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.
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.
[Back to Top]
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.
[Back to
Top]
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?
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.
[Back to
Top]
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.
HotBot / Inktomi
InfoSeek
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.
[Back to
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:
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:
For directories: Make updates to listing:
Do not make updates to listing:
[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.
How else can I promote my site?
[Back to
Top]
- 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?
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.
[Back to Top]
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.
[Back to
Top]
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.
[Back to
Top]
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.
- 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.
- 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
- HotBot supports both the keywords and description <META> tags.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
[Back to
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:
- Do not assume a category (i.e. Entertainment) means the same thing on every
directory.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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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.
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"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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