Understanding the Mysteries of Search Engines

- Dyanna Culp

Just use an easy “Submit to 5,000 Search Engines Program” and you’re set, right? Afraid not. All of the major search engines operate differently and have different “rules” for us to abide by. You want to run, not walk, from anyone offering to submit you to more than 50 search engines. Why? Those programs submit you to sites masquerading as search engines. They have huge unwieldy lists of all submitted sites and the only people who use them are Internet marketing fiends searching for emails to spam with their solicitations. Learning the search engine ropes requires skill, patience and some regular research.

Search Engines versus Banner Ads. In January 2001 the NPD Group, a research group specializing in consumer purchasing and behavior, conducted a study evaluating the impact of search engine listings versus banner ads to determine which was most effective. Search engine listings overwhelmingly outperformed banner ads. NPD found Consumers are five times more likely to visit a site and to purchase products after seeing search engine listings versus banners. So a successful web master must spend some time studying the engines instead of diverting large funds into banner ad placement.

HTML Meta tags strongly influence your search position and ranking in many top search engines. These tags include the meta- title, meta- description and infamous Meta keywords. The web site names and descriptions you see after performing an engine search often come from the meta title and meta description. Other engines rely strictly on the web page content itself and some utilize a combination approach- analyzing both the Meta tags and the page content. An important component of obtaining and maintaining a top ranking is development of the HTML Meta tags and evaluation of web page content BEFORE you begin any submissions.

Search engines keep the game challenging by frequently changing the “rules” by which they play. But there are some constants:

Exceeding the maximum allowed characters for html tags may result in either rejection for spamming or an engine acknowledging the tags only up to the acceptable character limit- meaning they won’t even read the tags that go beyond the limit. General rules of thumb: 60 characters for the title, 150 for the description and 874 for the keywords. When counting the characters you must include spaces and commas.
Excessive repetition of tag words is considered spamming and may result in spamming penalties or engine rejection.
Excessive submission of your web site to an engine can result in permanent banning from the engine. What is considered “excessive” varies by engine. Some allow only one submission ever (be careful with dmoz), some one per day; some allow three or more submissions per day- so you can submit site urls other than the home page. Many people make the mistake of only submitting the home page url. This is very important; much of your traffic arrives through “side doors’ instead of through the home page.
Keywords should be “grouped” in categories within the Meta tags and on the page text content. If you want visitors looking for web designers in Seattle then web design and Seattle should be placed together in both your tags and on the page content. The farther apart they are the less emphasis is placed on their association.
Keywords in the tags must be present in the accompanying web page text to avoid spamming penalties. In other words, you can’t have FREE in your tags and not have anything free in the actual web page content.
Search engines do not read text within images such as navigation buttons, logos and photos. In their opinion that text does not exist. For this reason web pages that are loaded in entirety as pictures should be avoided. This is becoming more of a problem as many young web designers build sites entirely in Flash or Java.
Search engines are leaning more and more to evaluations based on how many other web sites link to yours. It helps if the linking site is similar in subject matter. For instance if your site is on Gardening and all of the sites linking to you are about Harley motorcycles, the engines will not consider the links to be of much relevance. Some search engines, such as Lycos, will not list a submitted web site that has no other domains linking to it. This trend is growing.

The above features must be addressed before beginning on any Internet marketing campaign. Other strategies, such as reciprocal linking campaigns, should occur after the web site content and tags are in order. Search engines do not care about Flash or other fancy graphics. Expert construction of your web site content and Meta tags are essential components to successful visibility online!

Research your HTML Meta tags for current popular search terms relevant to your business. The on-line public may and may not be using the search terms that automatically come into your mind. For example, professionals in the Health Care industry rarely type in employment, as in R.N. or Physician employment. They overwhelming use the term “jobs” instead. A health care employment site focusing on the term employment in both content and tags would lose the majority of online job seekers for those fields. However, this preference of jobs over employment terminology does not apply to all other professional fields. A very useful online word research tool is Word Tracker at http://wordtracker.com

Develop Meta tag titles, descriptions and keywords for each major page within a web site, not just the home page. When you do a search on major engines such as Hotbot, Yahoo or Google many of your results link to a page “within” a web site, not to the home page. For instance many visitors to my site arrive at the main Computer Help url rather than through the home page menu. The Meta tags on my main computer page focus on computer and technology key terms. Development of tags and appropriate page content for all major pages within your site multiples the possible points of entry for visitors from search engines.

Evaluate web page content for search engine optimization. Keywords must be strategically placed throughout your web page content. Search engines give higher priority to terms found in titles, headings, bulleted items and bold text. If your web page title is an image, the engines will assume you have no title and begin reading the first line of available text. Reposition key terms and use some bold font.

Perform submissions to all major search engines. This should, whenever possible, include the submission of web site meta-title, description, and keywords. Place yourself in all appropriate categories when the search engines provide this option.

Resubmit your urls on a regular basis. The engines regularly discard submissions without processing them, probably just to irritate webmasters. By resubmitting you have a higher probability of having one of your submissions "take". It then takes from 2-8 weeks (this varies by search engine) for your submission to enter the system. Resubmit at two week intervals for the first three months (for the engines that allow this!). Then refresh your listings on a semi-annual basis. Sites with “old” submissions drop lower in the rankings and some engines give preference to newer submissions as determined by the last submission date.

There are now billions of web sites online. Your goal is to stand out from the masses. To reach this goal your web site must be strategically prepared for submission to search engine directories. For online success this preparation must receive as much care and planning as the design of the site itself. In future issues discover the top engines and their specific rules, reciprocal linking campaigns, and the value of underused online business directories.