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What Do Search Engines Look For?

It is important to understand the process by which search engines index websites. A common misunderstanding is that search engines index the “site.” In reality, they use the domain name to go to the default page which is the home page. The search engine looks for repeating words and phrases to determine what the page is about. Those repeating words and phrases are used to determine the ranking of the page.

Notice that I said “repeating” words and phrases. Keywords found in the keyword meta tag do not determine rankings. At one time, this may have been true. When search engine programs were not very sophisticated, this meta tag was created to help categorize websites. When unethical webmasters began putting in popular keywords that had nothing to do with their website, search engines quit using the keyword meta tag. It resulted in too many irrelevant search results.

Next, the search engine checks for links on the home page that lead to other web pages at that domain. It follows the links and analyzes each individual page. Each page is ranked for the repeating words and phrases on the page.

Each page on a website has a chance for a separate ranking depending on the search terms found there. Searches for those search terms do not lead to the home page but to the page where they are found. This is why it is important to optimize all the important pages on your website. Each one is your chance for a good ranking.

Picking Good Search Terms

It doesn’t matter how great your website is if no one comes. To obtain traffic from search engines, you must have a good ranking. And the foundation of good rankings is to choose effective search terms that will lead visitors to your pages.

The most common error is choosing search terms that are too general. Single-word searches are almost always too general. If you search for piranha on Google or Yahoo! expecting to find more information about the Amazon fish, you’ll find that most of the first page results have nothing to do with the fish. Change “piranha” to “piranha fish” or “amazon piranha” and the results suddenly become very focused.

Test Your Search Terms

The first test to do is a search on Google. Your results will show how many pages are found (on the blue bar at the top). This is your competition for a good ranking. Once you get past three or four million pages, you will have a difficult time getting a good ranking. When you hit the ten million mark, it is a good indication that your search term is much too general.

Once you have found a term that isn’t too general, test it to make sure people are actually using that term. Go to Overture.com and click on Advertiser Center in the upper right corner of the page. On the Advertiser Center page, look at the Tools column on the right side of the page and click on Search Term Suggestion Tool. This gives you a popup window.

Enter the search term you wish to test and press enter or click on the arrow button. The result you see is the number of times that search term was used during the past month. Below your term may be other terms that include term you entered. A large number of those means your term was too general. Look among those terms for searches that are more focused than the one you entered.

The best numbers for searches on your term is in the tens of thousands. By the time you reach 100,000, the term has become too general. If the results are below 10,000, you probably will not receive a lot of traffic even if you get a great ranking.

Once You Find a Great Search Term, Use It

Your most important search term for a web page should be found in the web page title tag. The title should start with the term, then put in a dash, and then include the name of your website. That way visitors will know what the page is about and where it is located.

The web page title is no small matter. It is shown in the blue bar at the top of your visitor’s browser. It is the link shown when they save the web page in their Favorites. It is the link shown on search engine results. And it is used by search engines to help determine your ranking.

The web page title should be no longer than five to eight words. The more words you use, the less important your search term appears. This tag should attract visitors to your site on search engine results. It can get searchers to click on your site rather than some other site.

Web Page Description

The closer a search term is to the beginning of the block in which it is found, the more relevant it is to the search engines. This is why the search term goes at the beginning of the web page title. It is also important to do this with the text on the page.

Write a description of your web page. It should be a complete sentence about ten to fifteen words long. Keep it very concise and avoid using unnecessary words. Don’t start with things like “This website is about . . .” Everyone already knows it’s a website.

Your description should have at the beginning or very near the beginning the most important search terms for that page. This sentence should be the very first text on the page. Putting the sentence in bold will add more importance to the search terms.

Repeat Use of Search Terms

To be significant, search terms should be used at least three to five times on your web page. To test for the keywords on your web page, use SearchEngineWorld.com’s Keyword Density Analyzer at www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi. This tool will show you the search terms found on your page. You can ignore the one-word keywords. These will not be effective in getting good rankings.

Bonus Points

You get bonus points if your search term is also found in your domain name. Search engines also analyze domain names when creating rankings. However, your domain name should contain the most important search term for your entire website and may not be applicable for the specific page you are optimizing.

Content Is King

To search engines, content is king. They make their money selling advertising. Advertising dollars are based on the number of visitors they receive. Giving good search results will increase visitors. And since visitors are looking for information, giving good content-rich results will bring more visitors.

The computer programs used by search engines to analyze web pages cannot read with comprehension. They see repeating words and phrases as defining subject matter. They see the number of words on the page as the quantity of content. Since search engines are looking for content, they see larger pages as better content pages. Ideally, web pages should contain approximately 400 to 600 words.

Make Your Content Page Sell

Having a web page with a block of 400 words on it may look good to search engines but it’s also a good way to drive away visitors. The next step is to make it a page that sells. You have about ten seconds to grab the attention of a visitor arriving at your page.

Get your visitors’ attention with a great headline. If the visitors found your web page as a result of a search, confirm that they arrived at a web page containing the content they were looking for by using the page’s prominent search term in the headline.

A picture placed high on the page also catches their eye and reflects your content. Pictures have the ability to communicate paragraphs of information in a single glance. The picture will confirm that they have found the information they are looking for.

Break up the text in small, digestible chunks. Insert sub-heads every three or four paragraphs. These need be no more than a bolded line of text. Tell what is coming next. Make it interesting. Give them benefits for reading your text. Point them in the direction you want them to go.

Your Menu Should Point the Way

Your menu can be used for more than navigation. It can tell the visitors what your site contains. Name your pages so it is clear what they will find.

For example, if your website sells camping gear, have separate pages to divide the your items into categories. Have a product page named for sleeping bags, another for backpacks, another for cooking utensils, and so forth. Then when visitors sees your menu, they know what your website is about and what will be found on each page.

Use Nectar to Attract Visitors

The flower has pollen it needs to spread in order to reproduce and cannot do that by itself. To attract honeybees, the flower produces nectar. The honeybee comes to collect the nectar but in the process collects pollen that is carried to other flowers.

Websites work in a similar fashion. The flower represents the website. The pollen is the products we wish to sell. And the nectar is whatever we are using to attract visitors to our site. Unfortunately, many of us create websites without any nectar and then wonder why we have no visitors.

Most people using search engines are looking for information. That’s what content is all about. And that’s why to search engines, content is king.

Let’s say we have a website selling digital cameras. Lot’s of sites have digital cameras for sale. How does someone looking for them choose which one to buy? It will be the site that provides the best information about digital cameras. You could explain, for example, the difference between optical and digital zoom and why that is important. By providing lots of this type of information, you become an expert in the field. And who would you trust to buy a digital camera from, an expert or someone who is just trying to make a buck selling them?

Submit to the Search Engines

A lot has happened in the search engine arena since the beginning of 2004. Any information you read written before that time may easily be out of date.

Yahoo! has spent the last year and a half on a buying spree. They bought out Inktomi, a major provider of search results. They purchased Overture which is a major provider of sponsored website advertising. They acquired the search engines Alta Vista and AllTheWeb. And they dropped Google so they could provide their own search results.

As a result of all the changes taken place recently, Yahoo now provides results for AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Dogpile, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, MSN, and Lycos. Google provides results for AOL, AskJeeves (Teoma), and Netscape. Although the number of engines Google provides results for is much smaller than Yahoo!, remember that Google is still the most popular search engine. Open Directory (DMOZ.com/org) also provides directory results to AllTheWeb, AOL, AskJeeves, Google, Hotbot, Lycos and even Yahoo!. Since Open Directory is free, many smaller search engines get information from them.

Who Should You Submit to?

Google should be first on your list, not only because it is the most popular search engine but also because it takes the longest. Expect it to take four to six weeks or more to get your site indexed.

Submit to Google at: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Before Yahoo! dropped Google, you had to pay $299 to have them just look at your website. It was better to submit to Google because you would show up on Yahoo! web searches. But that is no long the case.

Yahoo! is now accepting web submissions for free. You have to have a Yahoo! ID but that is also free. Although quicker than Google, expect indexing to take at least several weeks.

Submit to Yahoo! at: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Open Directory at DMOZ.com is more complicated to submit to because it is a directory. Websites are placed in categories. If you submit to the wrong category, your submission may be rejected. And you can submit to only one category. Review the websites at the bottom of your selected category page to make sure you fit.

Submit to Open Directory at: http://www.dmoz.com/add.html

The Importance of Reciprocal Linking

Although link popularity doesn’t seem to be part of website optimization, it has been included because it is a one of the measures search engines use in determining rankings. For Google, it is critical. This refers to the number of links pointing to your website. The more quality links, the more popular your website is considered and the higher your rankings will be.

The easiest way to get links pointing to your website is through reciprocal linking which is nothing more than an agreement: If you link to me, I’ll link to you. It sounds simple but if not approached correctly, you may find it difficult.

It is important to remember that this type of linking is not a matter of asking another website owner to do you a favor. Both websites benefit.

Increased traffic. Some of the other website’s visitors will see your link and follow it to your site. This increases your traffic. Some of your visitors will see the link to the other website and will follow it increasing their traffic.

Better rankings. Having a link pointing to your website helps increase your rankings. Your link pointing to the other site also helps their rankings.

Faster indexing. When a website having a link pointing to your site gets indexed by a search engine, it will follow the link to your website and index you. When your site is indexed, the search engine will follow your link to the other side and index them.

More frequent indexing. Also important to a website is repeat visits from the search engines. As you make changes to your site, you want to be re-indexed and your ranking updated. Having more links to your website will increase the number of visits you receive from the search engines. It is possible to be indexed by search engines several times a week.

Create a List of Websites

Know your audience. What are the kinds of things your visitors are interested in? Those are the best sites for exchanging links. If your website was about fishing, for example, your visitors would also be interested in things like boating, camping, RVs, etc.

Another source of websites is to do searches on the search terms most important to your website. Looks for websites that are similar in subject but are not direct competitors.

Another great source of websites are those linking to your competitors. You can find them by doing a search on Google. In the search box, enter “links: www.competitorsdomainname.com” where you put in the domain name of your competitor. If they are linking to your competitor, they may also be interested in exchanging links with you.

Things to Look for

First of all, do those websites have a links page? It can be very difficult exchanging links with a site that doesn’t have a place to put your link.

Next, are they keeping their website up-to-date? In the spring of 2004, I found a website that said in a large headline, “Click here to receive our new 2001 catalog.” So much for being up-to-date.

You can also check the date a web page was last modified. Right-click on the page. If you are using Internet Explorer, click on Properties. For some larger sites, that information is not available. If you are using Mozilla or Foxfire for browsing (available at www.mozilla.org) or Netscape, click on Page Info and that information will always be provided.

Links from good content sites who have many incoming links are worth more than sites that do not have good content or many incoming links. Google’s measure for this is called Page Rank and measures link popularity. You can get a website’s PageRank by installing the Google Toolbar on Internet Explorer.

It is found at http://toolbar.google.com. Be sure to open Options and mark the checkbox for the PageRank tool. When you visit a site, the green bar on the PageRank tool get longer the higher the site’s ranking. You can also put your cursor over the tool and a popup label will tell you how many points out of ten a site gets. Websites with a PageRank of four or better make the best links.

Create a Links Page

You cannot establish reciprocal links if you do not have a page on which to put the links. You can also call this page a “Resources” page if you want to impress your visitors with additional information.

Add a Link

Before contacting another site about exchanging links, be sure you have already placed a link on your site pointing to their website. They will be much more inclined to trade links if they see you have already done your part.

You can create your links using the following HTML code: <a href="http://www.putlinkdomainhere.com" target="top"><b>Web Site Name</b></a> Description of the web site here.

The best place to find a description of their website is to look in their description meta tag. Right-click on their web page and select Source. You will find the meta tag near the top of the HTML window that opens on your screen. It will say something like:

<meta name="description" content="This part contains the description.">

Ask to Exchange Links

Send an email to the website you want to exchange links with. Tell them you have visited their website and say something you like about their site. A complement is a good way to introduce you and warm them up to the idea. Ask if they would like to exchange links. Tell them you have already set up a link to their site and give the URL so they can click on it and go directly to your links page.

Give them the information they need to create a link to you. Include your website name, the URL, and a description of your website.

Follow Up

After asking to exchange links, be sure to follow up. If you do not hear back from them after a week or two, you might remind them of your request. If they still do not respond, remove the link to their site.

If they agreed to put up the link to your site and failed to do so even after a reminder, then remove the link to their website. Reciprocal means you both do links.

Regularly Seek Reciprocal Links

It takes time to get a lot of links to your site. Seek them on a regular basis and over time you will gain a considerable number. Occasionally go through your links page to make sure all the links still work. Delete any that are broken.

Get Link Popularity Reports

You can sign up for free email reports of your link popularity at www.linkpopularitycheck.com. You can also have the reports compare you with three of your competitors.

Weekly reports are good to remind you to spend some time on it every week. A half hour each week will bring great results over time.

Myths about Rankings

You can get good rankings if you use popular keywords in your keyword meta tag.

Because what you put in your keyword meta tag doesn’t have to relate to anything on your web page, search engines don’t pay attention to what’s there. It would be too easy to cheat for good rankings.

Using the most popular keywords will bring lots of traffic to your website.

Well, that has some measure of truth. But what good will it do you to have traffic arriving at your site expecting to find Paris Hilton? You aren’t looking for visitors; you are looking for buyers.

You can pay companies to get you indexed faster.

Well, yes, you can pay them. No, they can’t get you indexed any faster. No company has an “in” with Google, Yahoo!, et al. You can establish links going to your website and that will get you indexed faster. In one case, I had a website indexed in four days as a result of inbound links. I never did submit the site to the search engines because they found it before I could submit.

Link popularity isn’t important.

It isn’t important if you don’t want good rankings. You won’t get a good ranking on Google without it.

Some companies guarantee good rankings.

Anyone can guarantee a ranking if they get to choose the search term. It will have to be unique enough that no other website will use it. And it will also be unique enough that no one will use it.

Some companies guarantee first page placement.

Sure, they can get you on page one. They use pay per click advertising and bid on keywords no one else wants. You’ll show up at the top of the page. But no one will be searching on that term so they don’t have to pay for any clicks and you don’t get any traffic.

A great ranking will bring lots of traffic/sales

When I search on Google for my name, I come up with a number one ranking. But guess what? I don’t get any traffic or sales from it. No one is searching for my name. If you want to get a lot of traffic, people have to be searching for the terms where you rank high.

So you rank high on a term lots of people are searching for but you are still not getting any sales? All traffic isn’t created equal. Are your search terms bringing traffic interested in what you have to offer? Check your traffic statistics. Are your visitors only hitting your home page? That’s a good indication they are not finding what they are looking for or they do not like what they see. Make sure you have an appealing page that leads visitors to other pages on your site. If they still do not visit those other pages, re-examine your search terms for that page.

You Must Resubmit Every Month for High Rankings

The only reason to submit a website is to become listed on a search engine. Once you are listed, they will come back periodically to re-index your site. They want your listing to be up-to-date as much as you do. Make frequent changes to your site and they will come back more often so they will be up-to-date.

Gateway or Doorway Pages Will Deliver Good Rankings

The idea of doorway pages is to have pages individually optimized pages for each search engine to obtain high rankings for selected keywords. They are often intended only for the search engines to see and visitors arriving at them are redirected to your other web pages.

Remember that search engines want to see good content. That is the best way to get good rankings for all of them. Having redirects on doorway pages is a big no-no. Using redirects can get you banned. Having pages duplicated for each search engine is a big no-no. It’s called spamming search engines and they don’t like spam any more than you do. Stick to good content pages and you will look good to all the search engines.

Summary

What makes me an expert in optimizing websites? I’ve been building websites for a decade. It didn’t take me long to figure out that building websites was pointless unless I had visitors. And so I learned how to optimize websites the hard way – from experience.

No, I didn’t have to do a bunch of research to gather the material for this article. It all came out of my head and from my experience. I’ve lived it. I’ve had a top ranking website on Google for longer than I can remember. Do a search on Google for “utah fishing” and you’ll see my Utah Fish Finder website. As small as Utah is, I do about 30,000 page views per month on that site. That’s enough visits that it used to crash my page counter. It forced me to learn web programming just so I could deal with the traffic.

You can get that kind of traffic as well. It requires two things. One, you must have a good, content-rich website. Two, you must optimize your web pages so they will be found on the search engines. Follow these principles I have outlined and you will be on your way.

Resources

Keeping up-to-date with changes in search engine optimization is important to keep your website ranking high. To help you be aware of changes, I have included the following links. Sign up for newsletters where they are available. Stay informed and you will be able to make changes to your web pages when it becomes necessary.

Google guidelines for webmasters: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

www.searchengines.com
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.searchengineworld.com
www.webposition.com (also has software used to help with rankings)
www.highrankings.com/advisor.htm (newsletter subscription)
www.highrankings.com/forum (forum)
www.webmasterworld.com (many website forums)