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Search Engine Tips

The purpose of this document is to  provide you with background information on search engine technology and some  tips on how to get your Web site to appear on the result pages of search engines  and directories. We are by no means promising any miracles. However, this  information will help you better understand search engines and directories and  will hopefully serve to put you in a better position than you currently are in  now.


  • What is a search  engine?
  • How do search engines differ from  directories, announcement sites, and guides on the Web?
  • General Tips for Getting Listed in  Search Engines
  • Indexing Characteristics Specific To  Individual Search Engines
  • How do I optimize my announcement with  a directory?
  • When will I need to inform search  engines and directories of updates to my Web pages?
  • "Non-Netiquette"  Things
  • How else can I promote my site?
What is a search engine? 
  
Search engines utilize indexing  software agents often called robots or spiders. These agents are programmed to  constantly "crawl" the Web in search of new or updated pages. They will  essentially go from URL to URL until they have visited every Web site on the  Internet.  

When visiting a Web site, an agent will  record the full text of every page (home and sub-pages) within the site. It will  then continue on to visit all external links. Following these external links is  how search engines are able to find your site regardless of whether or not you  register your URL with them. Submitting your URL, however, does speed up the  process. It notifies an agent to visit and index your site instead of waiting  for it to eventually locate you through one of your external links.  

Robots will then revisit your site  periodically to refresh the recorded information. The revisiting of links is the  reason why some search engines don't require you to inform them of dead links.  Eventually, their robot would try unsuccessfully to update the information on a  dead link and realize it no longer exists.
 
Finally, an easy way to tell whether a  Web index is a search engine as opposed to another type of directory is by the  information it requires when adding your URL. A true search engine will only  need the Web address. The indexing agent takes care of the rest. 
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How do search engines differ from directories,  announcement sites, and guides on the Web? 

Directories: 
The main difference between a search  engine and a general directory is that a directory will not list your URL if you  do not register it with them. They do not make use of indexing software agents  and so have no way of knowing it's out there. As a result, their registration  form will be considerably longer than just your URL. Directories are usually  subdivided into categories and you have to submit your URL under the most  appropriate heading. 

Announcement Site:
 
The explosion of sites being added  daily to the Web has created a need for announcement sites that track all of the  new sites that join the Internet. Announcement sites are not only useful for  Webmasters and marketers to kick-off
their online promotion campaign, but also  for users to keep current on what's happening with the WWW. Depending on the  announcement site, different Internet documents can be announced -- new web  pages, new articles as well as new resources. The time period policy also  differs from announcement site to announcement site, but all "announcements" are  posted for a temporary period of time. Once removed from the What's New section,  most announcement sites archive these pages so users can continue to access  them. 

Guides & Cool  Sites:
 
Guides are quickly becoming an  important source for finding interesting and useful
sites on the Web. In  general, Guides review and rate only a small percentage of
all sites submitted.  Therefore, make sure your site is "rate-worthy" before
posting. Most of the  guides allow reviewed sites to use their special icons as
a sign of quality.  Cool sites usually select one new Web site every day.
Getting selected as a cool  site will attract high traffic, but that traffic
will usually only be  experienced for a temporary period of time. 
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General Tips for Getting Listed in Search
  Engines:




 
Each
search engine looks at different  elements of your page, therefore we highly
recommend implementing as many of  these tips as possible. 

1.
Use keywords in the <TITLE> of  your document
making it as descriptive as
possible.  When visiting your site, an agent will go first to the <TITLE>
tag. For  clarification purposes, the <TITLE> tag is what a browser will
display in  its title bar and is not simply the first line of HTML that shows up
on your  page. (Although your first words of introductory text should be
descriptive as  well). Search engines will display the text located between the
<TITLE>  tags when your web page is listed in a search. By making your
<TITLE>  descriptive, you'll be better off than those who only have
keywords within the  text of their page. It will also be helpful when people
bookmark your web site.  If a more descriptive name appears in a person's
hotlist, it will be easier to  find your site at a later date. 
For
example, instead of using < TITLE> Suncorp </TITLE> as the title of
Suncorp's home page, < TITLE> Suncorp: Tanning Supplier </TITLE>
would be much more  descriptive. It would also place greater emphasis or
relevancy on "Tanning  Supplier" when calculating keywords.


2. Descriptive Page Text Search engines assign greater
  relevancy to text located at the top of a page than to text located in the
  middle or at the bottom of the page. The search engines assume that web page
  authors will present their most important information first. If your page has a
  main graphic at the top, you should place some descriptive text either
  underneath or beside the image. The search engines will index this text and
  assign it a high level of relevancy.




3.
Use <META> tags
which
allow you to provide even more  detail about your Web pages and thereby gain
greater control over how your pages  are indexed. Not all search engines make
use of <META> tags, but adding  these tags to your pages will make them
more accessible to the search engines  that do. 

<META>
tag codes are inserted  within the <HEAD>--- --- <HEAD> tag. The
basic syntax  is: 
<META
name="description" content="a  health and fitness center located in
Atlanta">


This
will control what appears as the  summary of your Web page and will be displayed
after the title of your document  in the index listing. The content of the
description should clearly convey what  one can expect to find when linking to
your site. 
<META
name="keywords"  content="running, weight control, nutrition, aerobics,
cholesterol,  Georgia">

 
This
will allow you to provide extra  information about your page to the search
engines without it being visible to  the reader. While search engines do take
these keywords into account when  indexing your page, they are still going to
index the entire contents of your  page as many sites do not include
<META> tags. Since this is the case,  there is no need to be redundant.
Include keywords that will not necessarily be  derived when a robot visits your
site. In other words, "health" and "fitness"  need not be included in your list
of keywords as it is part of your < TITLE>. Robots index both the
description and keyword <META> tag  contents as searchable words. Hence,
your site will come up in a search if  someone typed in "nutrition" or "health
center" from your description. One way  to maximize the usefulness of keywords
is to incorporate singular and plural  cases of words as well as active and
passive verbs. For example, diet, diets,  and dieting will yield similar but
somewhat varying results in a search. Since  you're able through <META>
tags, why not guarantee you come up on all of  them. 

Do
not, however, excessively repeat  keywords in a keyword <META> tag as
search engines may penalize you for  this. At present, InfoSeek and Lycos are
two such examples and others may adopt  similar policies in the future. The
penalty will most likely be the spider  disregarding the <META> tag and
extracting keywords from the content of  your page- as is usually the case.
However, some Submit It! users have reported  being dropped from a search
engine's database and felt keyword repetition played  a role in the removal of
their listing. 
Who
should definitely make use of < META> tags?




  • Sites using Netscape frames:
    The main HTML file contains the
    < FRAMESET> tags, but fails to provide robots with any real useful
      information for selecting a Web site's abstract. Therefore you should include a
      description summarizing the contents of the frames on your page with
    < META> tags. 

  • Sites using Javascript at the top of their page:


  • If JavaScript code  makes up the first several hundred characters on
    your page, you should use < META> tags to provide a description for your
    page. An indexing agent's  search logic is programmed to place more emphasis on
    the text located at the top  of your page than the content it combs through
    towards the bottom.

4. Use ALT tags especially if your site contains multiple
  photos or graphic-image maps at the top of your home page. Some search engines
  will take into account the text within an ALT tag when creating your site's
  description and keywords. In addition, you will be greatly appreciated by all
  people who visit your site with their Auto Load Images option turned off or by
  those who prefer to use character browsers.



 
ALT tags are placed after an image file
  and generally look like the following: 
<img
src="/images/submits.gif"  alt="Submit It! : Web site marketing services and
tools." >



5. If your site utilizes frames





 
, you should be aware that  search engines treat frames as if they are links
within your main page. As a  result the engines will review and index your main
page and, at a later date,  return to index each individual frame just as it
will return to index all other  internal links within your web site. Therefore,
in order to have your main page  (typically titled index.htm or default.htm)
indexed accurately and efficiently,  we recommend that you add some descriptive
text between the <noframes> and < /noframes> tags of the HTML source
coding of your main page. The noframes  tags are usually placed below your frame
set information. The frame set  information is designated by <frameset>
and </frameset>. This text  should include your most important keywords
and keyword phrases. Adding this  text will provide the search engines with
content from which to derive keywords  for indexing. After this change has been
made to your Web site, the page itself  will appear exactly the same to anyone
using a browser that supports frames.  However, users of browsers that do not
support frames (i.e. Netscape 1.0 or  lower) will now be able to successfully
view your home page.





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Indexing Characteristics Specific To
Individual  Search Engines:



Excite



At the present time, Excite does not make use of tags. Since
  keywords and summaries are automatically generated by Excite, you have less
  control over their creation. However, there are still a few things you can do.
  Excite's software looks for common words or themes within a page. It then
  selects sentences for the summary that either contain these words or convey the
  overall theme. The words within these sentences are also used as keywords for
  which the site can be searched.



 

  1. Especially at the beginning of your page, be as concise as possible and
      limit non-descriptive sentences. If the Excite robot comes across a number of
      ambiguous phrases, it will have to look deeper and deeper into your site to
      determine its theme and site summary. Along the same line, too little text will
      also force the robot to travel further into the site for more information in
      order to establish a theme.
  2. Excite's indexing software places preference on complete, punctuated
      sentences. If you have content, such as a quote, at the top of your page that
      you do not want Excite to include in your site summary, do not display it as a
      complete sentence. This will lessen the chance that the quote will be included,
      but will not guarantee its exclusion.

HotBot / Inktomi

  1. HotBot supports both the keywords and description <META> tags.
  2. If you strongly believe that your site was not ranked as high as you thought
      it deserved in a search query, HotBot allows you to send them an email to
      bugs@hotbot.com. Be sure to include the URL of the search page.

InfoSeek

  1. InfoSeek supports both the keywords and description <META> tags. Your
      description can include up to 200 characters of text and the keywords can
      include up to 1000 characters of text. Do not repeat versions of a keyword more
      than seven times. If you do, InfoSeek will disregard the entire keyword list.
  2. If you do not make use of the description <META> tag, InfoSeek's agent
      will simply insert the first 200 characters after the <BODY> tag as the
      web page description. Hence, if your Web document does not contain <META>
      tags, at least try to make your first 200 words accurately describe your Web
      site.
  3. InfoSeek also indexes the ALT attribute in the <IMG> tag. If the
      majority of your home page consists of graphics, you can describe your page
    with  the ALT attribute.

The syntax for an <IMG> tag code is:



 
<IMG SRC="/images/clinton.gif"
  ALT="picture of President Clinton">



InfoSeek Ultra
InfoSeek Ultra will make use of <META> tags allowing you
to  control the description that appears in a search result as well as guide its
web  indexing in the selection of your site's keywords. If you do not make use
of < META> tags, Ultra will simply use the first few words it comes across
as  your Web site summary.



  Lycos


Lycos creates Web site titles and descriptions from the text of
  your Web page. Lycos' search agent selects a portion of the site that well
  represents its theme. It then displays this section as the site's description.
The keywords are also chosen via artificial intelligence by
Lycos'  spider. With this in mind, do not open your page with an image map. If
you do,  Lycos will not be able to take an abstract for your document.



 
WebCrawler




WebCrawler relies on the statement within the <TITLE> tag
to  use for the name of your page. While other search engines will derive a
summary  from the <BODY> text of the document, Web Crawler will default to
the URL  if you fail to include a title.



  In conclusion, do not make it your goal
  to appear in the top ten list of every search engine. This would not only be a
  very difficult task, but would most likely end in disappointment. You are
  virtually guaranteed to have varying success rates with different search
engines  due to the collection of variables that play a role in every search
result.  These variables include size of database, method used for determining
relevancy,  policy on spamming, use of <META> tags and more. Hence,
optimize your  listings by capitalizing on the indexing criteria shared by
search engines. If  you have a favorite or preferred search engine that you feel
strongly about  being yielded as high as possible in a search, customize your
Web pages  accordingly. Just keep in mind that this might lessen your perceived
relevancy  on another.
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Top]







How do I optimize my registration with a
  directory?
Since directories are hierarchical databases organized by
  subject, subject category selection would logically be the most critical aspect
  of linking your site to a directory. Give some thought to which category(s)
your  URL should be placed as this location will ensure the right people (those
  interested in your site) will be visiting your link. URL registrations can
  quickly become complex process when every directory contains a different
  sub-categorization scheme.



   There unfortunately is no formula or
  exact method for correctly placing one's site into a subject-oriented guide.
  However, here are a few tips: 

  1. Do not assume a category (i.e. Entertainment) means the same thing on every
      directory.
  2. Take the time to drill down within the directory until you come to the
      subcategory most appropriate for your site. If you find many organizations
      similar to your own listed, you're probably in the right place.
  3. Do not choose a less fitting category because it's either alphabetically
      desirable or doesn't contain many other links. If it is not appropriate, there
      is no reason to believe anyone clicking that category would be interested in
      visiting your site.
  4. If you cannot find an appropriate category, do not hesitate to suggest a new
      one. This advice even applies to Yahoo!! Do you think the Yahoo! staff thought
      of all 22,000 headings all by themselves?

Yahoo: Since Yahoo! is well ... Yahoo!, it will be
  discussed separately from the hundreds of other directories included in the
  Submit It! Service. It actually is unique from all other directories in that
you  could be listed on Yahoo! without having submitted your URL. They make use
of a  robot that searches for new sites at certain Internet locations (i.e.
  announcement sites, etc.). Despite Yahoo!'s implementation of this search
robot,  mostly all of their new additions still come via their "Add URL" form.




  Your Yahoo Submission Made  Easy
 
For
Internet users, Yahoo! is one of  the more notoriously difficult submission
forms to successfully complete. In  actuality, the Yahoo! submission form is far
from a mind-numbing experince. We  have outlined the necessary steps below. If
you follow them, it will not only  simplify the process for you, but also enable
you to gain the greatest advantage  possible through your submission.
 
1.
Find your Yahoo  category.
From Yahoo's
home page, drill down and  locate up to 2 Yahoo categories that best describe
your Web site. A good  indicator that you have found an appropriate sub-category
is when you scroll  down and see sites already listed that are similar to your
own, or, even more  so, find a direct competitor! If after searching through a
number of Yahoo  categories, you still are not sure where to place your site,
try searching by a  keyword you would want your site to be found under. Existing
Yahoo categories  will be displayed with the search results. 

TIP: Yahoo
requires commercial  sites to be placed within a Business and Economy
subcategory - either under  Companies or Products and Services. Personal Home
pages must go in the  Entertainment/People category. If your site is regionally
specific, add it to  the appropriate subcategory under the Regional heading
category. 
TIP: If
suggesting more than one  category, press the ADD URL icon when on the category
of your first choice. Then  enter the string of the second category into the
Additional Categories field. To  avoid making a typo to a long string, copy the
URL located within the Address or  Location field of your browser. To do this,
highlight the text after  http://www.yahoo.com/ with your mousse. Right mousse
click and release the mouse  over 'copy'.
For
example:
Business_and_Economy/Companies/Music/
  CDs__Records__and_Tapes/Online_Shopping/ 
2.
Click the Add URL icon at the top  of the screen.
After finding
the category you  wish your site to be placed within, click the Add URL icon at
the top of the  screen. This will take you to the Yahoo submission form with the
Category fields  already pre-filled. 
3.
Fill out the ADD URL  Form
Two
particularly important fields are  the Title and Comments fields. Yahoo does not
allow you to suggest keywords in  their submission form. Instead, it will use
both the Title and Comments fields  to derive search words for your site.
Therefore, think carefully about what  keywords you want Yahoo to list you under
and construct your Title and Comments  fields around them. Do not, however, just
submit keywords separated by commas.  Enter complete, coherent
phrases/sentences. 
Example
of a poorly constructed  title:
Brian's Music
Store 
Example
of an optimized  title:
Brian's Music Store, CD's for
  sale 
TIP: Your title
should not exceed  50 characters (including spacing). 

Example
of a poorly constructed  Comment:
Click to this
page to listen to a wide  variety of music sure to fit your interest.
 
Example
of an optimized  Comment:
Pop, Rock, New Age and
Alternative  CD's. Many artists, your favorite music, CD's on sale. 
TIP: Your comment
should not exceed  20 words or 200 characters (including spacing). 
Yahoo
has employees visit the URL of  submissions to verify that the category you
selected is appropriate and that the  title and comments are accurate. As a
result, do not exaggerate what is located  on your site. In the end, your site
will simply not get listed. 
4.
Click the Submit  button.
Once you have
completed the form, click  the Submit button to send your Web site information
to Yahoo. If the form has  been filled out properly, Yahoo will display a screen
that thanks you for the  submission. If there is an error in the submission
form, Yahoo will display a  screen informing you that the submission has failed
and, depending on the error,  tells you why the submission failed. In the case
of a failure, press the Back  key on your browser, make the necessary changes
and resubmit. 
5.
Check your  listing
Yahoo states that it should
take two  weeks for your site to be listed. They recommend you do a search for
your URL.  If your site is not listed, then resubmit your entry using the Add
URL function  in Yahoo. For more information, check out Where's My
Site

on  Yahoo. 
[Back to
Top]







When will I need to inform search engines
and  directories of updates to my Web pages?




  Here are some general rules and
  indicators for knowing when you need to make updates to your listings. For more
  detailed information on the process involved in making updates to each
  directory, consult the Submission Hints and Tips accessible within the Submit
  It! Gold and Pro versions. 
For search
  engines: Make updates to listing:
 

  • If your URL changes, you will need to resubmit. Some search engines have
      Dead Link forms for you to fill out. Those that do not will drop the old URL
      from its records the next time it tries to visit your site at the old address
      and is unable to find it.
  • If the content of your site changes so extensively that the abstract no
      longer adequately describes your site. These changes, however, will be taken
      into account when the indexing agent next visits your site to refresh its
      information. Resubmitting will hasten this process.

For directories: Make updates to listing:

  • If your Web site address (URL), description, or category classification
      changes, you will need to inform the webmaster of that directory.
  • If your category classification has changed and you are now inaccurately
      located within the directory's index.

Do not make updates to listing:

  • If there has been minor changes made within the site which do not alter the
      site's description. If the content or purpose of the site remains the same, you
      are not misleading anyone who chooses to visit your site based on the original
      description.




[Back to
Top]







"Non-Netiquette" Things:



  There are several "tricky" things you
  can do to try to get your URL listed higher or more times on a search engine
  results page. We are listing these alternatives, but are in no way recommending
  them as these Web site promotion methods may be viewed as "cheating" by some
  members of the Internet community. In fact, some of the search engines are
  starting to penalize people that use these tricks. The reason why we list these
  tricks is to help you understand why some sites always show up multiple times
or  always at the top. 

  • Placing mass amounts of hidden keywords <!software manufacturer, software
      manufacturer,...> at the bottom of your document. Search engines calculate
      keywords by how many times they appear on a page. It is important to be aware
      that search engines may penalize you for excessively repeating keywords. At
      present, InfoSeek and Lycos are two examples and others may adopt similar
      policies in the future.
  • Changing your name to A1 Enterprises or !Rob's Restaurant in order to appear
      at the top. Our suggestion is that you pick something descriptive instead. You
      might appear at the top by changing your name, but be skipped over because the
      new one does not evoke a professional or trustworthy company image.
  • Changing your <TITLE> regularly so when robots revisit your site to
      refresh their information, they will interpret the new title to mean the
      existence of a new site. The result being your page will be listed more than
      once in a search.



How else can I promote my site?

  • For help with your web site marketing campaign try our


  • Submit
    It! services.

  • For additional information on search engine indexing, check out
      Internet.com's

  • Search Engine
      Watch

    written by Danny Sullivan.




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