Luring Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a science that is slowly becoming an art and an act that is costing websites thousands of dollars every year. While SEO lets you get the search engine to crawl through your website and crawl out with as much relevant information, search engine submission ensures that search engines look out for your site in the first place!

There are companies such as Pinstorm, which has a business model out of just strategizing your search engine submission and positioning. It is a multi-million dollar business and there are several tips and tricks that you need to understand to stay ahead of the competition.

In simple words, “Search engine submission” refers to the act of getting your website listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engine registration. Most of the times when you submit a page to the net, it does not even get you in the top 20 or top 50 rankings. It mostly means that search engine knows about you, and will consider your pages when it sends out a search.

Before you actually plan to submit your site and other details to search engines, you must have a definitive plan to make your submissions. If you have been spammed like me with offers on submitting your website to 101 search engines, think again. It is likely that ninety per cent of the 101 search engines may not make any sense to you. According to latest reports, the search engine market was as follows. Check out the figure.

In a country like India, most users use Google, Yahoo and MSN. And this works for them. Hence, if you are very keen to ensure that more of your countrymen actually login to your pages, then focus heavily on these three search engines.

Table 1 gives you an idea about some popular search engines and their pages.

Table 1: Popular search engines



Source: Search magazine (Free submission links)

Despite the rise in "paid participation" programs offered by search engines, free search engine submission is still possible. However, using the paid programs that are offered will speed up the listing process and almost certainly generate more search engine related traffic for your website. Only problem is you must know where to make these payments.

This is one of the reasons many companies have a search engine advertisement and submission budgets. And, mind you, we are not talking of the Amazons and Microsofts of the world; your company can also plan a web search engine budget.

Again, it is a budget just like money being allocated for spending in advertisements in newspapers, electronic media and on websites. Money spent on search engine optimization, submission and advertising is known to reap in rich rewards.

Let us look at the strategies to tie up with each search engine.

Yahoo!
Yahoo! Search was launched almost a year back. And from many years of using Google’s search engine, the media giant has come up with it’s own search engine. To get into Yahoo!’s radar, you have two choices. One of them is to submit your website for free (http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html?fr=FP-tab-web-t). This is usually a slow process and Yahoo does not guarantee any results.

Yahoo! offers a paid option that costs USD299 to include your website or URL in the Yahoo! directory, which is often consulted by one and all while searching for information. Results are guaranteed within seven days by Yahoo!.

Tip: Your submission to a non-commercial category is more likely to be accepted if your content is not overtly commercial. For example, submitting the home page of a site that sells silver jewellery is likely to be seen as commercial and not accepted. However, if you have a page within that website that discusses in depth how to select the right type of jewels for an occasion, then that page might be deemed helpful, non-commercial information and accepted. Hence, web masters remember that search engines love content and you must have lots of useful content on your website.

The annual fee only applies to commercial categories. If you submit to a non-commercial category using Yahoo Express and get accepted into that area, the fee is charged only once, not on an annual basis. You might get the opposite impression, because you'll keep seeing references to "recurring annual fee." However, in the terms and conditions for Yahoo Express, the annual fee is only for sites in the Yahoo Commercial Directory – http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+Business.

You really don't need to submit more than this. The only reason for submitting some of your inside pages is in case there is a problem reaching your home page. This gives Yahoo an alternate route into your site. From whatever page it visits, it will look for links to other pages that you have and perhaps include those. This is true for other crawlers as well.

Yahoo! also offers other options such as Sponsored Searches, which you can explore. Suppose you plan a budget of at least USD1000 for search engine submissions and promotions, then you must try Yahoo!’s humane powered directory.

Google
The absolutely best way to get listed with Google is to build links to your website. Indeed, this is the best way to get listed for free with all the major crawlers listed here. Crawlers follow links, so if you have good links pointing at your website, the crawlers are more likely to find and include your pages.

Here's the good news: if you submitted your site to the major directories and got listed with one or more of them, then Google and other crawlers will almost certainly pick up the URL that was listed. This means you may not need to do any additional work to get listed with crawlers.

Nevertheless, you may find it helpful to do some link building beyond the directories.

Aside from link building, Google provides an Add URL page (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) that lets you submit a URL directly to its crawler. There's no guarantee that Google will actually include a URL submitted to it this way, however. Despite this, it makes sense to submit your home page and perhaps one or two other URLs from "inside" your website via the Add URL page.

Other Google tricks and tips

Google has a number of properties such as blogger (blogspot.com), which are automatically searched by Google. If I were you, I will have a few blogs up on a topic related to what I do on blogspot and try maintaining that once in a while. It is free and all it requires is some effort. You can also get some of your office colleagues to do the same, and it works. Google sends its crawlers very often to blogs on blogspot.com and crawlers generally follow the links. This is one way of ensuring that Google reaches your website.

You can also use Google Search for searching your website. This is again free and saves you from writing a complicated search engine yourself. This in turn means that Google has to send its crawlers to your website.

Finally, you can sign up for the Ad Sense and Ad Words programs of Google. I for one know that DeveloperIQ’s website makes money using this program. Again, if you align with Google, Google puts your pages on its radar.

Submitting to the Open Directory

The Open Directory is a volunteer-built guide to the web. It is provided as an option at many major search engines, including Google. Given this, being listed with the Open Directory is essential to any site owner.

The good news is that submission is absolutely free. The bad news is that this means there's no guaranteed turnaround time to getting a yes or no answer about whether you have been accepted.

To submit, locate the category you want to be listed in. Then use the "add URL" link that appears at the top of the category page. Fill out the form, and that's it – you've submitted.

If you are accepted, you should see your site appear within about three weeks. If this doesn't happen, then you should resubmit.

As with Yahoo, it's highly recommended that you take the time to learn more about the Open Directory before submitting, in order to maximize the amount of traffic you may receive.

Crawler-based search engines automatically visit web pages to compile their listings. This means that, unlike directories, you are likely to have several, if not many, pages listed with them. This also means that by taking care of how you build your pages, you might rank well in crawler-produced results.

Submitting to Teoma

Teoma is an important crawler-based search engine because it powers the main of the results that appear at the popular Ask Jeeves website. In fact, Ask Jeeves owns Teoma.

Teoma has no free Add URL page. This doesn't mean that you can't get listed, however. Teoma crawls the web, so if you have links pointing at your website, you may get included naturally.

Submitting to MSN

MSN Search is an important crawler-based search engine used by many people. It was once powered by Yahoo's crawler-based results. However, since 2004, when Microsoft realized that there is enough money in search engines, there have been remarkable improvements.

How does MSN work?
MSNBot is the MSN search web crawler that automatically crawls the web to add information to our search index. MSNBot crawls the web by looking for links within websites. So one of the best ways to ensure that MSNBot can find your website is to include valuable content that other sites will want to link to. But again there is no guarantee that it works. This link will help you to submit the site (http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx).

Paid Listings
Every major search engine with significant traffic accepts paid listings. This unique form of search engine advertising means that you can be guaranteed to appear in the top results for the terms you are interested in within a day or less. Given this, paid listings are an option that should be explored by site owners who wish to quickly build visibility. There may also be a long-term advertising option for some.

Cheatsheets of website submission and optimizations

Table 2 provides a fair idea on optimization of websites specific to search engines.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages were once a magic bullet recommended to webmasters suffering from lack of exposure. Relevance of doorway pages has come down, since search engines have become smarter. However, there are enough reasons as to why you should still try it out.

Doorway pages are pages specially optimized for one search engine and 1-3 key words. They are also known as "gateway," "bridge," "entry," "jump" or "supplemental" pages. Doorway pages stand on their own, separate from the rest of a site. They usually feature a logo, some text and a link that encourages visitors to enter the site.

Use it when everything else fails. If you are compelled to use doorway pages, never create more of them than there are "real" pages on your website. Search engines understand that some pages cannot be indexed and will generally allow you to create one page pointing to each page on your site. As long as your doorway pages present unique and useful information, search engines won't ban them.

Beware of search engine Spam

All these are considered spam by search engines:
· Meta refresh tags;
· Invisible text and overuse of tiny text;
· Irrelevant key words in the title and meta tags;
· Excessive repetition of key words;
· Overuse of mirror sites (same sites that point to different URLs);
· Submitting too many pages in one day;
· Identical or nearly identical pages;
· Submitting to an inappropriate category (for directories); and
· Link farms.

Final Thoughts
If you have to build up traffic to your website, it is highly recommended that you actually plan a small budget for promoting the website through search engines. By using AdWords and other public listings, you could actually generate business that is indeed commendable.