Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

by Christine Churchill

Part 1 -   Why Search Engines Are Important To You . Learn how much traffic you could be getting.

Part 2 -  The Basics. What's the difference between Yahoo and Alta Vista, and more?

Part 3 -  How to get listed. What to do and what you can expect to happen.

Part 4 -  How to improve your ranking. Just being listed isn't enough. Learn tricks to get a top ranking.

Part 1 - Why Search Engines Are Important To You

You've built your site. You've tested it. You're ready for business.

So where are all the people?

You need to get the word out about your great site, but with limited resources and no advertising budget, you need some way to attract visitors.

What can you do?

Try the No.1 way people find out about sites - Search Engines! Surveys show that over 85% of internet users find new Web sites by using search engines. Other surveys show that after email, search engines are the most popular activity on the web.

Instead of blowing your limited resources on banners and ads galore, use search engines to send motivated visitors to your site. Click through rates on banner ads continue to drop, while search engine traffic is on the rise and growing everyday.

Search engine optimization (techniques to improve how your Web site ranks in the search engines) has been called the cheapest and most effective marketing tool available. Expect to pay professional firms that specialize in search engine optimization $2000 for a small site - $10,000 is common for big companies. If you are in an extremely competitive business, plan on shelling out $25,000 and up. Oh, and don't be surprised if you have to sign a six month or even a year contract. That's the norm for a professional shop.

You have an option to "do it in-house". With a little help from NetMechanic, you can do search engine optimization yourself, improve your site's search engine ranking, and save yourself a lot of money, frustration, and time.

Search engine traffic is the kind of traffic you want.

Why?

Traffic you receive from search engines is already targeted. Visitors arriving at your site from search engines have entered a keyword relevant to your site, so they are already interested in your product or service. This is the best source of potential customers you can have.

Search engines are the number one way users find new sites. Surveys show that over 85% of users rely on search engines to locate information on the Web. If you optimize your site to do well on the engines, then register your site with search engines, you should see increased traffic to your site.

Search engines are free to users and users know where and how to use them. One of the first things a novice to the Internet learns is how to use Yahoo (actually Yahoo is a directory, but we'll discuss the difference later).

Part 2 - The Basics

Before you can position your site to do well in the search engines, you need to understand search engine fundamentals.

A search engine is a giant database that lists sites on the Internet. You access the database when you enter keyword searches and receive a list of relevant sites.

Search sites are the Internet's Yellow Pages.

Think of a search engine as a giant, automated version of the yellow pages. If you need information on "party planning" from the yellow pages, there are several steps to retrieving it.

• Go to the yellow pages and look under the alphabetized subject list for "party."
• Note the subcategories: "party planning" "party - children's", "party - rental equipment", and so on.
• Examine the companies listed under "party - planning" and decide which company best meets your needs.

You can repeat this process online using a search engine.

Search Engines Versus Search Directories.

People use both search engines and directories without ever realizing there is a difference between the two.

• Directories (Yahoo, LookSmart) have human editors who review web pages, rank them, and then organize them into categorized lists with brief descriptions. The categories and descriptions are based on submissions, but are edited by professional editors (real people in the loop reviewing the sites being submitted).
• Search Engines (AltaVista, Excite, Google) have automated programs called spiders that index sites and score pages based on proprietary guidelines. There is no human judgment involved. Search engines index all the information on all the Web pages they find. The indexes are generated automatically, based on the words and phrases that are found on Web pages.

What is a Search Engine?

Search engines send automated computer programs (called robots or spiders) to crawl the Internet in search of Web pages. Basically these spiders follow links to travel from URL to URL. When they visit your Web site, the robot indexes (or records) the text of your page or pages (if it is a deep crawling spider) and stores it in the search engine's index. Later, when a user enters a search query at the search engine's Web site, the search engine scans Web pages in its index for pages that provide the best match.

In theory, the search engine spider is supposed to be able to find all the sites on the Internet. However, since new sites are being added daily, it's risky to assume that the spider will find you. Expedite the process by submitting your URL to the search engines.

Not knowing the difference between a directory and a search engine can burn you!

What is a Directory?

Unlike the automated search engine process, each entry in a directory is first reviewed by a human being. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A keyword search will only look for matches in these descriptions, so be careful how you describe your site. Techniques to receive a high search engine rating will not work with a directory. While good content is necessary for search engines, both good content AND visual appeal are mandatory in human-edited directories. Remember, manual review takes time!

The typical time lag between free submission of a site and its actual listing in Yahoo is five months. You can speed up the process at some directories, but expect to pay for that service. This trend will probably continue.

• Yahoo's Business Express Program, offers express guaranteed consideration of your commercial Web site within seven (7) business days.
• Looksmart moved to an exclusive pay for listing scheme - all new submissions must pay to have their site reviewed.
• Open Directory Project is a free directory. (Hint: If you get your site listed here, it will help you later in Google.)

When you submit to a directory, do it by hand and take your time. You need to impress human reviewers with your site so high-quality content and design are critical to your success.

Search Engine and Directory Hierarchy.

There are literally thousands of search engines on the Internet, but naturally you're most concerned about your ranking on the high-traffic sites. Some of the smaller search engines may not bring you a lot of traffic, but your listing gives you another source of links (which can help in your overall link popularity building).

If you can do well on the sites listed below, you will probably do well on others too.

Top Search Engines
Google
AltaVista
Lycos
Teoma
Overture

Top Search Directories

Yahoo
LookSmart
Open Directory
Zeal

Part 3 - How to get listed

Don't wait to be discovered! Submit your URL directly to the search engine or directory.

Search Engine submissions.
There are two ways to submit to search engines and directories, manually or using an automated submission tool. Here is a summary of both methods.

• Manual Submission - Use the Add URL form from the search engine site itself. This way, you have absolute control over where your site is submitted. However, this process is that it is a very time consuming and labor intensive activity. Some search engines bury their Add URL form so far down in the site that one wonders if they are intentionally trying to thwart potential applicants.
  
  
• Automated Submission Tool - Fill in the data once and the tool automatically submits your URL to multiple engines. It is a fast, easy one step process and you only have to fill in the data forms once.
  
  There are several features you should look for in an automated submission tool.
  
  
  1. The number one item of importance is to make sure the submission tool does not submit to directories. If you look down the list of places the tool submits and you see directories listed, leave and do not look back! You can be assured that NetMechanic's Search Engine Starter only submits to search engines.
     
     
  2. The second thing to look for in an automated submission tool is to find one that allows you to pick and choose which engines to submit to. If you are doing well in one engine, but not in another, you may want to submit to the search engine where you need improvement and not submit to the engine where you are doing well. Again, NetMechanic's Search Engine Starter provides the user the flexibility to submit any page on their Web site to their choice of 28 different search engines.
     
     
  3. Find a submission service that monitors search engine spam. Because most submission services submit to many search engines, you may receive spam email by some of the smaller engines that occasionally sell their email addresses.
     
     Note: It is not the submission tool company that is selling the email addresses, it is the search engines themselves. NetMechanic's Search Engine Starter allows you to use an alternate email address when submitting your site. Additionally, NetMechanic monitors the search engines it submits to and purges spam-abusive engines from the submission list.

Bottom Line: Submit your site to directories by hand.  Save time by using a submission tool to submit to search engines.

How often do I submit?

Your best strategy is to submit weekly until your site gets listed. Check your listing frequently. If your site disappears suddenly, you may be the victim of a search engine database omission. Search engines frequently have multiple versions of their databases and they aren't always in sync. You may be listed in one version of their database and not in another. Your only recourse is to resubmit your site.

To see if you have even been picked up in a search engine, go to the search engine's site and do a search with your company's domain name as the search query.

Directory Submissions.

Submitting to a directory is a much more involved specialized process. Don't do it in a rush and don't use an automated submission tool. The better submission tools, like Search Engine Starter, don't submit to directories.

How long does it take to get listed?

These times vary with search engines and directories. The search engines will optimistically report a very short time, but most sites get listed within the following times:

Google	4 - 6 weeks
Lycos	4 - 6 weeks
WiseNut	6 weeks

The reality is that most search engines and directories are very backlogged and slow to get listings added to their databases. Don't be surprised if you experience waits much longer than these. As mentioned earlier, you may wait over 5 months to see your site get listed on Yahoo!, if it gets listed at all.

We recommend that if your site isn't listed within the time periods above, that you resubmit your site to the search engine where you are not listed.

Is being listed in the search engines good enough?

Unfortunately no.

A listing won't automatically increase your traffic. A good ranking may. You want to be listed on the first three pages of the search engine results page. Most web surfers aren't patient enough to look more than the first 20-40 listed links. In fact there is a considerable drop off just going from the first to the second page.

Part 4 - How to improve your ranking.

How do search engines rank pages?

Search engines use a ranking algorithm to determine the order in which matching web pages are returned on the results page. Each web page is graded on the number of the search terms it contains, where the words are located in the document, and other criteria that changes frequently.

All search engines have a different method of ranking. That's why you might rank number 1 on one engine and number 25 on another. Robots look for relevance and rank results on a secret ever-changing algorithm. Some look at TITLE, some look at META tags, some look for link popularity. Search engine optimization means optimizing the Web site for the best possible positioning based on the page's keywords and description.

NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack has a search engine optimization package that will walk you through the whole optimization process. NetMechanic has numerous experts who have conducted extensive tests to help identify what techniques work to better your ranking in the search engines. Additionally, we have identified what can get you into trouble with search engines.

General tips to get a good ranking.

1. Create a good site with good content.

This is critical, especially as search engines grow in sophistication. If your site contains worthwhile material, users will return to your site and will recommend it to others. Other sites will link to you - which will in turn help you by improving your link popularity.

2. Pick keywords visitors will actually use on a search engine query.

• If you have keywords that are very competitive, consider narrowing your focus to improve results. The keyword "horse" will return thousands of responses and may not place you near the top, while "Appaloosa" is more focused and targeted to a particular query.
  
  
• Consider using a keyword phrase instead of just one keyword. Visitors to search engines use phrases to narrow their searches. For example, instead of using a keyword like "horse" that would return too many responses, use a more specific keyword phrase like "Alabama Quarter horse."
  
  
• Brainstorm a good list of list of keywords. Tap into other people - a fresh perspective can help uncover words you may have missed. This keyword analysis article offers some useful tips on brainstorming.
  
  
• Don't just guess at which keywords are popular, get quantitative feedback using the Keyword Popularity tool included in Search Engine Power Pack. Remember, if you pick the wrong keywords, all your optimization will be wasted. See story on Keyword Selection.

3. Include keywords in your TITLE tag.

Pages with keywords appearing in the TITLE are assumed to be more relevant to the topic than those without.

4. Use keywords in META Keyword and Description tags.

Using META tags will not hurt you in search engines that don't use them, and they can definitely help you in search engines that do index them. While they are not as important as the TITLE tag, META tags can give you the edge over your competition since most web sites don't even use them.

5. Use your keywords throughout your page.

Search engines will check to see if the keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

6. Have a good keyword density on your page.

Keyword density is derived by dividing the frequency of that word by the total words on the page. Frequency is a major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. This can turn into a balancing act as too high a density can be considered spam by some engines. Usually you are safe if your keyword density falls between 1 - 5 %.

7. Continually work on improving your link popularity.

Listings on popular Web sites can increase your traffic significantly. They do this in two ways:

• They give potential visitors multiple paths to your Web site.
• They can increase your ranking in search engines that use link popularity as part of their formula.

Most search engines use link popularity as relevance criteria. For example, the Google search engine (not their new directory) is based almost entirely on link popularity.

Summary

Success with search engines and directories is not one magical thing you do specifically. It is the culmination of your whole strategy. It is a time consuming, labor intensive activity with great rewards.

Bottom Line: Use Search Engine Power Pack at least once a month to help you get more traffic from the search engines.

NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack is a search engine optimization power house. It's a five tool bundle that can help you improve your search engine ranking and bring more traffic to your site. Power Pack walks you through the whole search engine optimization process. From selecting your most effective keywords and building META tags, to optimizing your pages for peak search engine performance, to submitting your pages to the search engines of your choice and to tracking your site's performance in the search engines over time. NetMechanic has the one stop solution that will greatly improve your search engine performance.

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