Submitting
and Promoting Your Web Site FAQ | Search Engines
Search Engine FAQ's
Internet & Small
Business Management
Marketing, Database & Bookkeeping
Search engines are a primary way that people find information on the Internet. (Sometimes search engines are equated to the yellow or white pages of the Web). Users request information from search engines and in return they receive a list of possible URLs that match their request. There are many kinds of search engines that provide Web site information based on many different kinds of criteria. One of the most comprehensive and useful Web sites to get detailed information on existing search engines is SearchEngineWatch (www.searchenginewatch.com).
Submitting your Web site to a search engine does not guarantee, however, that it will appear or even receive a preferred ranking with a search engine. This FAQ presents an overview of how search engines work and contains tips on how to increase your chances for inclusion and/or preferred ranking with search engines.
- How do I get my site considered for a listing with a search engine?
- How do search engines work?
- What can I do to be included in a search engine's index?
- How do I choose my keywords?
- How do I apply the keywords to my site?
- How do I test my site's ranking?
- Can I fool search engines? (spamming)
- Nothing replaces quality content!
- Where do I submit my site?
How do I get my site considered for a listing with a search engine?
Depending on the search engine, there are two common ways they can discover your site:
- You submit a request for your Web site to be included or reviewed in their index.
- Be referenced by another Web site that is already listed in a search engine's index.
Search engines discover your site when they crawl or spider the Web. This means that they read Web page text and follow most of the normal kinds of HTML links. They rely Web site text to record the nature and content of the site.
How do search engines work?
Most search engines routinely spider Web sites to analyze a submitted site, keep the search engine current or discover new content. They store this information in their index, and use it to determine whether your Web site matches a user's request --called the relevancy of your Web site.Search engines receive millions of submission requests a week. Some spider your site, then sort and determine your Web site's relevancy according to the keywords you place in Web site text. Others rely on human intervention and review of the Web site before they add it to their search index.
Search engines have different ways in which they sort, weight and determine what Web sites to display for their users. This is why you get different Web sites for the same search request in all of the different search sites. Here are some examples:
- Google ranks sites based on popularity. Popularity is determined by the number of external links that point to your site (this is called your click-through rate).
- Yahoo is a directory or editorial site. You submit the site to your choice of hundreds of categories and a human being decides to add it to the index.
- Infoseek is an indexing site. When you submit your site it automatically spiders the content, assigns a ranking and includes it in its index.
- Para-sites collect and represent the search engine content eliminating the advertisements. Metcrawler and SavvySearch are examples of these types.
- AskJeeves is a question-based search engine and requires a personal email for submission to best place the sites to respond to a query.
What can I do to be included in a search engine's index?
Although there are many different types of search engines, there are ways to refine your Web site so that it is picked up or ranked well by search engines in general. These key factors include:Each of these are described in the FAQs below.
- Choosing your keywords carefully
- Thoroughly applying the keywords in the text of the site
- Testing the site's rankings and updating often
- Never fool (spam) the search engines
- Nothing replaces quality content!
- Where to submit your site
How do I choose my keywords?
Many automated search engines determine the relevancy of your Web page based on keywords used in the Web site text. Keywords are the two or three words that you use to identify your site to users. They are also the words in the HTML tags --specifically the title, text and the meta tags--used in your document. Meta tags apply to an entire document, and there are many of them. The ones most useful for search engines are the description and keywords tags. The description tag displays a description of your page when it is relevant to a search. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page. For example:<HEAD>
<TITLE> Fox Gardens </TITLE>
<META name="description" content="An oriental landscaping company">
<META name="keywords" content="landscaping, oriental landscaping, oriental landscaping services, landscape, oriental gardening, gardening services">
</HEAD>
A search engine that displays your site would show:
Fox Gardens--An oriental landscaping company
The words you included in the keywords tag are a subset of the words you might choose to use. In this example, landscaping, oriental landscaping, and oriental landscaping services are samples of keywords. Be specific as you select them, choosing the keyword landscaping alone, for example, does not narrow the search enough for you to be well ranked if the user searches on oriental landscaping. Choosing keywords is critical--one word can completely change the relevance ranking of your site.
To find out the best keywords to use, go to your desired search site and search on the terms you think your desired audience will use. You can use some publicly available tools to analyze the URLs that appear, including your competitors, to see what keywords are being used in the HTML. Links to these tools and more detailed information on all of these search engine topics is available from SearchEngineWatch (www.searchenginewatch.com) --an outstanding Web site full of useful information.
How do I apply the keywords to my site?
The list below summarizes many of the known tips on using keywords to boost the relevancy of your Web page to search engines.
- The most important place to use your keywords is in the title of your Web page. Some search engines don't search the text of the file, nor do they read meta tags.
- Provide relevant information and keywords on the first page of your document.
- If your title or page is a graphic, make sure that you use the alt tag to place the title in the HTML, search engines cannot interpret words in graphics nor do they follow graphic links. Also use keyword meta tags for pages with sparse text. Not all engines review the content in these tags, but this increases the chances of your keywords being caught by the engine.
- Apply the keywords in keyword meta-tags, including variations on the words, misspellings, plurals, and any other combinations. For example, use photograph, photography, photo etc.
- Use lower case for meta tag keywords. While some search engines are case sensitive, this will produce the most results without tripping a search engines spam sensor.
- Repeat the keywords in your content frequently and in various ways. Many of the engines weight the importance of your keywords based upon the frequency of their use. It is especially important that the first paragraphs of your document contain your title's keywords.
- Use a clear description meta tag. (The description meta tag is used by search engines to describe your site in the listing.) For example Rare old photographs for sale.
- Some engines ignore the comment tag, others include it. So, using your keywords in your comments may be useful. Avoid repeatedly inserting your keywords in comments, however, as that would considered spamming or trying to fool the search engine.
- Search engines create relevancy ratings based on when keywords occur in your site. If you use tables your keywords will appear later in your documents rather than earlier. Use of frames also impacts search engine ratings.
- Keywords that are embedded in JavaScript are ignored by search engines.
- Graphics and image maps are ignored by search engines. Graphic only links can't be followed by the search engine, so make sure you've provided an alternative route for the engine. Some engines submit a simple text site map to search engines to deal with this issue.
- Symbols and dynamic content are not followed when a site is spidered.
- If you'd like detailed information on how each search engine uses keywords, refer to the SearchEngineWatch Web site (www.searchenginewatch.com) for more details.
- Include your site identification URL as the last keyword in your meta tags.
How do I test my site's ranking?
The range of time that it takes to index your site depends on the search engine. The quickest response time for your site to be indexed is about 2 days if you are submitting to Infoseek. Two days is extremely fast when you consider the enormous number of Web sites that are submitted to search engines every day. Many of the other engines (Yahoo included) can take 2-4 weeks to appear, if your site appears at all. Some of the search engines offer you the opportunity to pay to have your site considered more quickly than the standard time period (called express submissions).Infoseek has a speedy inclusion cycle because it doesn't require human intervention. This makes it an ideal testing ground for new keywords and for your site's relevancy rankings. We don't recommend submitting to Infoseek more than once every 24 hours for your testing process.
For detailed information about how to test your ranking with the different search engines, we recommend the SearchEngineWatch page Checking Your URL www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/checkurl.html.
Search engines routinely update and change their criteria for listing. They also regularly discard sites from their index, so they require constant monitoring. Keywords for your industry also change often. We recommend that you check for the most popular or appropriate keywords for your site and resubmit about twice a month. This can benefit your site since fresh submissions are often higher in ranking than old ones. We suggest that you monitor every week or two and resubmit your pages at minimum every time you make significant changes to your site.
Can I fool search engines? (spamming)
Web designers have developed many ways to try to fool search engines into ranking their sites well and including them in their site index. Some of these methods include repeating keywords over and over again in the meta tags for the site (called stuffing), using colored text on the same color background for key words and content, hiding text using cgi, using very tiny fonts, etc. These tactics are designed to bombard the search engine and deceive them about the quality and nature of the content.These actions can seriously degrade the value of search engines. Search engines are savvy to these tactics and if they catch you engaging in these practices they will disallow your submissions to their index.
Nothing replaces quality content!
The quality and nature of the content you provide makes all of the difference to the audience you draw to your site. Some Web sites are discovered and listed by search engines before they have reviewed their submission requests. They are discovered because other sites of high quality content refer them to your site.Where do I submit my site?
A detailed write-up for all of the major search engines and their characteristics and idiosyncrasies is available from SearchEngineWatch www.searchenginewatch.com. Some hints:
- Register regionally for Yahoo (registering nationally sometimes diminishes your relevancy rating).
- Submit to search engines and portal sites that specialize in your vertical market.
- Countries have different search engines than the major ones we support.
- Negotiate reciprocal links with sites that draw the kind of traffic you desire.
- Consider purchasing advertising or "bull's eye" positions with search engines that support them.
While search engines are still a primary method for drawing traffic, don't forget traditional media, newsgroup postings, web directories, and alternative forms that can sometimes be far more effective than search engines. You can also use personal communications to lists for your industry/area, this kind of approach produces less traffic but the audience is pre-qualified.
