Free versus Paid International Engine Exposure

Dyanna Culp, 2004

Global Webmaster pockets are being milked dry by paid inclusion and ppc programs. Everyone wants our money, both the big international and the small local engines. $600 for engine inclusion here, $15 there, could add up to multi- thousands of dollars.  Just a few short glorious years ago, if you had to pay at all it was a one time fee, now it’s annually. Read the small print in the submission forms. Paid inclusion does not “guarantee” a site’s inclusion or any priority ranking- it just guarantees you might get spidered.

Almost everything written about engine relationships, submissions, optimization and marketing has changed. Not just once, but multiple times over the past year. Following advice from Google or Yahoo articles that were up to date in December 2003 would now cause you nothing but grief. Engine relationships and spider techniques are in a constant state of flux. Remember that what is true today, may not be tomorrow. Keeping up with it all is a very daunting task for a busy webmaster and is keeping all of us Internet marketing consultants busier than ever.

The web is truly achieving a degree of global homogeneity, at least in the search engine markets. There are no longer any major differences between U.S. and European Internet Marketing. Thousands of small local engines still exist worldwide, but no matter which country you choose to study; Google, Yahoo and MSN are the 3 top international players with the majority of the search market. With all eyes on the burgeoning Asian market, local Chinese and Japanese engines are battling Google and Yahoo takeovers.

Anywhere the web is taking off, and money stands to be made, engines and portals are demanding money. This is a problem worldwide, in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. You can spend thousands on paid inclusion and still see no traffic rolling in. You can pay for inclusion in MSN, but may rank # 572. Yahoo has dropped its flat fee inclusion program, now you pay for inclusion and pay per click. And Google does not have a paid inclusion program at all.

Running PPC ads for high demand search terms can run into hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per month. Many frustrated webmasters see PPC ads as their only option for online visibility. PPC ads are available from all three big players and have distribution networks across the majority of local country engines. And yes, they will bring in traffic, but at a considerable cost.

Worldwide PPC advertising

• Google: you can have .com AdWords distributed to your countries of choice worldwide. But a more successful strategy is to set up accounts with ads written specifically for the target country and if possible with a corresponding domain ending. Low traffic click through rates will result in Google dropping you from bidding on that term. Place the word in brackets, for ex. [slave] and you’ll get back in by only showing up for the specific term in brackets- not any word combination. Save money by using negative terms to get rid of non-relevant traffic. For instance you’re paying for the term massage, adding the terms horse and animal with a minus sign (-) in front of each will stop your ad from appearing for horse or animal massage.
• Overture: The top PPC provider with markets in the US, UK, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the list keeps growing. A separate account is required for each target country. I’ve found almost identical traffic from expensive #1 spots and cheaper #7 spots. Sometimes those top spots get excessive hits from jealous competition who figures you can afford the costs- since you’re bidding to be #1.
• Espotting: a European version of Overture of particular importance in the UK and Germany

There is still a free road into high rank positions on every engine worldwide. If you can get high in the big three global engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, and the top directory: DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project) – then you’ll have a free ride on almost every engine in the world.

The majority of online Europeans use Google and MSN. Google, MSN, Yahoo and other American based engines have a huge presence internationally. If you’re in Google US, then you’re in Google UK but may be outranked by a local domain ending such as .de for Germany or .co.uk for Great Britain. Google offers users in other countries the options of searching their database globally, by country or by language. They provide search services (or data feeds) to over 130 search engines, portals and corporate websites in more than thirty countries. Without a country specific domain you won’t appear in a country database selection even if you’re in the Google global base. Bill Gates has announced his goal of MSN toppling Google from their throne and Yahoo has rapidly been eating up Google market shares in the U.S. and Asia.

ENGINES, DIRECTORIES, PORTALS?

ENGINES

Engines use “spiders” to crawl the web, delving into (and listing) all of a site’s pages, reading all of the text and meta-tags. Google has the lion’s share of the global search market, followed closely by Yahoo (now only a few percentage points below in the U.S.) and MSN at #3 is determined to rise in the ranks. All three now have in-house proprietary spider technology and each prefers different types of spider food from your website.

GOOGLE

If at least 2 sites in the Google database link to you, Goggle will pick you up. Whole websites are devoted to Google and I personally am one of those suffering from periodic “GDS” or Google Distress Syndrome. Last year they had an estimated 75 % of the U.S. search market, but their search results suffered from the many spider changes began in November of 2003 and they’ve dropped to under 60% of the U.S. market. The slack is being picked up primarily by Yahoo and MSN. There is no paid submission, just PPC AdWords. Optimizing heavily for Google can hurt a webpage on other engines.

Since they are still the top global dog, I design the home page for Google and use sub-pages for yahoo and MSN optimization. Some search terms now trigger a quirk in Google’s spider. Using some terms 8x on the page may get you on page 1, but on a different word combination anything more than 2 may put you on page 28 of the search results.

A handy Google optimization tool. Pick one of your top search terms. Look at the page one results. Now view the Google cache for each page to analyze similarities and differences between how the search terms are used on the pages of the top 10 websites. Also, observe that Google results are using the meta- tag descriptions. Take notes on the top 10 meta-tag descriptions and keyword text use, and then go optimize your site.  This is putting it all very simply, but will put you on the right path.

Google’s attention to inbound text links. I have been able to manipulate rankings by changing the hyperlink descriptive text for links from my 2 websites to client websites. In some cases separating a desired search term worked better than keeping the words together, but in other cases the opposite is true. For instance to show up high for deep tissue massage we had to use inbound text links that said “deep tissue therapy massage” but to rank high for “massage therapy education” we had to have the words in that exact order for the inbound hyperlink.  You have to experiment- and keep detailed records. Once you’re in you start showing up on Google worldwide, for Free.

YAHOO

At first webmasters were delighted that yahoo was seriously challenging Google. A global market dominated by one engine is a nightmare for webmasters. But we should have paid attention to the warning signs. Yahoo needs to make big money to cover the billions spent in the past 18 months- buying up Overture, Income, Fast/ All the Web, Alta Vista (critical for its country specific – web page translations) and other companies around the globe. 

THE REALLY BAD NEWS---Yahoo’s new “Search Technology index” called the “Overture Site Match program” requires submission and PPC fees for a standard search engine listing. BUT relax, remember with some effort you can still get in for free. Yahoo spiders the web and sites already in their database will most likely stay- without charge.

The problem is getting new sites into Yahoo at no charge. Just like Google if you can get links from sites already in the Yahoo database, you will get picked up. Top choice for either is links from a high ranking site’s home page. Where you rank depends on how much the Yahoo spider likes you and your inbound links. If Google likes you, Yahoo probably won’t. You can design alternate homepages with come hither instructions especially for the Yahoo spider or you can optimize key sub-pages. If using these techniques, remember there must be inbound links to the sub-pages you want yahoo to rank.

MSN

MSNBot has been spidering the Web since April 2003. For years MSN displayed search results produced by combining data feeds from third parties such as Overture, Looksmart and Inktomi. Inktomi and Overture are now in the Yahoo stables and MSN has dropped its Looksmart partnership. Outsourcing PPC ads to a neutral Overture was once acceptable, but with Overture now belonging to Yahoo, look for MSN to initiate their own PPC program. Submitting through MSN bcentral is low cost, but again not necessary if you build good inbound links.

DIRECTORIES

Directories arrange sites into categories, like a giant web yellow pages. They typically list only a site’s homepage, are often edited by “live” humans and normally allow a listing in only one category.

Dmoz, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP), www.dmoz.org feeds data to Google, Yahoo, AOL, Netscape Search, Alta Vista, Lycos, Hotbot, and a multitude of other sites worldwide. ODP states that over 211 sites use their data. They do not accept any form of paid submissions nor do they spider. Volunteer editors exist for each category and review all submitted sites, so select your category and wording carefully. You can only make one category submission, for only one url- the homepage. Be sure to read the directions at http://dmoz.org/add.html before selecting a category and hitting submit URL. It is almost impossible to get a listing description and category changed.

Inktomi/ Fast were once the likes of dmoz, providing unbiased independent data feeds for global engines. That was before Yahoo bought them up this past year. Unlike a typical directory, you could never go to these sites and perform a search. For nominal fees they included your site in database feeds to the engines. That has all changed. Now you must pay both submission fees for each url and ppc – all of which goes into Yahoo’s pockets.

PORTALS

Portals are online communities that act as web jumping off points. They have some form of news feeds, search functions (typically from Google or another engine), may target specific demographics and in some cases, think “Yahoo”; they are also a search engine in their own right.

The NEW SEO Optimization for FREE listings

Source codes for each page must have an HTML page TITLE and full meta-tags. The page title is important for all engines, but especially Yahoo and MSN. Your top key terms should be as close as possible to the front of the title. For example Google results for virus software contains sites that have these exact words in the title and sites that do not- but have the words in the page text.

Meta-tag descriptions are critical for all engines, including Google. Google looks at these descriptions and in some cases displays them in search results. Yahoo results will list both the page title and the meta-tag description. With a hot term in the description you may only need the words a few in the page text to rank on page 1. Again, place priority terms closest to the front.

Meta-tag keywords are still read by most engines. Place top terms near the front. Group similar terms, for example: virus software, virus protection, viruses software. Separate search terms by a comma, space. Always add your company name and url as your last keywords.

Optimizing your page text: Google will kick in your teeth unless you frantically avoid using the words that actually describe your product. In some cases using a specific phrase more than 3-6 times can cause your ranking to plummet. Remember, Google popularity is high worldwide. For all other international engines, including yahoo and MSN- you need those extra terms that Google now hates. On any engine other than Google, pages will always rank that are rich in content and search terms, (without spamming), have good descriptive meta tags and an abundance of well written inbound text links.

Use text hyperlinks to all main webpages in the footer of every page. The engines love pages that have lots of links to them. What many people don’t realize is that links within the same site also count. Image links will not work and spiders cannot follow drop down menus. They must be descriptive text hyperlinks. For appearances sake they can be made in very small font and placed at the page footer. A site index is also critical. It should have a link on every page. The site index should link to every page in the website. Each with a descriptive text link. Using a site index can rapidly boost the number of webpages (in addition to the homepage) that you have in an engine.

Avoid link farms at all cost. A link from them to you won’t hurt, but your site will be penalized for linking to an identified Link Farm. Avoid using the word “link. “ Instead use resources, websites etc. On your “Resources” page include some text with each link to avoid engines seeing the page as a possible link farm.

You can have free inclusion in every major Engine, Directory and Portal worldwide. It does require that you be friendly with sites already in the big databases, preferably with high rankings. It requires research with tracking what optimization techniques work and don’t work for your particular hot search terms. It requires time and mental energy. But it can be done. If all else fails or you don’t care to venture down these unknown roads- a good Internet Marketing consultant can do the job for you. The cost would not be cheap, but much less expensive than a year of paid submissions and PPC fees.