Search Engine Basics

Written by JC Anderl


Search engines and directories are one ofrepparttar best ways to round up some targeted traffic to your website. Here arerepparttar 128345 basics of search engines and directories.

Search Engine Vs. Directories

The main difference between engines and directories isrepparttar 128346 way they index sites. Although search engines vary inrepparttar 128347 way they index, they all basically use a "spider" to crawl from link to link and indexrepparttar 128348 meta-tags, keywords, and page words to get their relevancy when a user searches their index.

Directories, onrepparttar 128349 other hand, have actual people look at a site and decide if they will add it to their directory, and where they will add it.

Directory Submission

Submitting to directories involves a different process because it more closely involves people. Although definitely notrepparttar 128350 only ones, two very important directories are Yahoo! and Open Directory.

If your site is commercial in nature, Yahoo! charges $299 for a review that doesn't even guarantee that you will get listed. It isrepparttar 128351 single most important engine or directory, so if you haverepparttar 128352 money, it is definitely a great idea to submit.

To submit to Yahoo! go to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+Business. Just fill outrepparttar 128353 form and they editors will take care ofrepparttar 128354 rest.

The Open Directory is based on a large group of volunteer editors. It is free to submit your site. To submit, go to www.dmoz.org,repparttar 128355 web address for Open Directory, and findrepparttar 128356 category that your site would fit in. Take some time and look around, you want to be sure thatrepparttar 128357 category that you pick is definitelyrepparttar 128358 best one for your site. Once you have foundrepparttar 128359 right category, click onrepparttar 128360 add URL link inrepparttar 128361 top right corner.

DOES SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC MATTER?

Written by Bob McElwain


The short answer is, "Sure." And it likely always will. Butrepparttar amount of free traffic search engines now deliver to many small online businesses doesn't amount to much. And what there is of it continues to decline in importance. Pay-for- submission models are rapidly eliminating free options.

These trends will continue. And many have been aware of this for years. My own site provides a good example ofrepparttar 128344 results.

A Question Overlooked

A fellow called a while back asking aboutrepparttar 128345 services I offer. When he asked how my web pages ranked onrepparttar 128346 search engines, I said I didn't know, that I had never checked. I guess that wasn't what he wanted to hear, for he hung up.

But it is fact. Why would I care what positions I have? My log files show I'm getting less than 20% of hits fromrepparttar 128347 search engines. Givenrepparttar 128348 competition for keyword phrases such as "site promotion," it is no surprise I don't get more.

Answering The Question

Still,repparttar 128349 call triggered action of sorts. I ran Web Position on my major keywords. The results were startling.

I askedrepparttar 128350 program to go 99 listings deep. It found only 4 pages of over 700 on my site listed forrepparttar 128351 keywords entered, and none at all aboverepparttar 128352 50th position. So how am I'm getting hits?

The Mystery Of Search Engines Unanswered

Allrepparttar 128353 above report means is that I am not getting many hits on keywords I felt were appropriated for a particular page. For example, site promotion brought up my Tips page as #86 at AltaVista. And this in itself is startling, forrepparttar 128354 page changes every week! (It's also entirely in size 1, something some experts believe AltaVista considers spam.)

Web Editorial Service was #73 at Lyris, butrepparttar 128355 page is not an article I wrote. Web Site Promotion Services was #52 at Google. Site Promotion Services was #6 at Overture.com, but I paid for this position.

In opening STAT, I followed advice that proved to be bad info. I developed a massive set of targeted keywords forrepparttar 128356 site. Most ofrepparttar 128357 terms I began with have disappeared since exploring with them. And with but few exceptions, I now have only clues as torepparttar 128358 keywords on a given page that actually bring a visitor.

Still,repparttar 128359 site initially brought pretty good free traffic from search engines. It peaked aboutrepparttar 128360 end of 1998 at about 40% of total traffic, and has steadily been declining since.

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