Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 4 – Submissions

Posted by lux4jean

Feb 4

Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 4 – Submissions

This is the latest article in the “Back to Basics” series. Previous articles include the importance of search engine marketing (SEM), effective keyword research, title tag formats and Meta tag use. In this topic we take a look at how to submit to the search engines.

Do you remember when a website needed to be submitted every day in order to get listed on the search engines? Or the time when we all needed to submit our sites to over 50,000 search engines in order to achieve traffic? Well, actually we never needed to do any of the above, but in a rush to achieve top search engine positioning, many businesses were convinced that submitting often and to thousands of search engines would bring that pot of search engine gold they so desperately wanted.

Fast-forward to today and the concepts behind submitting your website have dramatically changed. While many people believed that the submission process played a large part in the search engine ranking achieved, most businesses now realize that the submission process is merely a means of delivering optimized pages to the search engines. I often find analogies to be beneficial, so lets try this one. If your optimized website was this summer’s blockbuster movie, then the movie theatre’s projector would be the submission process. You want to make sure that the movie is shown using the best projection methods possible, but the actual projector does not make the movie a blockbuster. However, without the projector, your movie would not be seen. With search engine optimization, it’s the changes to the website that ensure top positioning, but without correct submission to the search engines, no one will see them. Still with me?

So now that you’ve started to optimize your website, how do you make sure that your “blockbuster” reaches its target audience? No doubt, you can name the most important search engines and I would hazard a guess that you could name many of the smaller ones too. Which ones are important and how should you submit to them? Let’s take a look.

The Big Four

Google – 29.5% of searches*

Google is everyone’s favorite search engine, but how do you get your website listed? First there is the submission form, located on their website. The instructions provided by Google are pretty straightforward: submit your top-level page and Google will spider the rest of the website. However, submitting your website this way does not guarantee that you’ll be indexed. Google has always preferred to find new websites by spidering existing sites in its index and following new links from there. If you want to increase your chances of seeing your website indexed, find some quality websites or directories to link to your new site now. You don’t need hundreds of links, but 3-5 quality links at this stage will encourage Google to index your site. Google typically updates its full index once a month, so do not panic if 4 weeks have gone by and there’s still no sign of being indexed. However, if after 6 weeks, you site is still not indexed, concentrate on adding more quality links and work on getting listed in the Open Directory. See below.

Yahoo – 28.9% of searches

Up until about 18 months ago, the best way to get listed in Yahoo was by paying the annual $299 fee to be listed in their directory. However, at this time, Yahoo gets its results from the Google index and a directory listing is no longer vital (although many like having the directory listing as well). So for the time being, I recommend concentrating on getting your website listed in Google, and that will take care of Yahoo (although with Yahoo acquiring Inktomi, this could soon change).

MSN – 27.6% of searches

There are two effective ways to get your website listed in the BING.COM results (sponsored listings aside). You can submit your website to Looksmart (see below) and find your site listed in the “Web Directory Sites” or you can favor Inktomi and have your website listed in the “Web Pages” section. The Looksmart results are shown ahead of the Inktomi results, so if you choose just one option, make sure it is Looksmart. However, Inktomi is a crawler and is very useful if you have lots of content or hundreds of different products. If someone searches for a multiple-word search term or a particular model number, it will be Inktomi that will likely have the answer, not Looksmart. We’ll cover submissions to Inktomi, below.

AOL – 18.4% of searches

The submission process for AOL, is well, non-existent. AOL uses the results from Google, so obtaining a listing at Google is important if you wish to be shown in AOL.

NetRatings for January 2003. Results do not add up to 100% as some searchers use more than one search engine.

The Directories

The Open Directory

The Open Directory is also referred to as ODP or DMOZ. It is a vast directory updated and maintained by thousands of volunteer editors. To get your website listed in the directory, simply find the most appropriate category for your website and click the “add url” link. Follow the instructions carefully. Not only are there standard instructions for each category, but also some editors have their own quirky set of guidelines. Do not be tempted to write a description that is full of dozens of keywords. Pick 3-4 of your most important keywords and write a 20-30-word description that includes these terms. DMOZ editors are known for changing the descriptions submitted by website owners, so make sure yours is well written so that you reduce the chance of it being edited; it could be your keywords that are edited out. Remember, editors are unpaid at DMOZ, so don’t expect to see your website listed after just a few days. It could take weeks or even months. You can read further instructions at the DMOZ site.

Looksmart

Looksmart used to ask for a simple $299 fee to have your site reviewed by editors and then listed in the directory. That is long gone, and now they use their own unique combination of paid-inclusion and editorial review. Pay the $29 to have your site reviewed and listed in the Looksmart directory. Once listed, you will pay $0.15 per click for the first 5,000 visitors that Looksmart generates to your website. After that, your click-thru rate is adjusted depending on the type of business you operate (rates range from $0.23 to $0.75 per click). The good news is that you can set your monthly budget to ensure that you do not overspend (minimum spend is $15 a month). You can submit your site via this link. (Note that these are basic instructions for getting listed in Looksmart – you can view further information on their website).

The Crawlers

There are many other search engines that you should consider. So that we are not here all day, let’s take a brief look at the best way to submit to each of them.

Inktomi – provides results to Looksmart, MSN, Hotbot and Overture.
Inktomi does not have its own search engine interface but provides crawler results to many other search engines. The best way to get listed in Inktomi is to use one of the many paid-inclusion services. The cost is typically $39 a year for the first URL you submit and $25 for each URL thereafter. The subscription is for one year and usually ensures your site is listed within 48 hours. Two of the main providers of Inktomi paid-inclusion are: PositionTech and Network Solutions.

Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves is a growing search engine with many loyal users. The crawler results for Ask Jeeves are provided by Teoma (which Ask owns). Unless Teoma happens to spider your website from another already in its index, the best way to get listed is to use their paid-inclusion service. Fees are in line with Inktomi and are $30 per year for the first URL and $18 for each additional URL. The main paid-inclusion partners are PositionTech and Ineedhits.com.

Fast – provides results to Lycos and AllTheWeb

Fast is similar to Inktomi in that it is not a search interface. However the sites indexed are displayed at both AllTheWeb and Lycos, so submitting is definitely worthwhile. The fees are typically $34 per year for the first URL and $16 for each additional URL. The main paid-inclusion partners are PositionTech and Lycos InSite Select.

AltaVista

AltaVista is no longer the search engine power it once was and with Overture recently acquiring the company (and Yahoo acquiring Overture), its future is unknown. Search results on AltaVista are powered by Yahoo! Search Technology. For fast submission to the Yahoo! Search index via the Yahoo! Search Marketing Search Submit program, Click Here.

Express Inclusion
The AltaVista Express Inclusion program has been discontinued. Legacy Express Inclusion customers will continue to receive distribution on the historical AltaVista network until their subscriptions expire.

Netscape and iWon

Both Netscape and iWon receive their crawler results from Google.

In Summary

Now for some caveats and clarification on the above. While some search engines offer free submission services and others will index your site eventually if you have inbound links, the advice above concentrates on the quickest and most effective means of getting your website indexed. In addition, I have not delved into the realms of “Direct-Feeds” or Pay-Per-Click which would need articles in their own right. However, for most small to medium sized businesses looking to follow the best methods of submitting a website, the above information should be enough to ensure that your site is indexed. If you’re ready for your website to be the next “blockbuster,” then following the guidelines above will help ensure your success.

Written by search engine marketing expert Andy Beal.

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Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 3 – Meta Tags

Posted by lux4jean

Jan 31

If you have been following this series, you will know that we have so far covered the importance of search engine marketing (SEM), effective keyword research and title tag formats. As we move through the “Back to Basics” series we find ourselves at the notorious topic of Meta tags, specifically “description” and “keywords” tags. Now, I know what you are thinking; “surely we don’t need to worry about Meta tags, as most search engines ignore them” and for the most part you would be right. The importance of Meta tags has diminished so considerably over the past couple of years, that I fully expect this to be the last article that I will write discussing their optimization. That’s not to say that they are already a dead issue, but in the next 6-12 months their importance will be virtually extinguished.

So, if this will likely be my last article on the topic, what is there left to discuss? Well actually there are still a few things you should consider when researching and constructing Meta tags. While search engine marketing has moved into the realms of page themes, keyword density, content and linking, Meta tags can still provide some benefits.

The History of the Description Tag

The Meta description tag is located in the <head> area of your website’s HTML code and its content is sometimes displayed in the results page of crawler search engines. The description tag looks something like this in your code:

<meta content=”Brief description of the contents of the page”>

It used to be that all search engines would pull this information and use it as part of their search results. Not only would your search engine listing include information from your title tag, but also below it would be a copy of your Meta description tag. With this predictable structure, search engine marketers could manipulate the way their website listing was displayed in the search engine results by changing these tags. In addition, the Meta description tag would have great importance when determining which position your website showed up in the search results. The number of keywords, their relevance and density within the description tag could be manipulated to help achieve the elusive #1 position on the search engine results.

Then along came Google

When Google became the search engine of preference, it ushered in a new era of how search engine listings are displayed. Google chose not to use the Meta description tag and instead rely on the content contained within a website. The biggest impact from this decision resulted in the Meta description having no significance whatsoever on where a website is positioned within Google’s results. A website owner could optimize their description tag to the highest degree, and it would have little effect on how their website was positioned in Google. The other effect of choosing to ignore the description tag was that Google did not use this information as part of the website’s listing; instead formulating it’s own description using content extracted from the web page itself (only if there is very little page content will you see Google display the meta description). When it became apparent that Google’s approach was successful, other search engines started following suit to the point that few search engines today spider and display the Meta description tag.

So why optimize the Meta Description Tag?

So with so many search engines choosing to ignore the description tag, why bother to optimize it? The answer is simple. It takes just a couple of minutes to optimize the Meta tags on the web page you are building. While you may not influence the likes of Google, Yahoo, or AOL, there are plenty of smaller search engines that still spider the Meta description tag. The largest of these is Inktomi, which was recently acquired by Yahoo. Although, Yahoo has not yet switched its search results to the Inktomi database, there are still many search engines that rely on Inktomi results. The biggest Inktomi audience comes from MSN’s web page results. The web page results at MSN come after featured sites, sponsored sites and web directory results but nonetheless they are there. While you are unlikely to have your Inktomi listing displayed on MSN for generic terms such as “computers” or “Compaq” you should see traffic from MSN for longer, more specific terms such as “refurbished Compaq computers”. The more specific the term, the more likely that MSN will rely on the spidering technology of Inktomi to provide the search results. And with OneStat.com reporting in April 2003 that 45% of all searches are for phrases with three words or more, you can see that there is still a large audience to reach by optimizing your Meta description tag and targeting crawlers such as Inktomi.

So how should you optimize the Meta description tag?

Like every other aspect of search engine marketing, relevancy is the key to obtaining better search engine ranking. While your competitors may include dozens and dozens of search phrases in their description tag, fewer, more targeted phrases will increase the relevancy of the web page and will provide a greater benefit from your description tag. Unless you have a small website that has only a few pages, resulting in the need to place many phrases in each description tag, you should aim for around 5-10 phrases in each description. Keep each of the phrases within the same theme and you will further increase your chances of better search engine ranking for that page. An optimized description tag might look something like this:

<meta content=”Desktop computers and computer hardware supplies for home and office.”>

As you can see there are many keyword combinations that can be extracted from the above description tag. The most important phrases are at the start of the description, which adds to your chances of better search engine rankings. However, the search engines can also extract their own word combinations such as “office computer supplies”. With Inktomi providing a paid inclusion service which re-spiders and indexes your website every 48 hours, you can change and manipulate your Meta tags to find a format that works best for your website. Whenever formatting your description tag, remember that most search engines that continue to spider description tags also use that tag when displaying your listing. With that in mind, make sure that the description tag is inviting and coherent as well as optimized.

What to do with the Keywords Tag?

Much of the advice for your description tag also holds true for your Meta keywords tag. The keywords tag used to be very important when optimizing a website with all the search engines spidering and utilizing the information. When it became obvious to the search engines that webmasters were stuffing their keywords tags with dozens of unrelated search terms, the search engines moved away from algorithms that used information collected from keywords tags. We are now at the stage where, very few search engines use the keywords tags to any significant degree. However, examine your traffic logs and you will be surprised at how many different search engines bring traffic to your website. I’ll bet there are many small search engines, bringing traffic to your website, that you have never heard of before. With many of these smaller search engines relying on older technology, and with it only taking a couple of minutes to add a keywords tag, it is worthwhile to at least look at the way you format your meta keywords tag.

Optimizing the Keywords Tag

Within your website code, your keywords tag will look something like this:

<meta content=”keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3″>

I’m not going to spend long discussing the format and optimization of the keywords tag, just as I do not expect you to spend hours optimizing them. That being said, make sure that you use your keywords tag to include words that might be missing from your web page content or perhaps include alternate spellings of words. I have also found it beneficial to include product SKUs or manufacturers model numbers in your keywords tag. These in particular tend to be very targeted keywords with fewer competitors. This often results in their inclusion in your keywords tag providing the edge over a website not using a keywords tag. In addition, the keywords tag is a great place to add geographical search terms such as the city you operate in, the county or even the State.

While you can add as many keywords as you wish to your keywords tag, I would avoid using more than 20-25. Don’t agonize over the use or non-use of commas and forget any thoughts of repeating a keyword over and over again. An effective keywords tag may look like this:

<meta content=”Presario 800t, s400t, s300nx, wake county, Raleigh, North Carolina, NC”>

As you can see in the example above, the best use of the keywords tag is for targeting either obscure terms, model numbers or targeted regions. Using this approach will help you get the most out of the limited benefit of the keywords tag.

Written by search engine marketing expert Andy Beal.

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Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 2 – Title Tags

Posted by lux4jean

Jan 28

As part of the continued series “Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics”, we turns our attention to the much talked about Title and Meta Tags (while a Title Tag isn’t really a Meta tag the two are commonly discussed as such). This week he takes a closer look at the Title tag.

When I decided a few weeks ago to write a series of articles for those new to search engine marketing (SEM), I considered whether there truly was a need to discuss the topic of Meta Tags. After all, this topic has been so heavily discussed that anyone remotely interested in search engine marketing would already have grasped this basic of techniques. My decision was justified just a few days ago when I was asked by the American Marketing Association to provide a workshop on how to create Meta Tags and discuss their benefits. It was at this point that I recalled starting out on my own quest for search engine marketing knowledge many years ago and researching the basic topics that today seem so fundamental. So for the next few parts of this series, I hope to enlighten those of you who are discovering SEM for the first time and maybe refresh the knowledge of those more seasoned marketers.

Meta Tags – an analogy

I don’t recall ever reading the following description of Meta Tags anywhere else (although have been using it for years) so hopefully the following analogy will be new to you. When considering the function of Meta Tags, it helps to compare a website to an old fashion book (remember those paper things that we all used to read before the Internet). The first part of any Meta Tag is the “Title” tag. The Title tag is very similar to the title of a book, it gives a visitor the first hint as to the theme of the website. The next section of any Meta Tag is the “Description” tag. The Description tag is comparable to the summary found on the back of a book, providing a brief guide to the content of your website. The last part of any Meta Tag is the “Keywords” tag. The Keywords are similar to the index of a book, allowing anyone to clearly see if the website contains the information they are seeking. If you compare a search engine to a bricks-and-mortar library, with millions of books you’ll hopefully have a good understanding as to relevance of Meta Tags for your website.

In this guide, I wish to focus on what many believe is the most important part of any Meta Tag, the Title tag. Now before we continue and discuss suggestions for the best format for your Title tag, lets stop and consider exactly how it looks in your website’s HTML code.

<head>

<title>Title of Your Webpage Here</title> (bolded for emphasis)

<meta name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of the  page">

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword phrases that describe your webpage">

</head>

As you can see, the format is pretty straightforward. You will also notice that your Meta tags should be placed within the “head” area of your website as opposed to the “body” area.

Ok, now we have the basic idea of what Title tags are and we’ve taken a look at the standard structure, lets turn our attention to ideas for optimizing the content to ensure a successful search engine marketing campaign.

The Best Use of a Title Tag

While many people have differing opinions as to the benefits of the Description and Keywords tag, most all are in agreement that the Title tag is extremely important for any SEM campaign. The Title tag is used by pretty much every search engine that uses spiders to crawl your website. That list includes Google, AOL, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, ExactSeek.com and more. The Title tag is pretty much the most effective Meta Tag and is used for conveying the theme of your Webpage to the search engines. Not only is the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search engines when calculating your webpage’s relevance, but it is also displayed in most search engine results pages (SERP). It therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it influences your websites position in the SERP, but is also attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link.

Long gone are the days when cramming dozens of words into a Title tag would result in better search engine positioning. These days the search engines, Google in particular, prefer to see shorter Title tags that are succinct in describing the content on the page. In fact, it appears that stuffing more words into your Title tag will do more harm than good, especially when targeting very competitive search phrases.

So how should a good Title tag look? That, my friend, is one of the many questions that us marketers strive to answer. Each of us have our own ideas of what constitutes a good Title tag and the format for one page, might be totally inappropriate for another. However, I understand that to not provide an example would be a complete omission, so here goes:

<title>Desktop computers and computer supplies</title> or;

<title>Desktop computers and computer supplies at 123Computers</title>

As you can see, there are really only two identifiable phrases that make up the above Title tag, but they provide for many different keyword combinations such as “desktop computer supplies” or “desktop computer”. Equally important is the fact that they focus on just one theme. Many times, I’ll see websites that will try and target two or more very competitive keywords that do not follow the same theme e.g. “desktop computers and digital cameras”.

You’ll also notice two different formats depending on whether you wish to include your company name or not. In an ideal world of search engine marketing, webpages would not include the company name at all. Unless you’re Dell or IBM, the name of your company really doesn’t make much difference to the user at this stage. They are more interested in knowing the theme of your page and whether it is relevant to the search query they entered. Likewise, the Title tag is a valuable thing and adding the name of your company might reduce the relevancy of your page in the eyes of the search engines and reduce valuable space that could be used by an extra keyword. That being said, more than 80% of website owners prefer to see their company name listed somewhere in the Title tag. If that is the case for you, it is my advice to place the company name at the end of the Title tag, allowing the search engine spiders and surfers to read the keywords first and determine the relevance to the search query before seeing the name of the company.

In most cases, less is definitely more when constructing optimized Title tags for your website. Keeping to fewer keywords will help to demonstrate to the search engines and their users that the webpage is both highly relevant and solely focused on a particular product or service. In the same way, ensuring that each page has its own unique Title tag will ensure a greater chance your site will be positioned higher on the SERP.

In Summary

In finishing, I’ll leave you with three things you should never do when constructing your Title tag.

Leave “Untitled” as your Title tag (don’t get me started).
Use “Homepage” as your Title tag (only slightly better than “untitled”).
Use only your company name as your Title tag. Unless your company name is searched thousands of times each month, add keywords.

The above advice should keep you busy for the next few days. The next topic in the series will cover the ideas and formats to use for your Description tag. We’ll go through, step-by-step the purpose of the Description tag which search engines use it, as well as techniques for getting better positioning.

Written by search engine marketing expert Andy Beal.

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