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Search
& Rescue
Saving your Web site from search engine obscurity
By Kent Lewis
According
to a 1997 survey by CommerceNet and Nielsen Media, 71 percent of
Web surfers use search engines to reach their desired destinations.
On a daily basis, the top search engines execute some 75 million
searches, equivalent to 868 searches per second. The average user
spends about 7 minutes per day at search engines, suggesting a 16
percent share of a 43-minute surfing day. If those statistics don't
make you say "huh?" then how about this: if your Web site
isn't in the top 10 query results, you might as well be invisible.
With millions of Web pages being indexed regularly, the chance your
site will come up in a relevant keyword search is slim and getting
slimmer. In the past, Web designers and marketers were happy with
a few META tags and a quick submission to the top eight engines.
This is no longer making the cut. Thanks to spammers and paranoid
search engine programmers, algorithms change regularly, rendering
previous promotional efforts obsolete and ineffectual.
According
to self-reporting statistics, the most popular engines include Alta
Vista, Excite (Magellan and WebCrawler), HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos,
Northern Light and Yahoo! While the human-powered directory Yahoo!
has the most traffic, HotBot actually has the largest index of pages
at 110 million (55 percent of the Web). Alta Vista is a close second
with 100 million. The remaining engines: Northern Light, Excite,
Infoseek and Lycos have a combined index of 165 million.
The
Basics
There are a few basic guidelines to building and promoting a Web
site for maximum visibility with key engines. Most of these techniques
are so fundamental to good site design, only a few minor modifications
should need to be made prior to site promotion.
Content
Site content (text) is usually a no-brainer, but some sites make
the mistake of using large graphics or placing text too low on the
page. Most search engines index the first 250 words and weigh content
by how high up the page it occurs. Another common mistake is using
marketing terminology not familiar to key audiences.
Design
The look and feel of a site is a key differentiator. Unfortunately,
many sites compromise promotional fundamentals to have a flashy,
attractive site. A good site developer can design a highly functional,
good-looking site without undermining its marketability. A good
example of a good design practice that counters search engine effectiveness
is the use of frames. Due to the dynamic nature of many search engines,
this may not always be a problem.
URL
The URL or pointer address is a unique identifier, similar to a
phone number, and allows Web browsers to locate information. A good
URL has both a relevant name (www.company.com) and a descriptive
path (www.company.com/product/). Promoting a specific URL with relevant
keywords helps both the search engine and the visitor quickly and
easily find the site.
Title
The title of your Web page should be short but descriptive, as it
is weighed heavily by search engine algorithms.
META Tags
While only two or three search engines still use META tags, they
provide a description used in query results and increased relevance
for keyword searches. These invisible tags are used in the source
code, similar to comment and ALT tags, and can also be used strategically
to increase relevance in key searches.
Maintenance
The key to any successful Web site, regardless of promotional effectiveness,
is to keep it fresh. A regularly updated site keeps visitors coming
back, and search engines happy, as they re-index sites regularly
and kick off sites that haven't been updated within a given time
period.
Promotion
The second most important key is to submit URLs regularly. Submitting
a URL once and forgetting about it does no good. As indicated above,
search engines update their index regularly, dropping URLs due to
lack of changes, or for random reasons (which seems to happen often).
Monitoring
Lastly, it doesn't do any good to spend time fine-tuning a site
for promotion and submitting the URL without ever assessing its
effectiveness. Tracking search engines daily or weekly will provide
insight into their behavior. It's also an opportunity to see how
your URL is doing as well as research what the top sites are doing.
Summary
Without an aggressive, dedicated team of Web promotion experts,
your site, whether $20 or $2,000,000, will be virtually invisible.
If you are content with the 87th listing on HotBot, then by all
means, disregard this.
Resources:
ICONOCAST
Media Metrix Ratings
Meta Tag Lawsuits
RelevantKnowledge Ratings
Search
Engine Report
Search Engine Sizes
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