Click here to visit a guide to hundreds of finance links!
Click here to visit a guide to hundreds of finance links!
By Richard Morochove
First published June 23, 2003
The number of Web sites is on the rise once again. Netcraft's monthly survey for June lists 40.9 million sites. A year ago, there were 38.8 million, which slid to 35 million by fall.
Now that the online competition is increasing, how can you make your business Web site stand out?
Many prospective customers turn to Internet search engines, such as Google, to find sources for the products or services they seek. Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures a Web site is easy to find on a search engine.
An SEO consultant will charge thousands of dollars to fine-tune a site and boost it into the top search results. Here's my penny-pincher's guide to some simple, low-cost SEO tips you can use
In order to optimize your Web site, you need to know a little about how search engines work. Most engines send out spiders, automated robots that crawl the Web, searching for new and updated Web pages. The most important search engine is Google. Its search database now includes over 3 billion Web pages.
Text from these pages is maintained in an index, which is updated periodically with fresh results from the spider. When someone types in a search request, the search engine uses a closely-guarded proprietary method to create a listing of the most relevant Web pages.
While a search request may return a listing of many thousands of sites, most searchers will not look beyond the first two or three pages of results. So if your site isn't ranked in the top 30 or so results, the number of visitors who will learn about your site through the search engine will be very limited.
There are two key things you must do to rank high in an Internet search. First, the search engine must know your site exists and include your Web pages in its index. Second, you must include text on your pages that is relevant to a popular search request.
If your Web site has been around for more than about 6 months and at least one other site has linked to it, chances are it's already in the search engine's database. If it isn't, submit your URL to notify the engine. This doesn't absolutely guarantee a welcome visit from the search spider, but it works in most cases.
While some search engines charge a fee for URL submission, Google does not for its URL submission form. Be patient, because it may take a month or two after your request before your site shows up in the search engine's public database.
Google also provides search engine results for Yahoo, AOL and Netscape. However, since Yahoo recently acquired the Inktomi search engine, I expect it will soon switch its search supplier. Inktomi supplies search results to Hotbot and MSN.
There are just a handful of search engines which collectively handle over 90% of search requests, so it's easy to submit manually to the ones that count.
Don't waste your money on services that promise to submit your site automatically to thousands of search engines. Most of these are Free For All (FFA) links sites, which are absolutely useless for delivering visitor traffic. However, you will receive much more spam, since the FFA sites feed many commercial mailing lists.
Other services promise to submit your pages to Google and other important engines daily or weekly. This is unnecessary. Once you're in the search engine's database, you'll stay there, unless your Web site goes offline. Frequent submissions will not improve your search ranking.
Next, give some thought as to how your prospective customers will search for your products or services on the Web. What search term will they use?
Overture.com's Advertiser Center provides a nifty Search Term Suggestion tool that lets you see how many times a search term has been used in the previous month. You can use it to check on the relative popularity of different search terms.
Is it more productive to optimize for "computer consultant" or "IT consultant?" According to Overture, computer consultant was searched 11,050 times in May, while IT consultant was searched 3,366 times.
Once you decide on the words that make up the best search term, work it into the text of your Web pages. Include the words in the title of your Web page, which is considered important by the search engines. If the title of the main page of your site is Home, Your Company Name, or something similar, you are wasting a valuable showcase for the search engine.
Don't create a home page without text. Fancy splash pages with graphics and Macromedia's Flash animation may look great to you, but they will be ignored by the search engine. The spider will not be able to translate your graphics into searchable text.
If you'd like to learn more about search engines and how they work, I recommend Search Engine Watch. A paid subscription is required for full access to this site, but there's valuable information available without charge, including a newsletter that tracks search engine developments. CW
Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.
Copyright ©2003 by Morochove & Associates Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed by any means without our prior written permission.
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