| Misconceptions about
search engine optimization are common. One of the most common
is that once a site is built and submitted to the search
engines, heavy traffic is on its way. Another is that when
making a submission to each engine, a site will be registered
immediately and will stay listed with that engine for as
long as it is in operation. That's just not how it works…
not even close!
May 26, 2000
What people need to know is that search engine optimization,
which is actually the effective utilization of search engines
to draw traffic to a Web site, is an art. It is an ongoing,
continuously evolving, high maintenance process that includes
the customization of a site for better search engine ranking.
Critical steps to take before
submitting
After developing a Web site and selecting the best hosting
company, don't rush out and submit it to search engines
immediately. A Web site manager would be wise to take a
little time to:
Fine tune the TITLE tag to increase traffic to
the site
Improving the TITLE tag is one technique that applies to
just about all the search engines. The appearance of key
words within the page title is one of the biggest factors
determining a Web site's score in many engines. It's surprising
how many Web sites have simple, unimaginative titles like
"Bob's Home Page" that don't utilize keywords
at all. In fact, it's not unusual to see entire Web sites
that use the same title on every page in the site. Changing
page titles to include some of the site's key words can
greatly increase the chance that a page will appear with
a strong ranking in a query for those key words.
Create gateway pages that are specific to the focus
of each site
Key word selection must be done carefully with great forethought
and understanding of the search engine's selection criteria
for key words. The larger the number of key words that are
used, the more the relevance of any one key word is diluted.
One way to get around this is to create gateway pages.
Gateway pages are designed specifically for submission
to a search engine. They should be tuned with a specific
set of key words, boosting the chance that these key words
will be given a heavy weight. To do this, several copies
of a page should be made, one for each set of key words.
These pages will be used as entry points only, to help people
find the site, therefore, they don't need to fit within
the normal structure of the site. This provides the page
developer with greater flexibility in establishing key words
and tags that will encourage a stronger ranking with the
search engines. Each gateway page then can be submitted
separately to the search engines.
Ensuring that site technology won't confuse the
search engines
Often the latest technology being built into a site can
confuse the search engine spiders. Frames, CGI scripts,
image maps and dynamically generated pages are all recently
created technology that many spiders don't know how to read.
With frames for instance, the syntax of the FRAMESET tag
fundamentally changes the structure of an HTML document.
This can cause problems for search engines and browsers
that don't understand the tag. Some browsers can't find
the body of the page and viewing a page through these browsers
can create a blank page.
Today only 2% of browsers don't support frames, but many
search engine spiders still don't support them. A search
engine spider is really just an automated Web browser and
like browsers they sometimes lag behind in their support
for new HTML tags. This means that many search engines can't
spider a site with frames. The spider will index the page,
but won't follow the links to the individual frames.
Setting up a NOFRAMES section on the page
Every page that uses frames should include a NOFRAMES section
on the page. This tag will not affect the way a page looks
but it will help a page get listed with the major search
engines. The NOFRAMES tag was invented by Netscape for backward
compatibility with browsers that didn't support the FRAME
and FRAMESET tags.
Performing a maintenance check
All Web sites should be thoroughly tested using a site
maintenance tool in order to catch errors in operation before
customers are brought to the site. HTML errors can hinder
a search engine spider's ability to index a site, it can
also keep a search engine from reading a page or cause it
to be viewed in a manner different from how it was intended.
In fact, a recent report by Jupiter Communications suggested
46% of users have left a preferred Web site because of a
site-related problem. With NetMechanic's HTML Toolbox or
another site maintenance tool, all Webmasters, from the
novice to the expert can avoid potential visitor disasters
due to site errors.
Finding the best submission service
Selecting a search engine submission service requires careful
thought and important decisions. Using an auto submission
service is a good place to begin. Most search engines like
Alta Vista, HotBot and InfoSeek automatically spider a site,
index it and hopefully add it to their search database without
any human involvement. Some engines, like Yahoo, are done
completely with human review and for many reasons are best
submitted individually. Chances are good also, that in the
first submission a site will be rejected by several of the
engines and will need to be individually resubmitted. There
are several online resources for auto submissions. The best
ones won't submit a site to Yahoo where the customer is
better served doing this on his own.
Understanding the waiting periods
A variety of waiting periods must be endured with each
search engine before there is even a hope of being listed.
Knowing and understanding these waiting periods before beginning
the process can eliminate or at least minimize frustration
and confusion. Typical waiting periods for some of the more
popular engines are six months with Yahoo; one to two months
with Lycos and 4-6 weeks with Excite or is that 4-6months?
What they say and what happens in reality can be very different.
Ongoing promotion tasks:
To improve site rankings and increase understanding of the
listing process, there are many tasks that can be done on
a regular or semi-regular basis. Optimizing rankings within
the search engines is also to help ensure that a site attracts
the right traffic.
Some of the monthly and weekly promotion tasks are:
Crunching and examining log files
Data contained in log files is an excellent resource for
identifying which engines are sending the majority of traffic
to a site. It can also show which key words or gateway pages
are generating the strongest traffic and what are those
visitors doing when they enter the site.
Searching the Search Engines
Conduct a search of the search engines to analyze where
the highest rankings of the site have materialized and what
keywords are generating the best rankings. Different search
engines use different rules to rank pages. Individual gateway
pages should be created based on the knowledge and interpretation
of what each search engine is using to determine top rankings.
Several pages can be tested out on one or more engines and
the pages that have the most success can be kept, while
the unsuccessful pages can be dumped or revised to achieve
a higher ranking.
Learning more about how the search engines work
Each search engine uses different rules to determine how
well a Web page matches a particular query. As a result,
building a single page that gets a good score in all the
major engines is just about impossible. Learning how each
engine ranks pages is also hard, since the engines often
keep this information as a closely guarded secret. However,
with a little patience, some experimentation and reverse
engineering, the way that many of the search engines work
can be discovered.
Resubmitting the site
For engines that reject a site or don't list it high enough,
it is strongly recommended that more information is learned
about the engine's criteria before resubmitting. This information
should then be incorporated into gateway pages or key word
revisions in order to have greater success with subsequent
submissions. Fine tune the page (or pages) make adjustments
to TITLE tags and META tags, then after resubmitting the
site, track the results to further learn about the engine's
criteria and which adjustments made an impact on the rankings.
Don't be afraid to experiment, take some risks and gather
data as you proceed.
Checking log files for traffic being directed to
erroneous pages on the site
This is good news!! Don't dump these pages or remove them
from the search engine as most people will do when they
redesign their site. Any page with a high ranking is of
value. If a page is bringing traffic to a site, leave that
page on the search engine, don't change it but rather redirect
the traffic to valid pages in the site.
Getting Noticed
For small to medium-sized Web sites, search engines are
the most important source of traffic. Unfortunately, getting
noticed in the search engines isn't an easy job. A Web site
manager can spend months getting a site listed in an engine,
only to find it ranks 50th in their search results. It's
hard to give universal tips for improving search engine
ranking because each engine has its own set of rules. In
general, though, a page will rank well for a particular
query if the search terms appear in the TITLE tag, the META
tags, and in the body of the page.
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