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Search Engine Placement and Traffic
by Tad Coffin
MediaTitan.com
Search engine traffic is among the best traffic your web site can receive. Visitors coming from a search engine already have in mind exactly what they are looking for and will therefore be much more likely to buy a product or service.
Getting listed in a search engine is easy. Simply go to a search engine, find the "submit url" link and submit your site. Getting listed well in a search engine is not so easy. A highly ranked listing on a search engine involves a number of factors including domain name, meta-tags, page text and perhaps most importantly, relevant links from other sites to your own. Since most people click on the top ten results given from a search engine, it is important to be in the top ten for maximum effectiveness.
Before we go into how to get a top listing, we should take a look at how search engines work. A search engine is different from a directory, as there is no person actually reviewing each site. Search engines send out programs called spiders to take a look at the pages submitted and index the information on them in a database. Using a secret algorithm, the search engine ranks a page's relevance to a search made by a surfer and brings back the results. As a search engine marketer, it is your job to make sure your pages work well with the search engine algorithm to get a high ranking listing.
An extremely simplified example of a search engine algorithm to determine page relevance to a searched word or term would be something like the following: 1 part domain name, 1part page title, 1 part meta description, 1 part meta keywords, 2 parts page text and 3 parts links into your site from other relevant sites.
Now that we have a basic understanding of how a search engine works, lets examine each of these factors that will be taken into account in the algorithm. First there is the domain name of a site. If you are trying to get your site ranked highly under the term widgets, it is ideal to have the word widgets in the domain name. For example, http://www.widgets4sale.com will rank higher under a search for widgets than an otherwise identical page with the domain http://www.stuff4sale.com/. Pretty simple, huh?
The page title is also important for search engine relevancy. The page title is found between the html <head></head> tags like so: <meta name="title" content="Your Page Title">. The title tag should be limited to 52 characters with the most important words earliest in the title. For example, if your site sells widgets, a title of "Widgets for sale in a variety of colors" would be better than "A variety of colored widgets for Sale." No sweat, eh?
Next we'll cover meta page description. Like the title, and all meta tags, the page description is located in the <head> of an HTML document. The page description should be longer than the title and describe the page in plain English using as many relevant words as possible. An example page description might go something like this: <meta name="description" content="Widgets for sale in all shapes colors and sizes direct from the distributor for discount prices.">
Since both the page title and description may both be visible in the search engine results page, it is important to make sure they accurately describe your page in plain English terms surfers will understand.
Also of importance in most search engine algorithms are the key words. Key words are a list of words a person looking for your site might type to get the information or content your site provides. The key words can either be short phrases separated by a comma, such as "custom widgets, discount skyhooks" or single words "skyhooks, widgets." Don't repeat keywords.
As stated previously, one of the most important factors in getting listed in search engines such as Google, AltaVista and NorthenLights is the number of links on the web pointing to your site. Every web page on the net that points to your own site adds a point, so to speak, to your search engine ranking. The higher the ranking of the site linking to your own, the more points you would receive for that link. If there were two sites that ranked equivalently in all other ways, the site with the most indexed links coming to it would be ranked higher.
To see this principle in action, go to a search engine like Altaista and search for widgets. Click on the top site returned and then type the url preceded by link: in the search box. For example:
Link: www.widgets.com
This will return a list of all the sites that link to the site www.widgets.com. Top ranked sites generally have many, many sites linking to them.
So how do you go about getting links to your site? Ask, trade beg and plead other websites to list your own site.
Keep in mind that search algorithms change with frequency so no one can figure them out precisely, but generally use different combinations of the mentioned criteria. Also remember that this is just and introduction to the topic. For more information on Search Engines, go straight to the source:
http://www.altavista.com/sites/about
http://www.google.com/about.html
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