If you have an informative web site, search engines want to send you lots of customers. That's because more web surfers find what they want, more they'll use a particular search engine and recommend it to their friends. The search engine also benefits, as it becomes known as a resource that gets its clients - searchers - to their destinations quickly and efficiently. The more people recognize how well engine works as a resource, more it gets recommended, and used. As popularity increases, so do engine's revenues from advertising.

What Does Your Web Site Need To Receive Traffic From The Search Engines?

Small web sites with only 1 or 2 pages set themselves up for failure, simply because they usually don't have enough content of interest. There are of course exceptions, where 1 or 2 pages are each as long as a book. But these are awfully frustrating to read, and no one will be satisfied with them. Most often 1 or 2 page sites are simply too short to provide any useful information, so search engines don't take them seriously. Among other factors, search engines examine how deep a site is. The more meaningful content present, more weighty site is viewed as, and more importance it is given.

If you are wondering about whether to bother, ask yourself this: Why does your company have a web site? What does company do with it? Think about it. Most companies today have web sites, and most market web sites to facilitate customer acquisition, to increase their customer base, and to improve customer retention rates.

There are a number of reasons for having web sites. Many companies use theirs to enhance their customer service. Using a web site as a marketing vehicle is a great way for a company "to put word out" about products, services, or offerings.

Most importantly, remember that your web site is an online resource that your clients can use to find answers to frequently asked questions, "how to" tips, and to educate themselves. When including content on a web site, always remember that knowledge shared may be common to you, but it's likely that you are an expert in eyes of your clients. People visit your web site for your product or service, but also for information. If they find useful, relevant, information, they will keep coming back, and will likely make purchases. People like to buy from experts.

Instead of thinking of your web site as nothing more than an online billboard or business card, think of it as an online menu, that lets people get an idea of what it is you do, and how you do it. Develop a content rich website, optimize it, and let search engines increase your website traffic, naturally. If you optimize each major web page within your site, you will increase rankings in search engine results and therefore receive targeted traffic for each of those pages.

Doing each of above - ensuring relevant content is present, and optimizing pages - will ensure that search engines have what they need so they can do their work. It will also ensure that they can send you targeted traffic (customers), so that you can get that 83% of first time visitors your online business needs to survive.

I had envisaged writing my own online real time search, front ended with Perl, accessing live sites via IP address bands of websites, and returning first ten to twenty hits encountered. This being a more live exercise on current data without missing out on sites created since Googles last run, which was then a five weekly cycle. Thankfully they have addressed this problem too, in an also very fair way of intuitively guessing which sites are genuinely being worked on and are real and viable, via currently experimental algorithms which seem to me to favour real over imitation. So I will hold back on indexing live data, probably indefinitely, in deference to their having pretty well plugged an annoying five week wait hole.

Through all of this I think we should applaud whole Google operation for being so resistant to obvious temptation to placate rich and powerful at expense of whole internet, and integrity of whole internet. They are now firmly in driving seat, and are there because they are fair, an unusual trait in an otherwise somewhat shoddy world compared with today and its values. I used to do deals on handshakes, I would shake Googles hand today for putting content over profit, and people power over consortiums.

Malcolm Pugh October 2003.

http://www.stiffsteiffs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/search-engine-tips.htm