Search Engine Secrets

How to get Top Search Engine Listings

|| Deep Search Engines | Standard Engines | Submission Guide | Preparing Pages ||
|| META Tagging | META Descriptions | META Keywords | Step-by-Step Summary ||

Understanding the Search Engines The first thing you need to do before ever submitting your web page to any of the search engines is understand how they work. There are currently hundreds of search engines on the internet right now and they all have one thing in common: They all hold databases of information on millions of web sites and web pages. Deep Search Engines Deep Search Engines are those using a "robot or spider". These robots/spiders are constantly roaming the World Wide Web searching for new and/or updated web sites. When a robot/spider visits a page it reads the whole thing, it then proceeds on to any sub-pages and so on. Then after it reads all the pages it follows any external links and reads them. Important: Robots can only follow links!!! If you have nobody linking your page or you haven't registered with any of the search engines, then there is no way your page will ever get indexed with any of the deep search engines and nobody will find you!!! Your web site will virtually be invisible to the entire internet community. Don't think that the robot/spider will eventually make it to your site ... submit it!!! It can take several months or longer before it makes it there on its own. Time you can't afford if you're using your web site to generate business. If you want to attract the attention of the deep search engines and have them list your site at or near the top... you MUST format your web site properly. Some of the Deep Search Engines Alta Vista Lycos AOL Netfind Magellan Excite MSN Search Google NBCi HotBot Northern Light InfoSeek Webcrawler Standard Search Engine For Standard Search Engines, all the information that is stored inside these databases are what is input by the person submitting it, like you and me. Submission is done through the use of forms provided by the administrators of that particular search engine. Since all the information that is stored in this particular type of search engine is provided by a submitor the information is usually more relevant and useful. Therefore, these search engines should be a major focus of your attention when considering your web site promotion. Yahoo! If there is one search engine that demands special attention it is Yahoo! This IS the most mega-popular search engine that is used and visited of them all. Yahoo!, in its beginning, started out as a hierarchial database and eventually added a search engine once it gained undisputed stardom. They have recently joined forces with Alta Vista ( do a search and look at the bottom of the page, there's a link that allows you to search Alta Vista without ever leaving Yahoo!) If you are selling a product or service via your web site, a very large portion of your visitors will have probably originated from doing a search through Yahoo! Tip: Get a good listing on Yahoo!!! Hierarchial Database With this type of databases there is no search engine involved. All of this information is stored in "catagories". These catagories contain lists of titles that link to a particular web page. Each title has a short description either following the title or directly underneath. What is important for you to remember when registering your page with a hierarchial database is making sure that your page is in the most "relevent catagory". Think like your customers, and place your page in the most likely catagory a customer would look to find the product or service you are providing. Galaxy is an example of this type search engine. Preparing for Search Engines As for the Deep Search Engines - your Title says it all. This is due to the fact that the robots/spiders consider the title to be the most telling description of what the rest of your site is all about. I am refering not to the major heading on your web page, but the actual name you gave the page when developing it. <TITLE>Your Web Page Title</TITLE> The name can be found in the upper left hand corner of your browser if you are using Netscape. When the robot/spider visits your page this will be the first thing it will look at. If the robot/spider finds any keywords within your title, your page will be listed above any others that only have the keywords within the main body of text. Deep Search Engines and Density Rating The Deep Search Engines sort web pages in order of the density of keywords found in the document. For example, if you did a search on "beanie babies", those pages that had the two words "beanie babies" have a "100% density rating" therefore being listed at the top. It doesn't matter how many times those keyword(s) appear in the document, only the percentage. As discussed earlier, your title is the most important to the deep search engines. If two separate pages both have a 100% density rating and one of the pages has the keyword in the title and the other only in the body text, then the one with the keyword in the title will be listed first. Think about it, logic!!! Tip 1. Try to use a few of your most powerful and meaningful keywords in your title. Choose them very carefully, and make sure your title is short and to the point, not long and descriptive. Have you ever done a search on Alta Vista or Infoseek and seen the same web site listed several times in the search results? You may have thought, how did they do that?! Note: This is a very powerful way to increase traffic to your site when users search the deep search engines. If you have many powerful keywords and plenty of sub-pages, all these sub-pages have titles and meta tags (discussed next) fields that can be exploited to raise your web site density ratings and give you multiple listings in the Deep Search Engines. Tip 2. Go through each of your sub-pages and use a different title than that of your main (index.html) page. Put one or two more of your powerful keywords in the title, continue to the other pages and do the same. This way, whatever search string the user inputs, one of your pages will be near or at the top! index.html - <TITLE>Main Page Title use your most powerful keyword</TITLE> sub-page1 - <TITLE>Sub Page Title use next most powerful keyword</TITLE> sub-page2 - <TITLE>Sub Page Title use next most powerful keyword</TITLE> Get the Idea!!! Tip 3. Change your titles regularly. By doing this, each time the robot/spider visits your page and sees a different title it will think it's a new page and treat it as such by indexing it again. Now you have more than one listing for the same page!!! <META> TAGS Currently there are only a few deep search engines that recognize META TAGS. Those that do are Alta Vista and Infoseek. Although the use of these tags are very important, they are not near as powerful as your title (don't forget that). Your meta tags should appear between the <HEAD></HEAD> part of your document. <HEAD> <TITLE>Page Title With Powerful Keyword</TITLE> <META NAME="description" CONTENT=" Type descriptive paragraph about your site here"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT=" Type, best, keywords, separated, by, commas, here"> </HEAD> <META> description Alta Vista and Infoseek will read your meta tag description and use it as the page description for your listing. Make sure you include some of your powerful keywords here, but don't repeat them over and over (it looks sloppy). Be sure to mention any possible values that you think the customer might be interested in if they visit your site. For example if your web site has lots of links, then say so, "lots of links". If you offer something to your customers for free, them mention this as well. Using the word free, seems to work well pulling people to your site, try it. Wasn't it Barnum who said... oh well!!! <META NAME="description" CONTENT=" Type Your Description Here"> Some of the search engines like Yahoo! will allow you to fill in your own description. Once again, try to pack your most powerful keywords into your description without repeating them. When registering your page with Yahoo!, try to limit your description to about 15 words or less, even though it says 20. If Yahoo! thinks its too long, they will reword it for you, and probably not to your liking. They do it to me all the time. Here are power words, and power phrases, in writing an effective description or ad copy that will pull people into your pages. You may be able to incorporate some of these in your description... Best, Discover, Easy, Fantastic, Free, Guaranteed, Health, Hottest, Improved, For a Limited Time Only, Love, Money, Must See To Believe, New, Powerful, Proven, Results, Revolutionary, Safety, Save, State-Of-The-Art, The Best Kept Secret, Unbelievable, You, You'll Love This. All these words and catch phrases should be considered when developing your site description. Also consider adding some "curiosity or mystery" to your description. It will create more interest. Who was it said... curiosity killed the cat? Oh well!!! Example #1: Discover the HOTTEST NEW irons on the market today. Revolutionary NEW State-of-the-Art design is taking strokes off the average players game. The secret to our design is... Example #2: Soon offered to golfers, quality custom-built clubs at an affordable price. Now tell me which one would you go to first? I would hope the first description. You might just want to know more about their design and why it works so well. I just love that mystery thing!!! <META> keywords Imagine that you are one of your customers. If you were looking for your type of product or service what keyword(s) would you use to do your search? Chances are, your customers will use the same words. Think of as many keywords as you can that even slightly resembles the type product or service that you are offering. List all these keywords in order of priority. Take these keywords, visit all the major search engines and do searches for each one and see WHO comes up. Pay special attention to the description in each of the top listings and chances are you're likely to find some new keywords you may not have thought of. Tips: Try to limit your keywords to 200 words or less. Don't repeat the same keyword more than 3 to 5 times (can get penalized for this) Don't list the same keywords next to each other (can get penalized for this) Good Example <META NAME="keywords"        CONTENT="antique, automobile, parts, antique, automobile, parts, vintage, collection"> Bad Example <META NAME="keywords"        CONTENT="antique, antique, antique, automobile, automobile, automobile, and so on..."> Use Plural Words!!! The last thing you will need to do to your keyword list is add the letter 's' to the end of all your keywords (or add the appropriate plural form to the word). This is very important because most people search for keywords in their plural form. If all your keywords are in their singular form, your page will not be listed when they search in the plural. The plural form will allow your page to be listed when both the singular and plural forms are searched for. Example: Do a search for the word "game" you will find your keyword "games" now go to Yahoo! type in a singular keyword, look at the results and you'll see what I mean. Avoid Common Words Try to avoid using any terms or keywords that have to do with the internet or net in general. These terms include, but are not limited to: web, internet, internet services, web services... etc. If you want to know what I'm talking about, go to Alta Vista and type in "web service" and you are likely to get back a search results of ZERO!!! Why, because the search found something like upteen million pages with the term "service" in it. Therefore, the database is set to ignore the word service in any search. Competitors Can Help You!!! If you want your web page to appear in the search results when a user types in the name of your competition or a product name of your competition you will need to do this: After you have compiled your keywords, go back through and add your competitors names to the list, then do the same for their product names if there are any. This way whenever a user types in your competitors name in one of the deep search engines, your site may well appear in the results too!!! Beware though they might get upset... : } Body Tags Some of the search engines find it important to locate keywords in the "body of text" (especially at or near the top of the document) as well as the title and meta tags. Take the same keywords you compliled for your keyword meta tag and copy them into the firstline after the body tag using the hidden comment tag. <!--- copy your text here ---> Example: <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Your Powerful Title</TITLE> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your Description"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Your Keywords"> </HEAD> <BODY> <!--- Copy your meta description and list of keywords here, your site visitors can't see this code but Robots and Spiders can ---> </BODY> </HTML> Don't forget to use the ... <!--- --->     : } URL Address Your site URL (web address) is almost as important and powerful as the title on both the deep and standard search engines. You can indeed use your URL for keywords even if you don't have your own domain name. If you are going to get your own domain name, and you should, try to place your main keyword in it!!! Most people try to get short domain names and they are missing the opportunity to place a keyword where it really counts. Tip: Lets say the subject of your site is about "Natural Health Products" and your URL is: "http://beseen.net/BeHealthy", in this instance there is a keyword right in my URL. Step-by-Step Summary Before you submit anything, lets put all the pieces together step-by-step and see what the finished product should look like. Step 1. Your Title ~ Make sure that it is short and to the point. Try to use your most powerful keywords in your main title. Sub-Pages ~ Make sure you give each sub-page a separate title using powerful keywords. Changing Titles ~ Remember to periodically change your titles so that when the robot/spider revisits your site it thinks it's reading a new page and treats it as such by adding it to the search engine. You have two listings for the same page!!! Step 2. Keywords ~ Compile a list of the most powerful keywords you can think of that relate to your company, product, or service. Try to keep list less than 200 words. META TAG description ~ Include powerful keywords but be descriptive as well. Let the reader know what's there ... lots of links' and/or FREE ... and so on. META TAG keywords ~ Place the keywords within your keywords meta tag. Remember not to use them more than 3 to 5 times, and don't repeat them one after the other. Use Plural ~ Most websurfers search by entering the plural form of keywords!!! Common Words ~ Avoid using common words and "net terms" such as web services, internet, services etc.!!! Competitors ~ Use your competitions name and product names in your keywords. You want surfers to see your page when searching for your competitor don't you? Step 3. Body Tags ~ Use the hidden comments tag ( <!--- ---> ) to add your description and keywords to the body of your document. This will give the meta disabled search engines a chance of finding relevent keywords within your documents. Step 4. URL Address ~ Try to use relational keywords in your URL address such as /beseen.net/BeHealthy/. If you are going to get your own domain name and the word isn't already taken, try to make your domain name a powerful keyword. Something like "www.antiques.com or www.antiquesforsale.com" HTML Formating ~ Always make it organized and well thought out. Hey this is your image you are creating, would you do business with a sloppy looking site. <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Your Powerful Title</TITLE> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your Description"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Your Keywords"> </HEAD> <BODY> <!--- Copy your meta description and list of keywords here, your site visitors can't see this code but Robots and Spiders can ---> </BODY> </HTML> Note: Be sure to use the META tags, and hidden comments tags on all sub-pages. Submission Guide Submit to Deep Search Engines Before submitting your web pages to any of the Deep Search Engines, make sure that your TITLE and META TAGS are all in order!!! Once the robot/spider visits your page it could be several weeks or even months before it visits it again. Tip: Ignore what the Deep Search Engines say about submitting only your main page and letting the robot/spider index the rest of your sub-pages. Go ahead and submit all of your sub-pages along with your main index page. If all your sub-pages contain the same meta keywords & descriptions, its likely to get multiple listings under certain search results. Submit to Standard Search Engines When submitting your web pages to the Standard Search Engines everything is usually straight forward, like your email address and the URL. The fields you need to pay close attention to and focus on are the "title" and "comments" sections. In the comments box put your short description first followed by your most powerful keywords in upper or lower case if your allowed. NOT Yahoo! If you haven't noticed, Yahoo! doesn't let you list any of your keywords. Instead you must include as many of your most powerful keywords into your title and description. The title is most important though. Don't use repetition ... If you do nothing more than repeat keywords in the description, one of two things will more than likely happen. 1. Yahoo! themselves will reword it ... not exactly something you want done, and 2. They could ignore your listing altogether and not list it at all! So be carefull and be creative with your description. Yahoo! Catagories Choose the most relevent. Look around Yahoo! and get a feel for how everything is organized. Do a search on your competitors and see which catagories they are under. Chances are, that's one of the several you will need to be under. Tip: Always fill in the "Additional Catagories" section. Always, always, always!!!

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