101 Search Engine Strategies and Web Promotion Techniques
Search
engine submission and web site promotion is a wide subject. There is much to
learn. The goal of a search engine or directory
is to give their visitors access to the best sites in the category or keyword
for which they are searching. Every
search engine has its own set of criteria for ranking sites and they don’t
publicly publish this information. And
the rules are always changing.
Otherwise, everyone would just try to match their “formula” and it would
become useless for ranking sites.
This document aims to help
you, as a webmaster, improve your sites' ratings on these search engines.
The bulk of information available
to you as a webmaster is a mix of other webmasters’ experiences with the
engines, myth and hearsay. Research the
subject as fully as you have time to.
Don’t take any one document, even this one, or any one person’s advice
as being the absolute set of answers.
Anyone who says they “know it all” is either lying or is a fool. Use your own intelligence and make your own
decisions on how to promote your site.
But
don’t be dismayed. This confusion on the
subject can be to your advantage. Good
research can put you ahead of at least 95% of all of the other web sites on the
net. Knowledge is Power!
Knowledge
= A Good Ranking
A
Good Ranking = More Visitors
More
Visitors = More Customers
More
Customers = More Money for You!
Getting
your sites ready for search engines, called “optimization”, submitting them and
tracking your ranking results is just part of an overall marketing plan. Make
yourself an outline with the following points:
Throughout
the course of this material, the reasons for including these items in your plan
will become very clear. This outline structure will be relevant whether you are
starting a site from scratch, or you are working on an existing site.
The term “search
engine” is used by most people to refer to both “spidering” and human-powered directories.
The spidering engines use an automated computer program to visit your site and
“crawl” or “spider” though your site. They read things such as page file names,
titles, meta tags and the text of your site. The
spider reports a summary of this information back to its home base, the search
engine’s database. The search engine
does some complex mathematical equations, called algorithms, to figure out how
to rank the site’s “relevancy” to certain search terms.
If you try to
artificially inflate your ranking, this is noticed by the search engines. It is
called “Spamming”. Sites that spam will
either be dropped in ranking or banned from inclusion the search engine
database.
Directories
are lists of sites made by real, live human beings, who have actually visited
each and every site. They index the best
sites that they find into categories.
Not every site that is submitted will be indexed. Even if your site is to be indexed, it may
take quite some time to get listed. For
no apparent reason, many very good sites may never be listed. Some examples of top directories would be
Yahoo.com or about.com.
The
name or title of your site is one of the most important decisions you will make
in the course of your web development and promotion. The title tag, in the head
of your html document, does not have to match the actual title of your site,
but it helps.
Here
are the HTML codes for a basic document, showing the placement of a TITLE tag:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your
Title Here</TITLE>
[The
rest of the meta tags go here]
</HEAD>
<BODY>
[all of the page content goes here]
</BODY>
</HTML>
Make
sure that the most important keywords and keyword phrases you are shooting for
are in the name of your site.
A
search engine will only extract the keyword information from the first 50-100
characters of your title tag, and use that as a major factor in ranking your
site. Cut as much as possible from the
title tag that doesn’t relate to those keywords.
Here
is an example of a poorly written title tag, from a search engine point of
view:
The Charles Taylor Company Inc.
This
is the worst kind of title to write. It
will give you no help in ranking. Unless a visitor specifically searches for
your entire company name, they will never find you. This title tells nothing to
the search engine about the content of the site. From looking at it, can you tell what that
company sells? Neither can the search engine.
Here
is an example a title tag that is not written much better:
The
Charles
Ahhh….
I see. They sell used cars. But the one
and only helpful keyword phrase, from a search engine point of view is “used
cars”. This title might as well be:
Blah
blah blah blah blah – blah blah blah blah
blah used cars blah blah blah
Stop
the vanity! It will get you nowhere.
Let’s
analyze this one, by going back to the original plan. What are the keywords that a used car lot,
such as this one, should shoot for? What
are their products and services? How
would people search for them? Let’s say that the “Charles Taylor Company”
specializes in selling and servicing domestic American cars and does roadside
service as a sideline.
A
better title would be:
Used
Car Sales, Service, Ford, Chevy, Olds, Car Parts, Roadside Service, Towing,
Locksmiths
This
title is 92 characters long and contains 9 keywords and phrases. It is important to put the most important
services at the beginning of the title. If
we were to submit this to an engine that would only take the first 65
characters, for example, everything past the word “Roadside” would be
“truncated” or just cut off. The words
past the search engine’s character limit will be ignored. Go ahead and add the extra words. If an engine can read them, it will be
helpful to your ranking.
Getting
a web site on the Internet will take a company into a global market. However,
for most companies, their local market will continue to be their most important
market. For many kinds of businesses,
they may only be able to do business in that local market. Even if this is the case, the Internet is
still a very valuable advertising medium.
Take our used car lot for example.
No one is going to go half-way around the world to buy a used car or to
get their car serviced. The target
audience is the local market. Therefore,
in both the title of the page, and the content, it is important to feature the
name of the town in which the business is located.
Here
would be an example of a better title:
If
a person in
“
or
Ford
service in
For
both of these searches, our example company would show up in the results. There
are three search phrases the visitor is looking for simultaneously: Ford,
service and the name of the town. Our
title supplies all three and the search engine would think that this site would
be a good match. Our example company may
not have been at the top of the search engine results for the word “Ford”, but
chances are that they will do very well in the results for such a multi-word
search.
Another
factor that search engines use in ranking sites is whether they have keywords related
to the site in the domain name. Since
millions of domain names have already been registered, if you are searching for
a good keyword domain, it can be difficult to find. A good domain needs to be short, memorable
and be related to the site. “thecharlestaylorcompany.com” might be available
and match the name of the company, but it will do nothing to help the site in
search engine rankings. The domain name
“usedcars.com” would be fantastic, but good luck getting it! A domain such as “usedcars.com” is worth
quite a bit of money and you will probably never be able to acquire it. No matter what the subject matter of your
site, you will probably have to get creative and spend a bit of time searching
to find that perfect domain name.
The
domain name registrar that I always use is http://godaddy.com. At the time of the writing of this document,
they sell individual domains for $8.95 USD.
You may be able to find domains a dollar or so cheaper, but no company
that I have used can beat their speed and their service. I would give them my highest recommendation.
When
you visit the registrar to search, make yourself a list of important keywords,
related to your site, that you would consider having as part of your domain
name. As you search, juggle these words
around to different positions in the names you make up until you find an
appropriate domain that is not already registered. Some registrars, such as http://godaddy.com, have tools to help
you make up names. Take advantage of
those. As you search, write down
available domains that interest you. Search as long as you can stand it. When you get a good list of available domain
name choices made, buy one or more of them.
It could take you hours, but it is one of the important decisions about
your site that you can make. If you can
find one that would also be a good title for your site, that is best. It will make it easier for your visitors to
remember your URL.
When
you find a good name, you may want to buy names that are very similar to
yours. If you can get your chosen name
in its “.com”, “.net” and “.org” version, buy them while you can. This will keep other companies from
registering those domains.
A
good web hosting company will allow you to “park” domains. “Parking” one domain on top of another will
make your site accessible by more than one web address. If you have the “.com” ending on your domain
and you park the “.net” version on your site, then both addresses bring the
user to the same pages. If you can own
both domain names and park one, you will not lose visitors to your competitors
if a user types a “.net” ending instead of the “.com.”
When
creating a domain name and a title tag be sure that they actually match the
content of your site, or the page that they are on, otherwise, you will not get
a boost in the rankings. An irrelevant
title can actually hurt you. The search engine may think that you are
“spamming”, or trying to artificially boost your rankings. Spamming will get you buried in the results
or not listed at all. The keywords used should be relevant to your most
significant topics.
Dashes
and underscores are allowable in domain names, but I would avoid them. If you are using a combination of two words
in a domain, and there is a domain name that is spelled the same without the
dash, the people will end up at the wrong site if they leave out the dash. If your domain name is
“computer-widgets.com”, and there is a web site at “computerwidgets.com”, your
potential customer just may end up at a competitor’s site.
Search
engines rank “.com” domain extensions higher than the other extensions such as
.net, .org, .biz, etc. Since domain
names with good keywords are so hard to acquire, search engines figure that
this must be a well established site.
This will also help your visitors find your site. In most web browsers, if you put a keyword
into the address box and hit the “Enter” key, it will go to the “.com” version
of the domain of that keyword. For
example, if you type in the word “car”, it will go to http://www.car.com. Many people, when going to a web address, use
this navigation technique. You can type
almost any English language word and there will be a domain name to match. So, if your domain is “carwidgets.net”, and
there is a “carwidgets.com”, a visitor using this technique will end up at
someone else’s site.
They
may also just mistakenly type in the “.com” version. The domain extension “.com” is stuck in
people’s heads. They just don’t think of
all the other domain extensions and will nearly always try to go to the “.com”
first.
Plus,
just as the search engines think you are more established if you have a “.com”
ending, the “.com” will have a psychological effect on your visitors. It says that you are well established and not
a new or fly-by-night company.
When
deciding what search terms you should try to get ranked in with the search
engines, think about the many different ways that people will search for your
site. Take a piece of paper and write down every conceivable search term and
phrase that someone would use if they were looking for your products or
services. List things like individual services that you offer, individual
products that you sell, the general industry that you are a part of, and your
location. You should easily come up with
a list of a couple hundred words.
Ask
friends and family to write a list for you as well. If it is your web site or
your business, you are probably much too close to the subject to make an objective
list. Your helpers will come up with many new search terms that you had not
considered.
How
often do you make a typo or misspell a word? No matter how intelligent you are,
it happens. Some words are often
misspelled. Those misspelled words and
typos end up in the search engine searches.
As writers and designers, we always seek perfection. There is a time, however, to make mistakes on
purpose.
Take
a look at your list of keywords and determine which of these words are commonly
misspelled or mistyped. Add these
misspellings to your meta keyword tags and find a way to include at least one
of them on your page. Remember, if the
word is in your meta tags, but is not on your page, it is not relevant and will
be ignored. You could even hide your
misspelling in an ALT tag or in an image filename. It just has to be on the page
somewhere. Do this subtly and no one
will even notice.
There
may be literally thousands or millions of sites with whom you are competing to
be “number one” on the search engine rankings; for a certain keyword or
phrase. However, many webmasters don’t
think of including these commonly misspelled words. You may find yourself one of just a handful
of sites sharing in thousands or millions of misspelled search requests.
Here
is a list of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language:
|
absence |
century |
foreign |
moccasins |
responsibility |
Note:
a couple of the words on this list have alternate spellings in countries other
than the
Here
are some other lists of commonly misspelled words:
A
Study of Some of the Most Commonly Misspelled Words
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/error.html
Commonly
Misspelled Words List
http://www.library.cornell.edu/tsmanual/TSSU/comis1.html
Commonly
Misspelled Words
http://www.david.tribble.com/text/misspell.htm
This
tool will show you which keyword misspellings are most “popular”.
Spellweb
http://www.spellweb.com/spellwebber.htma
You
can’t try to get ranked in every single keyword that you think possible. There
is math involved to how the search engines will rank you. Your best ranking will only be on a few of
your keywords, so make those the ones for which people actually search
for. You shouldn’t rely on your own
judgment for this decision. There are
tools that you can use to determine which related keywords and phrases are the
most popular searches.
Here
are a few tools that I recommend:
Good
Keywords
Good Keywords is
free Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web
pages. It uses the tools provided by search engines like GoTo, 7Search, Direct Hit and Lycos to build a suitable
keyword set. Once you are done, a simple
click will get you the required keyword meta tag... ready to be pasted into
your HTML file.
Here
are additional web sites which can tell you of popular searches:
Yahoo Buzz
Index
http://buzz.yahoo.com/
Search.com
Snoop
http://savvy.search.com/snoop
Kanoodle
Search Spy
http://www.kanoodle.com/spy/
Yahoo
Shopping: What's Selling Now
http://st8.yahoo.com/OT
Overture (GoTo) Search Term
Suggestion Tool
https://signup.overture.com/s/dtc/signup/
Galaxy
StarGazer
http://www.galaxy.com/info/voyeur.html
Mopilot
LiveSearch (Wap)
http://mopilot.com/index.htm?go=live.php3
Lycos 50
http://50.lycos.com/
Google Zeitgeist
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Fireball LiveSuche - German
http://www.fireball.de/voyeur-fireball.fcg
Disturbing
Search Requests
http://searchrequests.weblogs.com/
Just
a bit of Humor here… This site displays actual weird ways people got to
webmasters’ sites. It is very humorous!
I thought it strange for people to find my hosting site with “Winnie the
Pooh Golf Clubs” as a search term, but it gets much weirder than that here.
Take a little break here and have a laugh.
Warning:
Contains some adult search terms, but it makes a point relative to this topic.
People
most often use multiple words in a search engine query. The engine will look for both the individual
words and the keywords phrases that the user asks about. There is a system of getting more accurate search
results using “Boolean logic”. There is
a good explanation of this system at Altavista, in their help section, at http://www.altavista.com/sites/help/search/adv_help
. I have found in my college teaching
experience, that most people don’t know how to use these techniques. They do, from experience, know to use
multiple words to narrow searches.
If
one was looking for a shop to do service on their Ford car, and they lived in
A
webmaster who used keyword phrases, such as “Ford car service” or “
Just
as adding more words to a search narrows down the choices, shooting for phrases
narrows the competition between you and other sites. In this example, it would
be much better to be ranked #3 in “Ford car service New
Don’t
try to use more than 2 or 3 of the top 100 keywords on one site. The search engines are hip to this trick and
will assume that you are trying to artificially inflate your rankings, and that
your content is not really relevant to those keywords. They will label you a
spammer, and drop you down in the rankings.
Think
about whom your most common customer is, or who you would like them to be.
Stereotype them. Are they teenagers?
Small business people or the “corporate type”? Women or men?
Use keywords that your stereotyped group would use in a search. Don’t try to go for top keywords to get more
visitors if these visitors are not going to buy your products and services. Bringing a teenage visitor to your site, for
example, would not help you sell services that are aimed at corporate
buyers. So, don’t try to bring in
visitors with MP3s, games, or adult topics if that is not your product or
service.
Everyone
loves something free. Giving away something
from your web site also creates goodwill with your customers and can create
more sales. What you give away for free depends upon your site. It may be
products, services or simply information.
Many searches that users perform will include the word free. The word
“free” is therefore a valuable keyword to use.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you will be number one in the
engines under the word “free”. Only one
website, out of the many millions of results per engine, will get that
honor. Would that be so useful anyway?
Who searches for just the word “free”?
But in combination with other words on your site, you may end up in many
multi-word searches. For example:
You
have 3 keywords:
Keyword1
Keyword2
Keyword3
And
you use the word “Free” on your page.
You now have 3 individual keywords and 3 keyword phrases, for a total of
6 possible listings.
Keyword1
Keyword2
Keyword3
Free
Keyword1
Free
Keyword2
Free
Keyword3
It
may seem as if using your competitor’s trade name could give you a search
engine boost. It is legal to link to
them, but don’t use other people’s trade names in your meta tags; you could get
banned from the search engine, or worse yet, sued! There have been several cases before the
courts, where trade name owners have sued over this subject. There have been judgments both for and
against the web site owner. But win or
lose, the litigation could cost you millions. Don’t risk it.
The
exception to using trade names is for products that you sell on your site. No
company is going to get upset over this.
You are giving them free advertising and showing their products in a
good light. They will appreciate the extra free advertising.
This
is the most important factor to your search engine optimization. The keywords that you choose to be ranked in
have to appear in the body text of your page.
They have to be there more than one time on the page. Don’t go overboard
and have a keyword be included too many times, or the search engines will
consider this spamming as well.
Here
is my secret web site promotion weapon.
I have not talked to many webmasters that go to this trouble to achieve
a good ranking, but it has given me good results for my design clients’
rankings. One can try to discover, even
in a crude approximation, the algorithm that the search engines are using to
establish ranking.
This
is how I do it.
I
make a list of keyword goals for the site that I am working on. That is, the
keywords that I choose to be ranked under.
I prioritize these, giving the most important ones my greatest
effort. I include others for balance and
the “luck” factor. Through my optimization efforts, I may get good ranking on
some of the secondary terms, so it pays to leave them in.
I
go to the top search engines and see who is ranked in the top 3 spots for each
of the top 5 or 6 of my chosen keywords.
I copy down these URLs. As you visit each of the engines, I would pay
special attention to the sites that rank well on more than one engine. These sites are especially well constructed,
as to finding that “magic formula” that works for multiple engines. They are well balanced in their search
engine optimization techniques. I then
take apart their pages, piece by piece, to see what these sites did that was so
loved by the search engines. For this, I
use my secret weapon, http://keywordcount.com.
This
is a jewel of a tool. At this site, you
can use their form to discover the keyword frequencies of your own site or
competitors sites. Depending upon which
options you check off, it will tell you the keywords in the body, comment tags,
meta description, meta keywords, and ALT tags.
It is set to do a comparison, so you can check two of your competitors
at a time, or check your site against your top competitors. The competitors you should check are the
sites that are in those top 3 search engines spots. You can also choose to have these results
e-mailed to you.
Here
is a sample output:
|
http://forwardweb.com |
||
|
Top 10 words |
||
|
web |
14 |
4.79% |
|
design |
12 |
4.11% |
|
hosting |
8 |
2.74% |
|
forwardweb |
6 |
2.05% |
|
ecommerce |
5 |
1.71% |
|
your |
||