (which would be the case if you'd just had <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="hotels, phuket,">).

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