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How do people find me on the web?
Three ways:
1. know the name you seek and type it into a search engine
2. link with another site
3. use a keyword (or keyword phrase) in a search engine or directory.
What is indexing?
Spider-type search engines have huge databases called indexes. Once
you post or upload your pages to your website, eventually the search
engines will probably find you and index you. You may have to wait
three years for this or it may never happen. Indexing is your rank
among other like sites and the point is to earn a high ranking so
your site will come up in the first three pages of what may be a
vast listing.
Can I submit my pages myself?
Yes you can and you should. You can manually go to each engine and
fill out of form that they give you. This will speed the process
of indexing.
What is your web site’s rank
and why does rank matter?
There’s a myth that simply submitting your Web site to hundreds
of search engines will increase traffic to your site. Not true.
Submitting is just not enough. When someone queries a search engine
for a keyword related to your site’s products and services,
does your page appear in the top 30 matches -- or does your competition’s
show up instead?
If you are listed but not within the first two or three pages
of results, you lose, no matter how many engines you submitted your
site to. There are two obstacles to solving this problem. First,
you have to know the techniques that will move you into a top 30
position. Once you get there, you have to monitor your progress,
a crucial step that takes hours to do right. Many Webmasters claim
they spend upwards of 30 hours a week checking their search positions.
A top ten ranking in a major search engine such as Google, Yahoo!,
or Lycos often will generate more targeted traffic than an expensive
banner ad campaign. Nearly 90% of traffic to most Web sites comes
from search engines or links from other Web pages.
What are the primary types of search
engines and directories?
To understand the importance of improving your site’s rank,
it is necessary to understand the basic idea of how search engines
index and retrieve documents.
There are basically two types of search services:
1. Search engines. These use spiders to index Web
sites. You submit your page to a search engine and the spider will
index your entire site. Theoretically these spiders might find your
site by accident but odds are they will not unless you go to them
and tell them about your site by filing out their ‘submit”
page. Examples are HotBot, Alltheweb (FAST) and Google.
2. Directories. These rely on submissions from
users and Web site owners to populate their indexes. Most directories
add your site to their index but generally they link only to your
home page rather than indexing the full text of each page on your
site. Examples are Yahoo1!, AOL and Open Directory.
How do search engines operate?
A software spider is a program operated by a search engine that
surfs the web just like you do. As it visits each Web site, it records
(saves to its hard drive) all the words on each site and notes each
link to other sites. It then clocks on a link and off it goes to
read another Web site.
A spider is like an electronic librarian who cuts out the tables
of contents of each book in every library in the world, sorts them
into a gigantic master index and then builds an electronic bibliography
that stores information. Some software spiders can index over a
million documents a day.
For your marketing purposes, know that some search engines have
spiders that will visit your Web site. What the spider sees on your
site will determine how your site is listed in their index. As the
spider visits your site, it notes any links on your page to other
sites and records these links. Many engines will use the number
of links to your site as an indication of popularity and that will,
in turn, boost your ranking.
Search Engines Have Ranking Criteria
(Also Called Probable Relevance)
Spider-type search engines have vast databases (indexes) that Web
surfers query to find web sites. When a person browsing in a search
engine wants to find something, he will type in a keyword or keyword
phrase. For example, if you want to purchase a new home in the Boston
area, you might type “Boston real estate”. When you
type in a keyword or phrase, you are simply performing a database
query. To determine which document or Web site to return for a particular
keyword search, each search engine must have its own method of ranking
documents within its directory. Most use a scoring or probable relevance
method. Search engines change their scoring methods from time to
time, thereby keeping everyone on their toes and causing everyone
to start the game again.
The Right Keywords Are Critical
If you choose the wrong keywords, nothing else you do will be right.
Choose the right keywords and you can see traffic to your site skyrocket.
Brainstorm to choose the right keywords; combine them in phrases.
If you are a regional business, location becomes very important.
Use keyword power combinations.
What is the indexing procedure The
Cheshire Group Uses to build high rankings?
The Cheshire Group depends upon you to help select the right keywords.
We can guide and advise, but this task is the core of the project.
Once the keywords are decided, we prepare page titles, doorway
pages and META tags.
Page titles include the 1) site title which will be blue
and will be an activated link to the site and 2) the site summary
description. These are two very major items. It is these words which
a visitor will see when your site is indexed.
META tags are the special “tags” or codes hidden
in your pages that contain the keywords, title and description for
your web site.
Doorway pages are special pages which have been designed
to appeal to a specific search engine for a specific keyword or
keyword phrase. Since each search engine has its own special requirements
(such as body copy length, repetition rate for keywords, etc.) there
is no way that one home page can be optimized for all search engines.
These doorway pages are linked back to your home page. One doorway
page per keyword per search engine. So if you have 4 keywords and
there are 10 search engines that you want to be indexed on, there
must be 40 doorway pages on your site. With some search engines
we submit only the doorway pages, with others we submit only the
home page. In the latter case we must put hidden links from the
home page to the doorway pages.
When we are ready to submit pages to the search engines, there are
protocols to follow such as: we avoid submitting too many pages
at once, we avoid submitting the same page twice on the same day.
We follow up by checking your rank for many keywords in the ten
search engines.
After Submission, what?
Sitting back after submitting your pages is not sufficient to attain
and keep a higher indexing score. In one month you can drop down
in ranking significantly. So we propose that you submit your doorway
pages at least once a month and continue to critique each pages
relevance to the particular search engine. An ongoing program in
necessary to insure a high ranking on the key search engines.
Conclusion
By creating your web site, you have made an investment in your company.
If nobody knows your site is there, you are not using your investment
wisely. Web indexing ensures visibility for your company, and visibility,
in turn, brings in new business. You are faced with the choice of
maximizing your investment or of letting it languish.
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