Guide to Search Engines

What are they?

Web users who know what product or service they are looking for but don't know who sells it can use one of hundreds of search engines to find the relevant websites.

Most search engines are free and they are the best means of drawing new visitors available to you. A search engine is a computer programme that, when queried for a specific type of information, hunts for that information in a pool of data called a database.

Most search engines access databases by using keywords, which are common terms for information you seek - a "keyword search" (e.g. you want to take a vacation in Scotland so you might use "Hotels Scotland" as your keywords). A search engine responds to this query with a list of matching "hits".

How do they work?

Search engines make use of "robots", "spiders", "crawlers", and various other computer programs that trace hyperlinks across the Web. While such "robots" cruise from one site to the next, they index the web documents they find and send the results back to a database.

When a search keyword is used by a search engine user, this huge database is checked and the results are presented in a list.

Because there is so much information available on the Web, these results may amount to several thousand so-called "hits".

For your website to win in this battle you must be in the top 30 hits. Few people bother after the first 30. It takes work to get there but the resulting rush of visitors makes it worthwhile.

Search engines are most people's launch pad into the web and will give you the highest return on time invested in internet advertising. But a simple registration is seldom enough. Any key word search will generate hundreds of thousands of relevant pages.

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Getting on Search Engines

You could always use one of the online agencies that can manage your search engine registrations for you (at a price). Or you could do it yourself using a simple piece of software combined with this 10-step programme:

1. Look at competitive websites

Use the search engines yourself to see which competitive websites get the top ranks based on the most logical keywords. How do they get there? What can you learn from them? Keep these lessons in mind for your own website.

2. Generate Keywords

Decide which key words potential purchasers of your products or services would use to find you on the Net. In addition to the words that jump to mind, you could ask other people in your company, or visitors to your site, what key words they've used.

This is the most important step, no matter how high your search engine ranking, if it is for the wrong words then you've wasted your effort. Once you've got a list of keywords you need to priorities them, and decide the five or six most important words to go for. Now insert these keywords into meta name="keywords" content.

3. Generate a Description

In no more than 20 words describe what your website offers. Incorporate the key words into this description, if possible, but aim for a sensible "headline" sentence. Ensure that you summarize what you site can offer a visitor and give a compelling reason for people to click to you. Now insert this description into meta name="description" content.

4. Incorporate the Keywords

Make sure these keywords are there in the copy of your website, at least twice each and as near to the top of the home page as possible. Use them in headlines if you can.

5. Add more links

Some search engines, like AltaVista, will put a more popular site further up the rankings. Popularity means how many other websites hyperlink to yours. Typically, your site will link with customers, suppliers and complementary sites. Offering and winning reciprocal links can be a slow exercise but it is worth it for the increase in visitors that results as well as the improved position on search engine ranks.

6. Choose your search engines

Identify the key search engines that you will focus on. With hundreds of search engines on the Net, you cannot get to the top of all of them. Anyhow it is not necessary since the main engines account for 80% of all searches (Google, AOL Search, Netscape, Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Info seek, Northern Light and HotBot). UK search engines such as UKPlus and GOD are important for UK-focused sites.

7. Beware of Frames

Using frames on your website can make for excellent and consistent style. However, some search engines and older browsers have problems with frames and may fail to read the text on a framed site. Make a no frame version available to counter this.

8. Register

Each search engine home page has a link to the page that describes "how to add your URL". Using the rules they set, register your web pages on the target search engines. It may take time - some search engines limit the number of pages that you can register each day, month or longer.

9. Experiment and Monitor

Try different variations of pages and keywords with different search engines and measure your performance. Monitor how highly you are ranked for your key words. If on the first attempt you don't make it to the top, don't give up. Compare what you have to those that are at the top, make logical changes and re-register.

10. Start all over

It can some times be a time consuming and repetitive task getting a good position on a key word. But the extra traffic makes it worth it. You need to monitor your results regularly, new registrations can knock you down the rankings, whilst search engines themselves frequently change their programmes.