Improving Search Engine Rankings

Achieving a good ranking with the major search engines can be an art as much as a science. Search engine programmers are constantly changing the methods used to catalog sites in order to make your searches more relevant. The purpose of this article is to give its readers some hints on getting listed in the first place as well as reaching a higher position.

I would like to make a quick distinction on search engines in general. The first type is a true search engine in that it automatically "spiders" or "crawls" your site gathering the information to be indexed in its catalog. Examples of these would be Infoseek, Alta Vista or HotBot. The second type is not really a search engine (although it is referred to as such), but actually a directory. This is where a human would review the submitted site and determine if it should be listed. An example of this type would be Yahoo. Our main focus here is on the automatic true search engines.

Before you worry about how high your listing will appear, its important to get your site listed period. With the thousands of new pages appearing every day, there is no guarantee your site will get indexed. However, steps can be taken to improve your odds.

Whenever a search engine spider enters your site, it will attempt to visit all your pages by following links. It is possible for the spider to get side-tracked by images or banners leading to other sites. For this reason, I have found it is best to create a spider or crawler page to be used for submitting. This page is designed for search engines and would contain only a list of hyperlinks to every page you want indexed on your site. This makes it very easy for the spider to follow. By the way, if there are any pages you dont want listed you can include the following line between the tags on your page:

Now that your site has been crawled and will hopefully get indexed (put into the search engine database), heres a few hints to improve the listing. First of all, I think it is important to create a separate page for each search phrase that you want people to find you under. This will make each term appear more relevant to the engines. Secondly, it is vital to use the search term in the page title. This is what your visitor sees at the top of their browser and goes between the tags on your page as . Since many engines do support META tags, you will want to include your most relevant search phrase in this portion. The format is as follows:
These lines also go in the HEAD portion of the page.

In order to have your page appear more relevant, I suggest you place your search phrase as close to the top of the viewed page as possible especially as a heading. Use that phrase throughout the body copy, more so near the beginning if possible.

I think its a very good idea to keep your pages relatively short for two reasons. First, the ratio of the search phrase to the body copy will be higher, thereby increasing relevancy with regards to the search engines. Secondly, your visitors will find the page easier to read and will probably stay on your site longer. Most people dont like scrolling down long pages.

As far as actually submitting your site to the search engines, I suggest you do it manually. There are some good submission programs or services, but many fall short. Besides, the majority of your traffic will come from 8 or 10 major engines anyhow. It doesnt take that long doing it manually and if there is a problem, youll know it right away. I suggest submitting every two weeks or at least once a month. The links listed below are the ones I personally use.

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=addurl
http://www.excite.com/info/add_url>
http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp
http://www.go.com/AddUrl?&pg=SubmitUrl.html
http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html
http://magellan.excite.com/info/add_url/
http://search.aol.com/add.adp
http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html>
http://www.webcrawler.com/info/add_url/>
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

Some of the search engines will index you within two days, others take up to six weeks or possibly never. The key is to be patient and submit on a regular basis.

One should never rely entirely on the search engines for his or her sites traffic, but a good percentage will come via that route. By having your pages indexed with good relevant content, your visitors are more likely to discover your site initially and be inspired to return again.

About the author:

Barry Craft has helped thousands of entrepreneurs develop more income from their online businesses. He publishes "Cyber Marketing News" which provides the latest Internet marketing tips.

Barry Craft
barry@profitmatters.com.

URL
http://www.profitmatters.com/

barry@profitmatters.com.
http://www.profitmatters.com/