Search engines

Why search engines are important
According to any market research study out there, you’ll find that about 90% of Internet surfers find sites for the first time through the search engines. Therefore, the first marketing strategy that you will want to focus on is the search engines.

However, in focusing on the search engines, you will not want to put aside all other marketing strategies. The search engines are important, but if you focus so much on your search engine rankings and forget about the other marketing strategies that you will be learning, you will be missing out on a lot of traffic and sales.

Different types of search engines

There are 4 main types of search engines out there:
Regular search engines
Directories
Hybrids
Pay-per-click search engines

In this article, we will focus on the first three types of search engines, and the pay-per-click search engines will be covered in the next marketing strategy. It is such an important marketing tactic that we’ve given it it’s own article.

Regular search engines
Search engines help people find information on the Internet. They maintain huge databases of web sites that users can find by typing in a keyword. These databases are compiled by programs are called "spiders." These programs "crawl" across the Internet or web by following links from site to site and then they index each site they visit. Search engines are tricky because each will use its own set of criteria to determine how they index the sites. For example, some search engines index each page in a website, while others index only the main page.

Also, the criteria each individual search engine uses to organize or rank web sites for its users vary. Some will list the results of a search according to which sites have the most links from other sites, called link popularity. Others concentrate more heavily on the summary information that is found in the Meta tags. There are actually quite a few other ways to do this and most search engines will use combination of criterion.

Directories
Directories are often confused with search engines, however they are much different in the way they work even though they appear to have similar results to Internet surfers. Instead of using spiders to crawl the web, directories, like Yahoo and Looksmart, have actual people review and determine the ranking of their sites. They have many more guidelines you must follow to be found in their directories as well. That is why directories' indexes tend to contain a smaller number of high-quality links.

Directory editors evaluate the quality of a site: its functionality, content, and design. Many directories will list sites in each category alphabetically, like the phone book. Therefore, having a company name that begins with a letter close to “A” will help with the directories.

Hybrids
Hybrid search engines are a combination of a directory and a search engine. This is a "best of both worlds" technique, done in an effort to provide users with the most complete set of results. Today the top ten search sites are hybrids. Yahoo! Actually started out as a directory, but now it supplements its manually compiled listings with search results from Google, which is a regular search engine.

What search engines look for

For the most part, search engines look at millions of variables in ranking a page. It would be impossible to know all of these, and the minute that you get close, they will all change, so it would be a waste of time. However, there are a few main variables that most of the search engines will look at that you will want to focus on. Most of these variables focus on keyword phrases, or words or phrases that Internet surfers would type in to find your website.

In dealing with keyword phrases, there are a few main words that you will want to keep in mind: relevance, prominence, proximity, and density.

Relevance
Keyword relevance means that the keyword phrases that you choose will want to be ones that people are actually typing in to find you. There is a great tool from Overture.com that will help you come up with relevant keyword phrases. This tool is called the Search Suggestion Tool and is found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion. Go there and type in a word or phrase that relates to your business. Then this tool will tell you how many times that word or phrase was searched for in a previous month at Overture.com as well as give you a list of phrases that were search for that have that same word or phrase in it.

This tool will give you the demand for different products/services by telling you what people are actually searching for. Overture.com is one of the major search engines on the Internet, so it will give you a good idea as to what is being searched. However, Overture.com only covers about 2.7% of all searches done, so it gives you a fraction of what the entire Internet is doing. From here, you’ll want to pick out about 50 keyword phrases that best describe your site and then type them down somewhere. And then select 5 from that list that you will emphasize on the homepage of your website.

Prominence
Keywords demand the most prominent positions on your page. The top of the page is the single most important place to include your keywords. You will want to place your top five keyword phrases as close to the top of your page as you can. This will ensure a higher ranking on many search engines.

Proximity
Keyword proximity relates to how close your keywords are to one another within the text of your site. The closer your keywords are to each other, the higher you will rank in the search engines. For example, if you have the keywords scented and candles, you could use either of the following sentences:

We specialize in scented candles of all types.
We specialize in candles, which come in a variety of scents.

In this case, the first sentence would receive a higher ranking because the keywords are closer in proximity next too each other than they are in the second sentence.

Density
Keyword Density refers to how often you repeat your keyword in relation to the rest of the text. The optimum density is between 3 and 7 percent. In other words, for every 100 words of text you have on your homepage, you should use your keyword 3 to 7 times. The areas that you will want keyword phrases repeated are in the title, headline, body text, meta tags, hyperlinks, other tags (like alt tags that appear when you roll your mouse over an image), and in the first sentence of the homepage.

Methods of registering to the search engines

There are three main methods of registering to the search engines and directories that you will want to follow:
1. Initial launch using site submission tools
2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories

1. Initial launch using site submission tools
The initial launch consists of using site submission tools, or websites that will automatically register you site to many of the search engines. There are two main websites that we will use for this: www.inktomi.com and www.jimtools.com.

Inktomi.com is a great submission service that will continuously reregister your site to the top search engines on the Internet. It costs $39 a year to utilize their services, but it's well worth it. They will get you to the top of many of the main search engines. To register, go to www.positiontech.com and register there. Many of the major search engines get their results from Inktomi, so that is why it is such a great resource.

Jimtools.com is a free submission service that will submit your web site to 46 of the top search engines and also to over 100 directories. To register, go to www.jimtools.com and click on the Submit tab. Here you can register your web site to many of the top search engines and directories for free. Only submit to the Search Engine Submitter and Directory Submitter; don't submit to the FFA links or the WAP Directory (if you do, you'll get about 1,000 emails.

2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
The third method of registering is to register monthly to the top search engines manually. The reason that you'll do this is because search engine rankings are like playing "king of the hill." One week you're at the top, and the next week you'll have fallen, so reregistering each month is important, and it's also important to register to each search engine individually. Inktomi and JimTools will register to the top search engines for you, but the ones that you're not ranking high on, you'll want to go to and manually register.

The best way to register to these is to go to www.searchengines.com and click on Submitting to the top search engines (this is under the How to submit your site area). This site has a listing of the top search engines and direct links to the place to register your site, as well as tips on registering, so it's very effective.

With this type of registering, you don't have much control as to where you get ranked on the list. One method of controlling your rankings on the search engines is to register to pay-per-click search engines, which is discussed in detail in the next marketing strategy.

3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories
Yahoo is the largest search portal on the Internet. They are a hybrid, so a combination of a search engine and directory. Yahoo has their own directory categories that you will want to register to, and their search results come from Google.com. Yahoo searches consist of about 30% of all searches done online, so being in here is important. However, Yahoo also knows this, so they will charge you a pretty penny to get listed. Right now it is at about $300 a year. Therefore, you may not register to Yahoo initially; however, once you start making some money on your website, Yahoo is the first place to go.

In registering to Yahoo, you will want to read through their submission guidelines. These can be found by going to www.yahoo.com and clicking on How to Suggest a Site. You will want to read these carefully because if you do not follow their guidelines, they will take your $300 and not get you registered.

Once you’ve done that, you will want to pick a category to be listed in within the directory. To do this, type in main keyword phrases that you think people will type in to find you. Then look at the categories that are listed. You will want to be found within the category that comes up most often when your keyword phrases are typed in. You can also choose a category by looking at your competition to see where they are listed.

Once you’ve picked the category, then you’ll all set to register. So go to the category of your choice, and click on Suggest a Site. Then follow the registering steps.

General Yahoo tips
§ If you sell any types of goods or services on your website, you will need to go through the Business and Economy category from the Yahoo homepage. Then you must also go through either the Business to Business or Shopping and Services categories.
§ Make sure your title is the actual name of your website or company.
§ Keep the description short. They say up to 25 words long, but they like it better if it’s 10-15 words in length.
§ Pick a category that would be found if people type in the main keyword phrases for your website. These are the categories most often looked at.

Other Directories
There are other directories to be listed in as well, other than Yahoo. One is the Open Directory found at www.dmoz.org. Dmoz is another very popular directory that supplies listing to many of the major search engines as well, including AOL, which is another of the major search portals people use. To register there, go to www.dmoz.org and find the category that would be best for your website (following the same method as you did with Yahoo). Then click on Add URL. Then follow the steps to register.

Another directory is Looksmart. They are another hybrid search engine and are a good one to be listed with because MSN get their search results from Looksmart’s listings. And MSN is another one of the major search portals on the Internet. Looksmart currently has a pay-per-click feature for small businesses. This means that it will cost you a certain amount of money each time your website is clicked on. The current cost is $.15 per click. To register, go to www.looksmart.com and click on Submit a Site and just follow the steps.

Online websites and resources

§ www.searchengines.com
§ www.searchenginewatch.com
§ www.searchengineforums.com
§ www.spider-food.com