For any questions or problems, please call us at
    (740) 653-9890, Mon-Sat: 9:00am-7:30pm; Sun: Closed.
For mistakes in or suggestions to this document, please email
    webmaster@greenapple.com
 

A search engine is a storehouse of links to web pages on the Internet. The aim of an engine is to provide users an efficient means for finding sites relating to visitors' search needs.

Search engines can gather and index sites automatically or by hand. The term ‘crawling’ refers to an engine that is gathering pages for its storehouse by using the links it finds in one page as pages for subsequent examination; the ‘spider’ is that part of the engine that does the crawling, stepping page to page gathering and indexing; inclusion into this type of engine often happens without an express request made for inclusion when the spider discovers the page through a link to it; often a request can be directed to the search engine to have the spider visit or revisit a page for indexing. Engines that gather and index by hand have personnel who examine pages for the storehouse; a person wanting their page included in this type of engine generally must submit it for consideration. Most search engines use a combination of automation and human oversight to fill and index their storehouse.

Access to the search engine may be through keyword searching or by drilling down its 'directory', a set of categories and sub-categories, which proceed from the general to the more specific. Many search engines support both keyword and directory searching.

There is no magic bullet to increase and maintain the number of visitors to your website. Organization and content are still king: design the site well, fill it with pertinent information, keep it up-to-date and people will come. However, there are steps you can take to improve the visibility of the site among search engines and the ranking of its web pages in search results.

The first of these is to understand the features common to search engine algorithms, in particular the algorithms used by automated gathering and indexing engines. Identify the keywords for your site and implement those keywords strategically when creating the web pages: give each page a particular keyword focus. Automated gathering and indexing engines return links to web pages, not sites. Directory-based search engines generally include a site into one or two categories only; identify the main page for your site and submit it under the category which best reflects the site as a whole. Use programs and services to help submit your pages into the numerous minor search engines which exist, but submit to the major engines manually. Submit to regional or industry specific engines and directories. In coding web pages, remember that search engines interpret text. Put important text toward the top of the page. Keep to your keyword strategy in using the HTML tags TITLE, ALT (for images), and META. Exchange links with others.

Ways to create link-backs to increase your link popularity:

• Sign guest books on related sites, include your URL linking back to your site.

• Offer sincere testimonials to related sites you enjoy or benefit from.  Give permission to post your statements, provided a link back to your own site be included with your testimonial.

• Post answers to questions in discussion forums relating to your website’s content. Give valuable advice, and they will link back to you for a long time.

• Write an article and submit it into every article bank you come across.  Put your URL linking back to your site in the article’s resource box.  Other sites may post your article, creating a link back.

Things that will help get you in:

• Unique content.

• Fast-loading, well-designed pages.

• Useful content (articles, instructions, tutorials)

• Full functionality. No broken links or “under construction” areas.

• Interactivity and pleasant user experience (avoid flashing text in the middle).

• Choosing the appropriate category and description.

Things that will get you rejected:

• Temporary sites (submit these only to "announcement" categories)

• "Under Construction" areas

• Dead links

• Sites with little content or links only

• Doorway pages (never create them for directories)

The following techniques are usually considered spam:

• Meta refresh tags

• Invisible text and overuse of tiny text

• Irrelevant keywords in the title and meta tags

• Excessive repetition of keywords

• Overuse of mirror sites (same sites that point to different URLs)

• Submitting too many pages in one day

• Identical or nearly identical pages

• Submitting to an inappropriate category (for directories)

• Frames, dynamic content, and Flash intros

  • Most search engines are still unable to index multimedia and dynamic pages, and those that are, - don't index all of them.  Here's a list of files that search engines don't index:

    • Text in graphics (use ALT tags)

    • Pages that require registration, cookies or passwords

    • XML

    • Java applets

    • Acrobat files (PDF), except Google

    • Dynamic content (URLs with "?" in them), except Google, Altavista, FAST and Inktomi

    • Multimedia files (Flash, Shockwave, streaming video)

    • **Lycos and NorthernLight don't currently even accept description meta tags and keyword meta tags

What to do once you're ready to list your site:

1. Submit your site to the engines.  Wait to see if the site makes it into the engines' indexes over the next few months.  If the pages don't make it into the index, review your site carefully for ways to utilize additional optimization, then resubmit.

2. Submit all important pages to search engines that allow submissions beyond the main page.

3. After a page has been accepted into the index, don't resubmit it unless it is dropped from the index.

4. If a page is dropped from the index, wait for 3 weeks to see if the page is picked back up, and then resubmit it.  Do not resubmit sooner than 21 days.

5. Make sure you have visible links from the main page of your site leading to your important pages. DO NOT use hidden links.

6. Submit your pages manually, or use a trusted submission service or software that mimics a manual submission. The software or service should wait for verification before submitting another URL and should allow you to choose the schedule for your submissions to avoid over-submitting.

7. If it takes too long for an engine to access your site, it is less likely to be indexed.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide

Because search engines change their algorithms constantly, there is no way to define the ideal page. Engines are constantly trying to improve their search results to give the best experience to those that search. The following serves simply as a guide or starting point for SEO and is in no way a definitive source for creating the "ideal page".

Title Tag:  60 characters or less.

Avoid stop words (the, and, etc.) and common WWW terms such as "Web", "Internet", or "home page".

If appropriate, start the title with an "A" or "$" or "!" to gain rank in alpha listings.

Description Meta Tag:  150 characters or less.

Some engines use this as the description shown to users, should be descriptive & informative.

Keyword Meta Tag:  874 characters or less.

Avoid spamming, the over-repetition of keywords.  Keep repetitions from 3 (conservative) to 7 (risky, may get penalized).

Use keyword derivatives or "stemming", and variations in upper & lower case, and common misspellings.

HTML Body:  Text seen by users.

Have an effective summary at the top of your page.

Some engines weight based on words’ position on the page. (i.e. frequently in the beginning or spread throughout the page)

Alt Text:  (<IMG SRC="logo.gif" ALT="[My Company Logo]"> )

Visitors not downloading images will see [My Company Logo] even though the image does not appear.

Many search engines accept Alt Text as a way of indexing images.

You can increase your "keyword density”.   Try to make the sentence appropriate to the link.

Link Text:  (<a href="home.html" TITLE="Your best keywords in a sentence">HOME</a>)

Give your text link a descriptive text TITLE.

Comment Tags:

Don’t use.  Spamdexing is no longer supported by most search engines.

Get your keywords in the URL:

Say you sell "fasteners". Instead of giving your files names like "about.html", "contact.html" or "products.html", give them names like:

1. "about_fasteners.html"
2. "contact_fasteners_store.html"
3. "fastener_products.html".

Workaround pages:
If your site consists largely of files that search engines don't index, create workaround pages. Workaround pages should contain the most important information about your products or services. Workaround pages should be optimized just like doorway pages.

Search engines will index workaround pages even if they can't index the rest of a site. Always link to these pages from your site map to make sure search engines spider them, and submit workaround pages rather than non-optimized pages.

Below are links to several popular search engines and methods to follow in order to hopefully get your site listed with them. There are thousands of other search engines out there, but you should concentrate on only a few at a time.

Google

1. Create a really good, useful site.

2. Make sure the text describes what your page is about.

3. Pick specific keywords for your site, not common words.

4. Consider purchasing AdWords.

   With Google:

   • Don't create domains, subdomains, or doorway pages with substantially the same content.

   • Be careful about where you link, avoid “link exchange programs" or "link farms”.

   • Don't use immediate redirects.

   • Don't hide text or use excessive keywords.

   • Crawls the text of PDF, dynamic pages, ASP, JSP, CFM, and PHP, DOC and newsgoups.

   • Does not crawl Flash.

   • "Skip intro" pages are treated as redirects.

Yahoo

1. Don't make popular affiliate programs the primary focus of your site.

2. Favors sites that feature tutorials, articles, instructions, and educational information.

3. When submitting, try to choose a category that fits your site, but is not flooded with listings.
   Make your site interesting & informative so it stands out.

4. Do some research. Check the search results on your best keyphrase.  See what competitors have done to achieve high ranking  Implement similar techniques.

5. Keep the content on your site current and accurate, update it frequently.

6. At the end of the submission form, tell what makes your site unique.

7. You must have at least 80% original content, very few affiliate links, and at least 200 words that introduce your site on the front page. Yahoo spiders your site first, if they do not find at least 200 words, they leave and the human editor doesn't even look at your site. You are immediately rejected.

AltaVista

1. Provide good content.

2. Place the content toward the top of the page.

3. Choose relevant keywords.

4. Create your pages "newspaper" style.

   With AltaVista:

   • Link popularity is very important, but avoid link exchange programs and link farms.

   • Unusual words count more toward ranking.

   • Spam: anything that deceives the customer, such as pages with no content.

   • Submit as many URLs as you want.

   • Dynamic pages are invisible to AltaVista.

   • Avoid tables and frames.

   • Does not crawl pages with a "?" in the URL, but you can submit them individually.

FAST

• FAST currently has 600 million pages in its index.

• It takes less than two weeks for a full refresh of the index.

• FAST cleans out their black list of "spammers" periodically and starts over.

Inktomi

• Pay inclusion program & non-profit’s program.

• Crawl framesets but not all pages in CSS.

• Flash, PDF, and streaming media are not indexed.

• As the index refreshes, sites that are on the "border line" will drop in and out of ranking.

• Sites submitted through the free Add URL are less trusted than sites found by the crawler.

• Indexes the meta-tags and full text of the submitted web page.  If the search word is on your website, your site will appear sorted according to relevance.  With search words appearing near the top of the page, in a headline or title, in meta-tags, or frequently, your site will be sorted higher in the search results.

Resources

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters

A comprehensive, easy to understand, and well organized discussion of how search engines work and strategies on improving site ranking. Includes commonsense design approaches that can improve a page's ranking, information on TITLE, ALT and META tag usage, and details of specific search engines. Reading and understanding this document alone provides an excellent grounding for developing a search engine strategy.

http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm

An overview of search engine technology and tips on how to get your website into search engines and directories.

http://spider-food.net/submission-guide.html

A listing of major search engines and directories with links to the exact points where you need to submit. Very useful to bookmark. Listing of secondary engines, with submit page links, to consider submitting to.

http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

A guide to site ranking with an emphasis on putting the site ranking strategies which work for your competitors to work for you. Tools, suggestions and links for identifying keywords. Tips on specific search engines. 

http://www.123promote.com/workbook/plan3.htm

An outdated but still useful whitepaper on Google's search engine technology.

http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

An updated and useful description on Google technology.

http://www.google.com/technology/

Specific HTML coding tips to improve odds of a favorable ranking.

http://websearch.about.com/internet/websearch/library/weekly/aa040400a.htm
http://websearch.about.com/internet/websearch/library/weekly/aa112798.htm
http://websearch.about.com/internet/websearch/msubmenu2.htm 

Three good sites from About.com on search engine submission.

http://www.searchenginecolossus.com
http://www.search.com
http://all4one.searchallinone.com
http://www.searchability.com

Four sites listing search engines in the US and around the world. There are a bunch of them.

Roget's Internet Thesaurus: http://www.thesaurus.com/
Phrase Finder: http://www.shu.ac.uk/web-admin/phrases/

Visit GoTo's Search Term Suggestion List
http://inventory.goto.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml

By utilizing their extensive database of actual keywords that people are searching for, WordTracker.com allows you to work through your choices to see which will bring you
the most traffic.

http://www.kaleidoscope-dts.com/secrets.html

http://search-engine-maintenance.com/search-engine-tips-022101.htm#1

An excellent link popularity checker from MarketLeap

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

 
This document is copyright Green Apple, Inc, 1995-2007.  Permission is granted for the free distribution of it provided that its contents, including this notice, are not in any way altered. Green Apple disclaims all responsibility of fitness and suitability of this document. User is responsible for any software they download or install. It is incumbent upon User to read and obey copyright and licensing notices of all the software they use.
 

Home / Access / Development / Support / Hosting / Local Links / Computers
 Contact Us / Green Apple News / Jobs / Site Map / Link To Us / Policy

Lancaster-Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce, 2000 Small Business of the Year
www.greenapple.com · tel. (740) 653-9890 · toll free. (866) 653-9890
Copyright © 1995 - 2007, Green Apple, Inc.