Search engine submission and ranking remain a mystery to a lot of people even
some webmasters and yet search engine submission can be an important part of
effective website marketing. In this article we will give an introduction to
search engine optimization and how to manage your site to improve your ranking.
What is a search engine?
It's fairly safe to say that most people understand what a search engine
is but for those who don't it is essentially a database of website's on
the internet that you can search by entering keywords and phrases to find
what you are looking for.
Search engine submission
Search engines usually 'crawl' website's looking for links and following
them indexing each page they come across. However unless you tell a search
engine that your site exists you are leaving it's discovery to chance which
isn't very effective!
In fact we're often surprised by how many companies don't submit their
web sites and yet it is critical that you do otherwise they may never get
noticed. Even fewer companies concern themselves with doing any sort of
search engine optimization!
Some key search engines to submit to include :
Of course this is only a few of the well known ones and there are many
many more. Google is probably THE most important search engine to get on
as not only is it the most popular search engine but it also powers a lot
of other search sites.
Search engine optimization
Submitting your site to a search engine usually isn't enough and so unless
you are very lucky you're going to have to put some thought into your web
site design.
Some key pointers :
There are various optimization tactics that effect your sites rating in
search engines. Below is a brief list of some of the key search engine optimization
factors you should take into account when designing a website.
-
It is much easier to target a more specific phrase than a generic keyword
or keyword combinations
-
One of the most important factors is getting other sites to link to you
your website using your target keywords and phrases as the link text.
-
Provide links on your pages to other websites with relevant content but
do not abuse reciprocal linking as you will be penalized heavily.
-
Your page should be safe for older browsers, use html links and avoid framesets
to ensure a crawler can index it.
-
Post articles and press releases to other sites as well as your own that
then link back to yours.
-
Ensure your content is relevant and to the point and make correct use of
punctuation and grammar.
-
Ensure your HTML code is well formatted making appropriate use of tags such
as h1, h2, alt, etc. Search engines like Google rank prefer standards-compliant
and semantically correct sites.
-
Use meta tags including page title, keywords and description making sure
they accurately reflect the content of your page.
-
Don't try to cheat the search engines (e.g. hidden links & keywords,
cloaking, etc). If you are caught you'll be penalized heavily if you've not
dropped completely!
- Create a sitemap to help searchengines and people find your pages. This can be done easily with a free online HTML and Google XML Sitemap Generator.
Be aware that this is not a definitive list of search engine optimization
tips and the detail of each point is beyond the scope of this article however
we have picked some useful links at the bottom of this article that will
provide further guidance.
Conclusion
Whilst search engine optimization and submission is a job in itself it
is well worth taking the time and effort to make a few careful considerations
to your design and content in order to gain higher rankings and ultimately
bring in more traffic.
With every website from db net solutions we'll work with you to reach your
target audience and optimize and submit your site to various search engines
for you.
Useful links
Below are some useful links and further reading to help you with search
engine optimization.
