General tips for improving
your search engine positioning
Use this tips first when
preparing your web site for search engines.
Provide text on your homepage
Providing "useful" text on your homepage is the most important
action to ensure proper indexing by search engines. Search engines
index the text read from the various home pages the engines
visit. If a page lacks descriptive text, then there is little chance that
page will come up in the results of a search engine query. The text should
be in HTML format as text in graphics can not be read by the search
engines. Some search engines
will catalog ALT text (text seen before an image loads) and text in comment and meta tags.
Choose keywords
carefully
Focus on the two or three keywords that you
think are most crucial to your site, then ensure those words are both in
your title and mentioned early on your web page. Generally, most people will
already have those words present on their pages but may not also have them
in page titles.
More keywords
Keep in mind that the keywords you consider
crucial may not be exactly what users enter. The lack of success with some
search engines does not mean that the site isn't being found. Many people
find the site by entering more words. For example, if you had a web site
centered on "cricket", others might go to a search engine
and enter words such as "cricket statistics" or "cricket
players." The addition of just one extra word can suddenly make a
site appear more relevant, and it can be impossible to anticipate what that
word will be. The best bet is to focus on your chosen keywords but to also
have a complete
description. These keywords should be in the text of your site and in the
Meta tags. You can also use these same keywords when you submit your own
site to search engines. Do not use to many keywords in the keyword
meta tag as some search engines determines the relevancy of a keyword by dividing
the keyword by the total number of keywords. (E.g. if you have 20
keywords the relevancy of one of them will be 5%. The relevancy will
be 20% if you have 5 keywords etc.)
Provide links to pages
within your web site
If there are no links to inside pages from the
home page, it seems that some search engines will not fully catalog a site.
Unfortunately, the most descriptive, relevant pages that are often inside
pages rather than the home page. You can also try sending search engines
directly to your lower levels, if they don't ordinarily go there. If
your site has a site map with links to all pages on your web site,
submission of this page should have a high priority on your submission list.
Frames and search engine
indexing
If your web site uses frames, special attention to "search engine"
friendliness should be given. Some search engines will only index
information in the <NO FRAMES> tag on your home page if you use
frames. Include enough information in this tag to ensure that search
engines will index your site. You can even provide internal links to
your other web pages in the <NO FRAMES> tag. Be sure to include
at least a link to your home page on each and every page. Should a
visitor enters via a search engine and can find no links on the page he
visits you are sure to lose the visitor.
Title of each page
Some search engines give high priority to the title of each page. Be
sure to have the title as the first line after the <header> tag.
Titles should typically be between 5 to 10 words long. The following
example is the title of this page:
The important Meta
Tag
Meta tags will help you control your site's
description in engines that support them. They will NOT guarantee that your
site appears first. Adding some meta description code is not a magic bullet
that cures your site of dismal rankings, but you should still do it.
<meta name="description"
content="Internet Web Draughting provide search engine positioning as
well as web design and hosting of your web presence. Contact us for
professional service.">
<meta name="keywords"
content=
"web design,web hosting,search engine submissions,Internet,web
maintenance,updating">
Be sure to use the correct spelling of the
keywords together with commonly misspelled keywords to ensure you are listed,
in cases where searches misspell the keyword. Double check on the
spelling of "description" and "keywords" in your meta
tags. I have noticed several web pages where they are misspelled!
Submit your URL to the
prominent international search engines
After you have done all the right things
with text, keywords, Meta tags, etc. submit yourself to the following search
engines. It is believed that up to 90% of all visits come from these most prominent
search engines.
Web Site Popularity
Some of the most prominent search engines determines the number of sites
linking to you. The idea is that the more web sites link to a
particular web site, the more popular and better the information on the site
is perceived. The following methods can be used to increase and
monitor your site's "popularity"
-
Try the Link Exchange
If you're really adventurous, join the
"Link Exchange", a free
banner exchange program linking sites all over the world. They have some
quirky rules, and it can take a lot of energy, but the results are worth it!
-
Exchange links with
other web sites
Swap links with other sites! First
place a number of related links on your site, then contact those sites
asking for a reciprocal link. You'd be surprised how many people are willing
to do this. If they're really cooperative ask if you can include a graphic
or banner with the link!
-
Monitor with LinkPopularity.com
This free service indicates which sites link to your site. They
also send free email monthly reports on your site's performance.
(Tip: Enter similar sites than yours or your opposition and see who link
to them. You can then email these sites with a request to exchange
links with them.)
Be persistent - do not
expect results right away
Once you are in an engine, check your site at
least once a week. Strange things happen. Pages disappear from catalogs.
Links go screwy. Watch for trouble, and resubmit if you spot it. The
following two services provide information on your site's ranking with the
most prominent search engines for free:
-
AgentWebRanking
AgentWebRanking searches Yahoo, AltaVista and more, looking for
keywords that describe your site. The results show you how well
your site is positioned with each search engine.
-
SERanker
SERanker enables you to choose which search engines you want
to check and what keywords to use. Results give you an overall
comment on your web site's performance.
Re-submit regularly -
keep to it
Many engines are now visiting sites on a
schedule developed from site changes. The engines have grown smart enough to
realize some sites only change content once or twice a year, so they don't
visit regularly. Re-submitting every month or two will ensure that your
site's content is kept current. Some of the smaller search engines and
indexes have a limit on the number of information in their index. The
most recent submissions are at the top while the "oldest"
submissions fall off the bottom of the list. To ensure high link
popularity, regular submissions should be done.
Exercise patience and
stick to the task
Some search engines take weeks or months
before they update their catalogs. They may be "crawling" each
night, but those new findings aren't available to the public until the
catalogs are updated. The amount of information on the Internet is
increasing exponentially and search engines have a difficult time to keep up
to the growth in web pages. The following table depicts typical times
various search engines take to index web sites after submission:
| Search Engine |
Average Time to Index |
| AltaVista |
1 to 2 weeks |
| Direct Hit |
Several weeks |
| Excite |
10 to 12 weeks |
| Fast/All the Web |
1 to 2 weeks |
| Google |
1 to 3 weeks |
| Yahoo Web Pages |
1 to 3 weeks |
| HotBot |
2 days to 2 weeks |
| Inktomi |
2 days to 2 weeks |
| AOL |
2 days to 2 weeks |
| Goto |
2 days to 2 weeks |
| MSN |
2 days to 2 weeks |
| InfoSeek |
8 to 10 weeks |
| Go Network |
8 to 10 weeks |
| Lycos |
2 to 4 weeks |
| WebCrawler |
3 to 6 months (At present no new submissions are
indexed) |
Spamming or undermining
the "system" through abuse will not help your case
Trying to obtain an unfair advantage by
spamming the search engines with keywords not related to your site of
repeating keywords to frequently doesn't seem to work
with every search engine. Ethically, the content of most web pages ought to
be enough for search engines to determine relevancy without webmasters
having to resort to repeating keywords for no reason other than to try and
"beat" other web pages. The stakes will simply keep rising, and
users will also begin to hate sites that undertake these measures. Efforts
would be better spent on networking, link exchanges and alternative forms of
publicity.
Do not use a text colour on a page with the same colour as the background of the
page in order to hide text to the human eye. The "more advanced" search engines test for this and may
penalise you severely.
Obtain and study statistics
of visits to your web site
Most hosting companies provide statistics on visits to your web site as an
added service. This is very important as it tell you the actual pages
visited, countries of visitors, search engine related visits and much
more. Enquire at your hosting company about this service.
Alternatively use LiveStat
which is a free service that monitors traffic. Page impressions are
counted and can even distinguish between human visitors and search engine
traffic. It also measures pages delivered out of browser cache or form
an ISP or corporate proxy servers.
Submissions to Directories
The utmost care should be exercised when submitting your web site to
directories as they usually only allow one submission. This submission
is reviewed by someone who decide if the site is complete (no "under
construction" text allowed) and if the web site is generally of good
quality. The person also make sure that the web site is listed in the
correct category. Read and adhere to the "rules" for
submitting to these directories. (No doorway pages are created and
submitted to directories.)
If your follow
these general tips for preparing your web site for top search engine
positioning your should obtain good results. The next level would be
to study and implement the specialised tips
for the various search engines and submit doorway pages to each of
them.
We have various search engine
positioning service packages to help you to obtain even better
results. |
