| |
Wednesday, January 10, 2001 |
|
Search Engine Submission Tips
You have probably seen the ad on TV: 3 or 4 men and women sitting around a computer monitor, watching the results of their online store on opening day. At first, the orders trickle in. The participants look nervous. Then the orders come faster. And faster. Elation turns to glee. Then the floodgates open and the orders rush in. Glee turns to dispair as the group begins to ponder how they will support and fullfill that many orders. (Of course, the ad is for a shipping company who wants to help the fledgling company deliver the shipments to its waiting customers.)
For the past 3 or 4 years, the hype has been that anyone with a website and a good search engine listing will become an instant Internet success. A lot of my customers ask me, "How can I get my site listed in the top 10 search engines? And by the way, I don't just mean listed anywhere, I want to be listed in the top 20 for my keywords".
I usually answer their question with "Well, thats not as easy as you might think.". I always expect my customer to say something like "if you can't get me listed in the top 20, I will find someone who can." and hang up on me at this point. Strangely enough, no one has said that to me or hung up on me... yet. I think most people realize the enormity of what they are asking. At this point, the number of websites on the internet runs in the millions. Each of those websites would like to be listed in the top 20 listings of the top 10 search engines. Do the math: 200 postions (20 x 10) all being pursued by millions of website operators. As you can imagine, it takes a pretty good effort and a lot of luck to get listed in the top 20 of any one of the major search engines.
So how can you increase your odds of being ranked in the top 20 or of even being listed at all? Start by taking the time to make your site ready. Most search engines index websites using software programs called 'spiders' that are always crawling the Internet following hyperlinks and indexing the content they find. Since these spiders are computer programs, they are best at indexing text content. So make sure you put content on your site that the search engines can index. Articles and stories with lots of useful text is a good idea. So is using META tags that describe your site and its contents and image references that include descriptive 'alt' tags. If you are not sure what those things are, consult with your web developer or a good web development book.
People have tried a lot of tricks - like repeating several words over and over on a page that is the same color as the text - but the search engines have gotten a lot smarter over the years and those tricks don't work as well as they used to. But if you think about it, those tricks don't serve you or your customer very well. You may get listed, but if a customer visits your site after finding you in a search engine only to see nothing there that they can use, they will leave in a nanosecond. They probably won't even wait around to see your page completely load.
Do yourself and your visitors a favor. Build your site with good useful content, keep it updated on a regular basis, and pay attention to the details. After you have added value, submit your site to the search engines. Give them some meat to chew on. You might be surprised by the results. And if you need to deliver products to all of your new customers, there will be a shipping company ready to serve you waiting in the wings.
|
|
| January 2001 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
| |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
| 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
| 14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
| 21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
| 28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
|
Dec
Feb
|
