Learning Center- Search Engines What is a search engine? Web visitors generally use search engines to find sites matching their search criteria. The visitor enters words or phrases in the search area, and the search engine produces a list of related sites. The search engine provides this information after conducting a more comprehensive search using indexing software agents, often called "robots" or "spiders." These robots and spiders are programmed to "crawl" the Internet in search of new or updated web sites. The search engine becomes aware of a new site to visit and index when that site is submitted. Why should I submit my web site? Submitting your URL to a number of search engines increases the odds of potential customers finding your site through traditional online searches. You can further increase your chances of being found through a search by adding relevant keywords to your home page title and text. Search engines are one of the least expensive and most successful forms of online marketing. If you're serious about reaching new visitors, submitting your site to search engines is essential.  Why should I submit every month? You want to keep your web site registration current. Link Pages move older links to the bottom of the list, and resubmitting puts you back on top. Search engines have a tendency to drop or lose sites from time to time. Resubmitting monthly ensures your site won't get lost. Some web sites offer "What's New" sections. Each time you submit, your site gets added to these lists.  What are the best keywords to use? The best way to determine your keywords is to step out of your shoes and imagine yourself as one of your customers or prospects. How do you think these people will search for sites like yours? What keywords do you think they will enter into the search engines? Create a list of all of the words that apply to your business, including your business name, product names (both brand and generic names) and the names of the geographic regions you serve. You may also want to consider variations of these words (such as "dog, dogs, doggie, etc) and common misspellings of important keywords. When developing your list of keywords, you should consider all of the possible keywords your customers and prospects may use. Spend a few days thinking it over. Ask a few of your customers what keywords they would use. Build as large of a list as possible, while still keeping the keywords relevant to your business. Once you have a complete list, you can then rank the importance of they keywords to determine which are the most important to your company. Why are the first 25 keywords so important? Most search engines will only allow submission of 25 keywords. Others compute the relevancy of your keywords by dividing the number of keyword matched in a search by the total # of keywords submitted. Therefore limit your keyword list to 25 keywords to ensure that you select keywords that are the most relevant to your site and that will generate the highest ranking in the search returns. When will I see my site listed on search engine sites? After successfully submitting your web site to a search engine or directory, it's up to those organizations to list your site. Most automated link pages will add your site almost instantly. Most search engines, like Excite and iWon, will send a "spider" to your site within a few weeks of submission. The spider will read and index your web site and schedule your site to be listed. It usually takes at least 4-8 weeks before your site appears on major search engines such as Lycos and HotBot. Some search engines are actually directories, where submission is done manually by a real person who reviews your site and then enters it into the appropriate category they feel is best. The most popular directory on the Internet is Yahoo. If you submit your website to Yahoo the traditional way, through their "add site" feature, then plan on waiting months before you see your website listed in their directory. The stinker is that even though it is listed, you may not be able to find it under the key words you supplied! Why can't I find my site on any search engines? The most likely reason that you cannot find your site is that it has a low ranking in the search return. This may be because your site is not optimized for the keywords you entered. It is also possible that the search engine's "spider" has not yet visited your site and this is also adversely affecting the ranking and making it difficult to locate the site in the search return. The easiest way to determine if your site is in the search engine's database is to enter the full URL provided with your submission order (for example, www.your-domain-name.com). It is very hard to get guaranteed high ranking in the search engines Since many of the factors that affect your sites ranking are outside of your control.  How do I optimize my site? There are many ways to optimize a site to increase its ranking in the search engine returns. Which search engines and directories are the best to submit to? Google (used by Yahoo)  AOL  MSN  Goto  Excite  Lycos  iWon  NBCi  HotBot  LookSmart  Why isn't my site listed on Yahoo!? Yahoo! is an Internet directory. Unlike a search engine, which uses an automated program to add sites to its database, many Internet directories have human editors who must review each site submission. The editors decide if the sites should be added to the directory and where they will be placed. Because of this human component, many Internet directories now charge an "express" submission fee of $100-$300 in order to guarantee that an editor will review the site. If the site is submitted without paying the fee, there is no guarantee that an editor will review the site, and even if they do, it usually takes 9-12 months for the editors to get around to looking at these submissions. It is therefore recommend to those who wish to be listed on Internet directories such as Yahoo!, that they submit their sites directly and pay the "express" fee to guarantee that their site will be reviewed. Why isn't my site listed on Google? Instead of ranking sites based on keyword matches, Google ranks sites based on the number of external links from other sites that have the keywords. From Google's FAQ:  Pages that have not been indexed yet probably haven't because not enough other pages on the web link to them - if other pages don't link to them they not be indexed. Google looks at the link interconnectedness among pages and allows the open, vast nature of the Internet to yield the most relevant search results. It generally takes a few weeks for the other search engines to list your site, and then for Google to index these other search engines before you will appear in Googles database.  What is a meta tag? A meta tag (or tag) tells the search engine what your site is about. The major search engines will review your site and read your meta tags to determine categories for your site. Meta tags tell the search engine your site's title, description and keywords. Without these tags, it's difficult for your site to achieve a high ranking on many major search engines. Do I need meta tags? Yes. If your site doesn't have meta tags, you're missing potential traffic. A web site without meta tags is tough for a search engine to place correctly. What meta tags should I add to my web site? 1. Title: The title is probably the most important part of your site to evaluate, as it is the most frequently searched component by search engines. It should state exactly what your site is about and include your most important keywords. An example of a good title would be, "Ivan's Interior Designs - Decorating the Inside of New England Homes." 2. Keywords: The Meta Tag Keywords should be those words or phrases that you think people will use when trying to look for a site like yours on search engines. You should incorporate many Meta Tags within your site's first paragraphs (50 words) and repeat them throughout the text. The right keywords for your web site should be specific enough to describe your web site's focus, yet general enough for potential customers to use as search criteria with search engines. Be sure to include your domain name, company name and product's name in the keywords. 3. Description: Your web site description should be a 20 word summary of the content of your site. This description should contain some of the keywords and should avoid marketing jargon. An example of a good description would be, "A full service provider of interior design services - decorating, painting, furniture and color schemes for your home." Where do I place the meta tags? The meta tags should be inserted between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your document. Below is an example of how to format meta tags and where to place them: <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Your Site Title goes here</TITLE> <META name="keywords" content="Your keywords go here, separated by a comma"> <META name="description" content="Your site description goes here"> </HEAD> <BODY> .. Page content is placed here .. </BODY> </HTML> How do I get the meta tags into my web page? Either you can place them in your website yourself or have a website design company do it for you. I've seen other companies that submit to 2,000 search engines, is this the way to go? We've seen these offers, too. How many search engines do you go to when you're looking for something on the Internet? Submission companies that offer 2,000 submissions are simply sending your web site to small niche directories. These pages may no longer exist and in many cases were set up to collect e-mail addresses to use or sell. Be careful if you're using one of these submission services. In the web site promotion game, quality wins over quantity.