3. When you stop paying for a PPC submission, your listing disappears and so does traffic.

PPCs can be an effective short-term solution for gaining exposure and driving immediate traffic to your Web site while you wait for full indexing, but it can become expensive if you use it as a long-term solution.

How Do Search Engines Work?:

Search engines compile their databases with aid of spiders (a.k.a. robots). These search engine spiders crawl Internet from link to link, identifying Web pages. Once search engine spiders find a Web site, they index content on those pages, making URLs available to Internet users. In turn, owners of Web sites submit their URLs to search engines for crawling and, ultimately, inclusion in their databases. This is known as search engine submission.

When you use search engines to find something on Internet, you're basically asking search engine to scan its database and match your keywords and phrases with content of URLs they have on file at that time. Spiders regularly return to URLs they index to look for changes. When changes occur, index is updated to reflect new information.

What Are The Pros And Cons Of Search Engines?

Pro: With vast wealth of information available on Internet, search engines are most effective and efficient way to find information based on your specific search requests.

Con: Because search engines index mass quantities of data, you are likely to get irrelevant responses to your search requests.

Are Search Engines All The Same?

Search results vary from search engine to search engine in terms of size, speed and content. The results will also vary based on ranking criteria search engines use. If you aren't getting results you need, try a different search engine. While results may not be wildly different, you may get a few search results from one search engine that you didn't from another.

How Do Search Engines Rank Web Pages?

When ranking Web pages, search engines follow specific criteria, which may vary from one search engine to another. Naturally, they want to generate most popular (or relevant) pages at top of their list. Search engines will look at keywords and phrases, content, HTML meta tags and link popularity -- just to name a few -- to determine value of Web page.

For achieving top rankings, and staying indexed long-term, best submission technique may be to not submit at all. Instead, try to establish third party links to your Web site and wait for Google’s spider to find you on its own. WebPosition’s Page Critic offers numerous strategies for doing this.

4. Will Doorway or Entrance pages get me banned from Google?

That depends on whether these pages contain spam. If your definition of a doorway page is a page full of irrelevant or duplicate content, and excessive keyword use, then yes, you could find your site banned. That’s how Google often defines a doorway page. Consequently, term doorway has developed a negative connotation over years.

If your optimized page is nothing more than an extension of your main web site that happens to contain search engine friendly content, then you’ll be fine. In fact, you’ll be rewarded for effort through top rankings. The key is not whether you label a page a doorway, entrance, optimized, informational, or “whatever” page. The key is whether page contains quality, relevant content that provides search engine with what it wants to see.

Google mentions that they discourage use of “doorway” pages because they fear that webmasters will optimize for keywords that are not relevant to page’s content. This is a legitimate fear as they are in business to provide relevant results to their visitors. However, if you create pages that contain what Google is looking for, then obviously Google will not penalize this page, or view it differently from any other page on your site.

With this in mind, here are a few of my tips on creating Google-friendly pages:

1. Always Include Relevant Content - Make sure that content on each of your pages is relevant to your site. Many sites have various resources on a number of different topics. This is fine, as long as overall theme for your Web site is solid. I would also suggest that you organize your related content into individual directories. Some businesses find it beneficial to organize each sub-theme of their site into a separate domain so they can cross-link domains. If you do this, make sure you have links from other sites as well.

2. Avoid Duplicate Content - Create each page with unique content. If you are targeting different search engines for same keyword, then you may find that you have some very similar content between certain pages. If this is case, you can always create a robot.txt file to tell each search engine crawler not to index a page or directory that was created for another search engine. See October 2000 issue (http://www.marketposition.com/mp-1000.htm#THREE) of MarketPosition for more information on creating a robot.txt file.

3. Avoid Keyword Stuffing - Creating pages that excessively repeat your keyword phrase is definitely not a good idea. This almost always will throw up a red flag to search engine and is one of most common forms of "spamming." How many keywords is too many? See WebPosition’s Page Critic for up to date, specific recommendations regarding how many words and keywords are recommended in each area of your page.

4. Design Good Looking Pages - Although Google cannot tell if your page is aesthetically pleasing, it is recommended that you create pages that look good and fit theme of your Web site. This will definitely increase click through rate from arrival page to rest of your Web site.

5. Avoid Using Hidden Image Links - Many site owners think they can fool Google by including transparent 1x1 pixel image links on their home page that point to their optimized pages. These are very small images contained in a hyperlink that are not visible to naked eye. This can get your page dropped from Google's index.

6. Avoid using links that have same color as background on your page - Many site owners try to hide links on their home page by making text color same as background color of page. As with scenario above, this can also get your page banned from Google.

7. Avoiding using Javascript Redirection Techniques - Many Web site owners have implemented use of Javascript to redirect a user to another page while allowing Google to crawl page that includes Javascript code. This did work for a while, but Google eventually caught on. Other forms of redirection, like IP cloaking are also frowned upon by Google.

In Summary:

The rules regarding each search engine change routinely. That’s why WebPosition’s Page Critic is updated monthly to keep pace. As a search engine marketer, it’s critical that you keep informed as to latest search engine rules and strategies. It's also important to understand that WebPosition Gold is only a tool. When used properly, it will not get you banned or blocked, and will in fact improve your rankings dramatically. However, as with any tool, you can choose to ignore its recommendations and to go your own way. For example, you can use a hammer to build a fine house, or you can take that same hammer to knock a bunch of holes in someone’s wall. Ultimately, this call is up to you, user of tool.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from Matt Paolini. Matt Paolini is a Webmaster and support specialist for FirstPlace Software, makers of WebPosition Gold (http://www.webposition.com). He's also an experienced freelance Search Engine Optimization Specialist and Cold Fusion/ASP.NET/SQL Server Developer/Designer. For more information on his services, please visit http://www.webtemplatestore.net/ or send him an email at webmaster@webtemplatestore.net Interested in reprinting above article?

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