by Andrew J. LaDuke

Getting Your Web Site into Search Engines

Getting your company's web site listed in the major search engines is the single most important goal you can focus on once your web site has been completed. Maximizing exposure can increase sales, improve your customer service levels, and provide higher overall customer satisfaction.

This is also the toughest challenge you'll face, as you can imagine. Anyone selling anything on the World Wide Web wants their site to appear on the first page of Yahoo, Google, etc. An entire industry has sprung up, ready and willing to take your money to help you get to the top of the listings.

Consider the facts. Most Internet users consider "searching" their most important internet activity. Second only to using email, searching for product info ranks number one. Almost half of all consumers who buy something online, found that web site or product in a search engine.

There are basically three ways we recommend to improve your site's ranking in the search engines.

Maximize Content

First, make sure you organize your keywords, site description, and content on each page to be "spider friendly." Spiders are what the search engines use to go out and gather data on what sites are on the Internet. Often, but not always, they will look at your "meta tags," which are lines of programming code hidden in your web page that include your site's keywords and description.

The web page "title" (this is what appears in the bar at the top of your browser), the page content, especially the first few paragraphs, and the keywords and description, may all be compared against each other for relevancy. This is the least expensive way to maximize your rankings.

Many experts will suggest you insert your keywords several times in the first few paragraphs of the web page. That way, search engines that don't utilize keywords in your programming code will easily capture your product or service.

Links To Your Site

Second, get other sites to provide a link to your site. Why? Because many of the search engines consider a link to your site as a kind of "vote" that your site is a good quality place worth visiting. This is very important task that most companies overlook. Want to know how many sites link to yours? Go to a major search engine like Altavista.com, and type in "link:http://www.yoursitename.com" substituting the name of your web site. Remember, only sites that link to yours AND sites that are already in that search engine will show up. For kicks, find how many sites link to Amazon.com by typing "link:http://www.amazon.com"

Go to all of your suppliers, and associations in which you are a member. Ask them to add a link to your site. Actually, insist on it. Next, look for web sites that may complement your site. Find the link for the webmaster, and send a quick email note asking if they'd consider putting your link on one of their pages. Always offer to reciprocate by putting a link to their site on yours.

Newsgroups are a great way to get a link on the web. Google has a tab labeled "Groups." Newsgroups are basically places where people post messages to each other publicly. They are a great source of information. Simply find a group that is related to your business and post a message. Make sure your message is useful and not considered spam. The sneaky part is to include a "signature" in your email that contains a link to your site.

Cough Up the Dough

Third, and finally, use a pay service. Some sites, such as Yahoo, offer "pay for inclusion." This starts at about $300 dollars. An alternative is "pay per click" which charges a small fee each time someone clicks through to your site. A maximum budget can be set, to limit the amount spent each month. Google and Overture have excellent programs of this type. Per click fees are based upon the popularity of the keywords selected.

To minimize pay per click charges, select keywords that are very specific to your product or service. For example, instead of the general term "camping," specify "camping gear" or "camping equipment."

These services will include extensive tools to measure and track your results. Wait 4-8 weeks to get a snapshot of your ad campaign's effectiveness.

Investigate Where Your Site Ranks

At this point, you may wonder if your site is listed in any of the search engines. There are some simple ways to check. Minor variations exist, depending on which search engine is being considered.

At Altavista.com, instead of entering a search term, enter your complete URL (Uniform Resource Locator, basically your complete web site address) with "url:" in front of it. For example, to check Amazon.com, you would enter "url:http://www.amazon.com" and then click the search button. At Google, type in "allinurl:" with the name of the web site, to see if the site is in their listing database. Do not include "http://" in your entry. So again to check Amazon.com, enter "allinurl:www.amazon.com" and click search.

What about Yahoo? Yahoo's home page gets their results from Google. So if checking Google, you've essentially killed two birds with one stone.

This is a simple and brief overview of some basic ways to maximize your site's position in the search engines. There are many more methods, tools, and services to use that can help achieve your goals.

Your web design professional should be up to date on the latest techniques so you don't have to. They can help initiate a "pay per click" program for you, and provide accurate return-on-investment analysis, to be sure you're getting the most bang for your buck.