How To Put Your Small Business Website On The Search Engines?
One of the most frequent questions small business owners ask me is: I've designed my website, now, how do I get it on the search engines?
Actually, having your site indexed by a search engine is not that difficult. However, making it rank high and appear in
the first results page is. Let's start with a brief explanation of how a search engine works:
Search engines store billions of pages in an archive called index. When a search engine conducts a search, it doesn't
really search the web: it searches the index. Search engines add web pages to their index through the work of a "search bot", a powerful software program that "crawls" the web regularly, following links and adding to the index all the pages it finds.
So, step number one is to make the search bots find your page. You can do this:
a) by directly submitting your page's URL to the search engine, or
b) by placing a link to your page on another page that is already in the index.
There is strong evidence that method (b) is the most effective.
Now, lets suppose that your page is already in the search engine index. How do you make it rank high? The different
attempts to answer that question have given birth to a whole new discipline called Search Engine Optimization. Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) involves following a series of techniques to increase the relevance of your page for certain search terms or keywords.
You must decide in advance what are the keywords you believe a user will type in the search engine window to find your page. This is probably the most important step in search engine optimization: if you pick keywords that nobody uses, or, to the contrary, keywords that are too common (too competitive), your page will never be found.
The keywords you chose must be used often in different parts of your page, like the title, headings, sub-headings, and
your page copy. The more your keywords appear on your page (without "over-stuffing" your page copy with them), the more relevant search engines will consider your page to be for your selected keywords.
Now, you may be thinking that this SEO thing is too easy: you could just manipulate a few page elements and you would be all set. The search engines, however, are smarter than that. To avoid this kind of potential abuse, search engines rely heavily on links from other pages. In a nutshell, the more links to your page from quality pages with content related to your site you can get, the higher your page will rank. In other words, you can have a great page, but if nobody is linking to it, you will not achieve high search engine rankings.
That's it.
In summary: chose the right keywords, utilize them often on your page, and get as many links as you can from quality pages related to your site's content, and you will be on your way to high search engine rankings. The rest is just time and patience.
While the goal of this article is just to give you a quick overview of what Search Engine Optimization is, you can further explore this topic by reading this Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Tutorial. If you found this article useful, you may also want to expand your Search Engine Optimization knowledge by reading Aaron Wall's SEOBook (http://www.accordmarketing.com/seobook/).
About the Author
Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics. He publishes The Internet Digest (http://www.theinternetdigest.net), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources. You can freely reprint his articles on your website, ezine, or ebook.
Get more visitors, more customers and more sales!
According to recent statistics, 812 million people used the Internet in 2004 (Source: Nielsen/NetRatings). Web users spend twice as much time online as watching TV (Source: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society). Consumers spent US$199 billion online in 2004 (Source: ComScore).
A survey conducted by market research firm TNS revealed that 75% of all online shoppers said that company size was not a factor in having their online shopping needs satisfied. Only 15% said they preferred to shop with large retailers (Source: TNS).
More than 80% of all Internet users find new web sites through search engines (Source: Georgia Tech/GVU Users Survey). That means that about 650 million people use search engines to find web sites.
Search engine users are some of the most qualified and motivated visitors to your web site you will ever have. After all, they have taken the initiative to hunt for online resources on a certain topic. And then they clicked your link to learn more.
The promotional tools such as IBP(Internet Business Promoter) help you to get your web site in front of these potential customers. High search engine rankings result in more web site visitors, more customers and more sales.
The right strategy for best results
The right strategy is crucial to the success of your search engine optimization activities
It is important that you do the right things in the right order if you want to have high search engine rankings. It is not enough to submit your web site to search engines and to wait for the results. Successful search engine optimization takes some time but the results are worth the effort.
The key to high search engine rankings is to do the right things in the right order:
1. Find the right keywords for your web site.
2. Optimize your web pages for these keywords so that they can get high search engine rankings.
3. Submit your web pages to all important search engines and directories so that web surfers can find you.
4. Get links from other web sites and make sure that these links contain your keywords.
5. Track the results.
IBP(Internet Business Promoter) helps you with all aspects of successful search engine optimization
IBP offers professional tools that help you with every single aspect of search engine optimization:
• IBP helps you to find the best keywords for your web site.
• IBP helps you to optimize your web pages for top 10 search engine rankings.
• IBP helps you to submit your web site to all important search engines, Internet directories and special interest web sites.
• IBP helps you to increase the link popularity of your web site.
• IBP helps you to track the results.
Successful search engine optimization results in more visitors, more customers and more sales.
You'll get best results if you go from step one to step five in the right order. Start by finding the most relevant keywords for your web site. The best keywords are not always obvious.
What you have to do now
• If you are new to search engine optimization and search engine marketing, start with, following, to learn more about the basics.
• If you already know why search engine marketing is important and what it can do for your web site, start with Step 1: Find the right keywords 16 .
An introduction to search engine marketing
Why do you have to optimize your web pages for search engines? New web sites can be submitted to search engines by filling out an online form. Unfortunately, a submission of your web site to search engines is not enough. Without optimizing your web pages, your web site will be listed in position 7,523 of 634,234,202 result pages.
Only a few web surfers look further than the first or second result page of a search engine
75% of searchers never look further than page one (Source: Georgia Institute of Technology). Most search engines display ten results on the first page; and very few searchers click the links to look at the second page.
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen points out: "Users almost never look beyond the second page of search results." Danny Sullivan, ClickZ Search Engine Marketing Columnist, puts it out this way: "Being listed 11 or beyond means that many people may miss your web site."
You'll only get targeted visitors from search engines if your web site is listed in the top results.
You must tell search engines what your web site is all about
Search engines must be able to find out what your web site is all about. If search engines cannot find out that your web site is about fishing equipment, they cannot give your web site high rankings for that keyword.
The process of optimizing your web pages so that search engines can quickly find out what your web site is all about is called search engine optimization (SEO). IBP's Top 10 Optimizer helps you to optimize your web pages so that they can be listed in the top results for your keywords.
Important web page elements
A web page is made up of different web page elements. These elements are placed in the HTML code of your web pages. Depending on how you use these elements, your web pages can have good or bad rankings. IBP helps you to optimize all relevant web page elements so that you get high search engine rankings for your web pages.
A web page is a single page on your web site. A web site is the combination of all web pages that can be found under a domain name. Here are some web page elements that can influence the ranking of your web site on search engines:
Title
The title of a web page is the text within the <title>...</title> tags in the HTML code of a web page.
Example: <title>Your web page title</title>
The Meta keywords tag
The Meta Keywords tag allows you to define which search terms are important to your web page according to your opinion. It should be placed between the <head>...</head> tags in the HTML code of your web page. Many search engines don't use this tag anymore.
Example: <meta name="keywords" content="keyword, another keyword">
The Meta description tag
The Meta description tag allows you to describe your web page. Some search engines display the text of the Meta description tag in the search results. That means that this tag allows you to influence the appearance of your search results in some search engines.
Example: <meta name="description" content="This sentence describes the contents of your web site.">
Body text
The body text is the text on your web page that can be seen by people in their web browsers. It does not include HTML commands, comments, etc. The more visible text there is on a web page, the more a search engine can index. The body text of a web page is very important to search engines.
The first sentence of the body text
The first sentence of the body text is the first sentence after the <body> tag in the HTML code of your web page. Some search engines give more relevance to search terms when they appear in the first sentence. Some will use your first sentence as the description of your page on the search result page.
Note that the first sentence of the body text is often not the first sentence that is visible on your web page. Depending on your web page design, the first sentence might appear somewhere else on your page.
Search engines consider the first sentence that can be found after the body text as the first sentence, regardless of where it appears on your page.
Example: <body>Here goes the first sentence. This text is not the first sentence.
Headlines
H1 headline texts are the texts that are written between the <h1>...</h1> tags in the HTML code of a web page. Some search engines give extra relevance to search terms that appear in the headline texts.
Example: <h1>your very big headline text</h1>
Web pages have many more elements. Each element can influence the search engine ranking of the web page. In addition to the elements that can be found on a web page (on-page factors), the ranking of a web page is also influenced by factors outside the web site (off-page factors or off-site factors). Details can be found in the next chapter.
How do search engines rank web pages?
Search engines use mathematical formulas to determine the rank of a web page. These mathematical formulas are called ranking algorithms.
The individual ranking algorithms are the best kept secrets of the search engine companies (fortunately, IBP can help you to decrypt the search engine algorithms).
Content is the key
When a search engine spider indexes your web pages, it analyzes the HTML code of your web pages. Where on your pages do special keywords appear? Which words are written in bold face? What text do you use in the title? The list goes on and on. There are very many different web page elements that search engines analyze on your web pages. A good combination of these web page elements increases the ranking of your web pages on search engines.
For example, a web page that contains the keyword Hawaii vacation in the title is probably relevant to people searching for the term Hawaii vacation on search engines.
Some people think that it's enough to repeat a special keyword over and over on a web page to get high rankings for that keyword. That used to work in the early days of search engines. Nowadays, search engines can detect these keyword stuffing pages. Search engines don't want to be tricked. If you use dubious optimization techniques 13 on your pages, it's very likely that search engines won't list your web site.
The key to high search engine rankings is to use the right keywords in the right elements in the right combination on your web pages. Search engines like content rich web sites that offer a lot of information to web surfers.
How to decrypt the ranking algorithms
As mentioned above, search engines don't reveal details about their ranking algorithms. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer can help you to decrypt the ranking algorithm of any search engine.
IBP's Top 10 Optimizer does the following:
1. It analyzes the web pages that currently have a top 10 ranking for your keyword.
2. It compares these web pages with your own web page.
3. It tells you how to change your own web page so that you can get a similar ranking.
Web pages that currently have a top 10 ranking on a search engine have obviously done something right. If you do the same things, your web page can have the same rankings.
IBP's advantage over other web page optimization tools is that IBP's advice is specifically for your keyword, your web page and the selected search engine. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer doesn't give you general advice. It only gives you advice that is tailored to your specific situation.
In addition, IBP's advice is based on the in-depth analysis of the current, up-to-the-minute top 10 results in the selected search engine. That means that IBP's advice is always up-to-date, specific, and accurate. You won't get that level of search engine optimization accuracy with any other tool.
Off-site factors
In addition to optimized content, the ranking of your web pages is also influenced by off-site factors (also called off-page factors). Off-site factors are the number of links that point to a web site, the age of a web site and the number of people that click on a search result.
Only a few search engines consider the age of a web site (although Google is one of them) and even fewer count the number of clicks a search result receives.
The most important off-site factor is the number and the quality of links that point to your web site (link popularity). The more and the better the web sites that point to your web site, the higher your site will rank on search engines. If more than one web page is optimized for the same keyword, the web page with the best incoming links will get the best ranking.
It is difficult to get high search engine rankings for an optimized web site that doesn't have good incoming links. It is also difficult to get high search engine rankings for an unoptimized web site with many incoming links.
Your web site must have both optimized content and incoming links. Fortunately, IBP can help you with both aspects.
What is the difference between search engines and Internet directories?
Before you promote your web site, you should know the difference between search engines and Internet directories. Techniques that help you to improve your ranking on search engines might not work with Internet directories.
What is a search engine?
Search engines use indexing software programs, called robots or spiders. These software programs are programmed to constantly crawl the web in search of new or updated pages.
They will go from URL to URL until they have visited every web site on the Internet. When visiting a web site, a search engine spider will record the full text of every page found (including sub-pages). After that, it will continue to visit all external links. The URL of a web page is the address of a web page, for example "http://www.Axandra.com/ibp".
By following external links that point to your web site, search engines are able to find your site. The search engine spiders will then revisit your site periodically to refresh the recorded information. Search engines rank your web pages based on mathematical formulas.
What is an Internet directory?
Internet directories don't use indexing software programs. If you submit your web site to an Internet directory, your web site will be indexed by real people who decide whether to include your web site or not.
Directories are usually subdivided into categories, and you have to submit your URL under the most appropriate heading. If you don't, it is very likely that your web site won't be listed.
Which search engines are important?
There are submission services that promise to submit your web site to 50,000 search engines. Some web site promotion tools also claim that they can submit your web site to thousands of search engines.
Thousands of search engines?
There aren't thousands of search engines on the Internet. The majority of these 50,000 so called search engines are "free for all" (FFA) link pages or special interest web pages.
Submitting your web page to thousands of FFA sites means that you'll end up with thousands of spam email messages.
In addition, you won't receive a single visitor when you submit your web site about office equipment to a directory of poets in Poland.
There's only a handful of search engines that can really bring visitors to your web site. As always, it's quality that matters, not quantity. For this reason, you should concentrate on the important search engines when you submit your web site to search engines.
Which search engines are important?
Currently, there are only three major players: Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. They are responsible most of the search engine traffic that you can get because they also power other search engines, for example the search engine on AOL.com displays Google results.
Then there are search engines that are not as popular but can bring you some additional visitors, for example Ask Jeeves and Teoma.
In addition, there are country specific search engines. If you have a German web site, you should also submit to the popular German search engines, for instance Fireball.de.
What about directories?
Directories are different from search engines because all web site submissions are reviewed by humans. There are several directories where your web site should be listed. The most important directory is The Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org.
You should also submit to topic specific search engines. If your web site sells garden equipment, you should submit your web site to specific garden directories. Even if they send you only a few visitors, they could improve the link popularity of your web site which helps your ranking in other search engines.
Where can I get a list of all important search engines and directories?
Click the Supported Search Engines link in IBP's main window to get a list of all the important search engines and directories. IBP also supports country-specific search engines and special interest directories.
What is unethical search engine optimization?
Some search engine optimization companies and software developers use unethical techniques and tricks to artificially boost the search engine rankings of a web site. This dilutes the quality of search results and calls into question the accuracy of search results.
For this reason, the search engines are continuously trying to counter the spam techniques which webmasters might be using and penalize or ban them.
They continue to reconstruct their algorithms to prevent spammers from flooding the results page with irrelevant or low quality content.
If you use a web site promotion tool that uses these unethical techniques, you'll put your web business at severe risk.
You must use only ethical SEO methods!
Use SEO products and techniques that utilise only ethical search engine optimization methods. Only the best SEO tools are able to produce lasting results and won't offend search engines.
Search engines consider the following search engine optimization techniques as SPAM. For that reason, Axandra products DO NOT use or promote them:
• automatically generated doorway pages
• cloaking and false redirects
• keyword stuffing
• hidden text or hidden links
• pages loaded with irrelevant words
• duplicated content on multiple pages
• misspelling of well-known web sites
• unrelated and centralized link farms
• other methods that try to trick search engines
You might get short term results with these techniques but it's very likely that your site will be banned from search engines if you do. You'll put your web business at severe risk if you use one of these methods.
Ethical search engine optimization is about everyone winning
Ethical search engine optimization leads to a symbiotic relationship:
• Search engines: They win as they are provided with pages that are easy to understand and that contain the quality information that their visitors search for.
• Searchers: They win as they are getting what they ask for from the search engines. They search for "green widgets" and get a page about green widgets.
• Web site owners: They win as they are getting quality visitors who are interested in what their web site has to offer.
IBP helps you to build web sites that are beneficial to web surfers, web site owners and search engines.
Can SEO companies guarantee high rankings?
Some SEO (search engine optimization) companies guarantee that you will get a special search engine position if you let them do the work for you. Actually, this is not possible. No company can guarantee search engine listings.
If a company makes such promises, take a closer look at the small print. The catch is often that the company selects the search terms. You'll be listed for obscure search terms that nobody searches for.
If you have a unique company name or a unique product name, it's relatively easy to get high search engine rankings for that term.
Before paying a company to get high search engine rankings for you, try it yourself with IBP. You'll find out that you can get high search engine rankings for yourself.
The only way to get high search engine rankings and keep them is good web page content any playing by the rules.
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