TopWebSite Search Engines Guide

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TopWebSite article re Putting You First 15/08/00 1184 words excluding title and bio Please include our author bio and a link to http://www.topwebsite.co.uk/, thanks. Author images available at http://www.topwebsite.co.uk/cliimg/ This article available as html formatted | plain text

Putting You First

'Submit your site to 1200 search engines' goes the line from hundreds of search engine submission web sites around the globe. This may be the answer to achieving your e-commerce dreams? But Beware.

The most likely effect is that by using these submission services you will generate 1200 spam e-mails selling you everything from fax paper to 'Sindy's secrets'.

You will have thrown your money and time away because without making your site search engine friendly in the first place, no amount of submitting will raise it's position in the results from the inky depths of page 14 to the hallowed heights of a top 3 position.

In this article, the first in a series about improving your web site promotion efforts, we look at the basics of what search engines are looking for and at the type of companies operating in this mysterious field.

Search engines examine pages submitted to them, along with pages their software (known as spiders) find whilst travelling across the web. They identify web page addresses (url's) through links on a web page then visit those pages too. These 'spiders' then extract information from the programming code used to create the web page. This allows them to calculate how relevant the page is when a surfer (you and me) makes a search for a particular phrase.

They work by identifying different elements in the web page code such as Meta Tags and text headers and analysing each element using mathematical calculations to determine what the page is about. They then rank their results to provide users with what the calculation determines is the most relevant web page for the phrase being looked for.

Achieving just a few top positions for your site on relevant searches can help make the difference between success and failure of your Internet based ambitions.

Search engines provide access to your web site for people around the globe. Visitors are targeted because they have specifically chosen to look for the products or services you are selling. They are probably the hottest sales leads a business is likely to encounter. If your web site is not appearing on a search then who's is? Probably the competition.

There are hundreds if not thousands of search engines and web site directories on the Internet. 98% of users stick with the major names in this field, AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Looksmart, Netscape, Go, Snap, GoTo and their UK versions.

Targeting these has to be the main priority of any search engine promotion strategy. Other selected engines and directories are valuable if they are regionally or industry specific to your business.

However, there is little value in a listing in the hundreds of small engines, which are unlikely to generate many visitors. These smaller search engines also tend to use the databases created by the major ones for their results. So a good position on GoTo will also mean a good position on many other engines that use the same information.

Submitting a site alone is not enough. There are hundreds if not thousands of other sites all wanting to be at the top of the search engine results. Without making a web site search engine friendly little benefit is likely to be achieved just by reputably submitting your web site.

The art of consistent top positioning is shrouded in mystery. Many online businesses are taking advantage of this to separate anxious site owners from their money. Others act in an ethical manner and have the best interests of their clients at heart. But how do we separate the two?

Many of the companies offering to optimise your web site do so using widely available software packages. These can be useful tools if you have the time to do it yourself.

Web Position Gold is the best known of these optimisation packages (a trial download is available at www.topwebsite.co.uk ). This software has been hugely popular with web site owners. However as more and more businesses use this method to create specially targeted doorway pages, then a levelling factor begins to creep in. Each page is like the next with little to differentiate between them. Pages created this way can be ugly without some alteration and that alteration may adversely affect the optimisation techniques used. Doorway pages may put visitors off visiting your web site altogether.

Companies using this method may offer a 'Top 10 Guarantee' and money back offers. Always read the small print. It is also worth considering how much of an expert's time you actually get working on your site for the amount you pay for such services.

If my solicitor charged less than my gardener did, then I'd consider finding a different solicitor, or a different gardener! Somewhere within their business plan the people running this style of operation have to make money. If they do that by only being able to afford to spend an hour on a site after paying for the phone, the bills, and their expenses then you are getting just that, one hour to promote your site. It's not enough.

Other optimisation companies have actually spent time analysing the search engines for themselves, conducting experiments and tracking results to reverse engineer the calculations used by the different search engines.

They are then able to use their knowledge to optimise your web site to achieve a spread of high positions for your site. Optimising a site properly may involve rewriting the site code to make certain words appear more prominent to the search engines but without making changes, which affect what, is seen by the visitor. This of course takes time and therefore their fees will reflect that.

You will generally not find these businesses advertising their services because they get all the work they can handle from their own web sites and from referrals from satisfied clients. They will not offer guaranteed positions because they know that search engines change their criteria and placements will ebb and flow with them. They will not be cheap because the client is paying for an expert to spend considerable time working on their site to achieve what they are paid for, more visitors and more sales.

They will want to try and understand the market your site is trying to reach and to work with you to become a strong player in that market. These are the promotion companies who know the black art of making a site search engine friendly and will offer in the long term the best value for money.

The other option, of course, is to work out how to do it yourself. There are many web sites offering advice and free information about how to improve the search engine positioning of your site. By far the best are:

www.searchenginesforums.com
Forums where all the professionals congregate to discuss developments and changes.
www.searchenginewatch.com
Provides a wide range of general information about search engines.
www.topwebsite.co.uk
Includes a range of optimisation tips for your own web site and has a search engine position check to identify if your site is currently listed on the major search engines.

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