Search
Engine Submission Tips
Submission tips to help take your site to the top Internet search
engines
Submitting
your site to search engines is a vital part of ensuring your
customers can find you. It's essentially important to understand
the basics of preparing your site for submission before potentially
harming your chances for a successful indexing. Here is a small
list of important things to keep in mind prior to submitting.
All links on your site should be operable. You should have well
written and useful content, meta tags,
and strategic text that's compatible with the search engines.
Your web pages should be preferably small in size and be accessible
to all Internet browsers. if your web page hasn't loaded within
eight seconds of a request, your users potentially won't stick
around.
Your
meta tag and keyword selection should be carefully put together
by a professional in accordance with top search engine and directory
algorithms. 1 Search Engines.com suggests no more than 60 characters
for the title, and 200 characters for the description.
They
keywords tag should have no more than 15 quality words. Always
avoid excessive overloading of keywords to attempt to manipulate
the search results. The use of hidden text, hidden links, and
other unsupported tactics such as cloaking should never
be considered. Such practices are considered as spam
and can lead to your site being penalized or banned from any
of the top search engines. A well written site with useful content
will always outweigh any trick you could use.
Here is
some helpful information to help you better understand each
of the Internet's top search engines.
1) Google:
Still currently
the NET favorite, Google is used more than 150 million times
a day for searches. They are the clear cut leader in relevance,
and 1SearchEngines.com highly recommends them as your number
one option for searching the web. Google also provides results
to other engines and directories such as Netscape Search, and
AOL Search. They also have their own "Pay Per Click"
program, called "Ad Words" This allows you to bid
on key phrases or words, and when someone searches for those
words, your text ad is shown in the right-hand column on the
search results page. For more information go to:
http://www.google.com/ads/
Ad Words will
cost you 5.00 and a credit card number to get your site enrolled.
Google is also the exclusive provider of sponsored links to
AOL Search, pulling the sponsored links from its Ad Words Program.
The top 3 ads will be displayed as sponsored links on AOL. Netscape
also displays Google's Ad Words on their sponsored links.
2) Yahoo:
Since it's launch
in 1994, Yahoo has maintained the Internet's oldest directory
with over a million sites listed. In addition to their directory
results, Yahoo also has its own search technology called "Yahoo
Search", which we also highly recommended for users searching
the Internet. Moreover, Yahoo allows its users to advertise
on their site with their Sponsored Search (formerly Goto.com
+ Overture). This program uses the top four bid positions and
displays them at the top of the search results pages; Yahoo
calls those listings "Sponsor Results,"and
also runs more listings at the bottom of the page, under the
same heading "Sponsor Results". They currently combine
a variety search products into one area named: Yahoo Search
Marketing. This suite is based on their Sponsored Search
(one time Overture + GoTo.com), Search Submit,
and Directory Submit programs. For more information
click on the following link: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
3) MSN Search:
MSN Search originally
pulled their results from Looksmart, and would sometimes pull
more listings found in Inktomi's database. Today MSN is experiencing
a transition into their own search model currently called Live
Search. We're keeping a close eye on MSN to see how they perform
under their newest direction.
4) Ask.com:
(formerly Ask Jeeves)
Ask.com was founded in
1996 (formerly AskJeeves) and has since become the world's 6th
largest web property (ComScore Media Metrix, March 2005). The
ask.com of today is quite different from its days of old, but
nevertheless, it continues to grow in terms of quality and relevance
within its search. Teoma,
which means "expert" in Gaelic, has been the heart
of Ask search technology since 2001. The power of the Teoma
algorithm, now known as ExpertRank, makes Ask search technology
one of the world's most powerful and unique search engines.
5) The Open
Directory Project:
Also known as
DMOZ, the ODP is hosted and administered by Netscape Communication
Corp. All submissions are reviewed by a human before being added
to the directory and each category has what is called an "ODP
Editor" who is responsible for that category.
DMOZ provides
results to many search partners, and their submission is free,
although time consuming. You have to find the appropriate category
to submit to, then click the "addURL" link located
at the top of the page.
6) AOL Search:
Recently signed
with Google to use their search results and to display their
sponsored links from their "Ad Words Program." Listings
also come from Google.
7) Overture
(formerly GoTo.com): Now Yahoo Search
Marketing:
Also owned by
Yahoo, Overture has always solely been a pay per click search
engine, where you choose key words/ phrases that you want your
site to appear under and try to outbid the competition for a
top billing. The higher you bid,the higher your URL on the search
results page. They have a $20.00 a month spending minimum and
a minimum bid of 0.05 per keyword/phrase.
The biggest benefit
of being listed here (i.e. Yahoo SEarch Marketing) is the relationship
that Yahoo has with some of the other major search engines and
directories. Basically, if you bid into the top 3 or 4 positions,
your site will also enjoy top listings in Yahoo, Altavista,
MSN, Lycos, Infospace, Ask Jeeves, CNET and more. Generally,
these listings are shown as "sponsored links" at the
top of their search results page. Trying to get those top bid
positions is well worth it with the type of exposure you'll
receive on some of the majors. They recently lost the contract
to supply sponsored links to AOL Search, but they do still provide
search results for AOL's Europe Net properties in the UK, France
and Germany.
8) Altavista:
Currently owned
by Yahoo (as per their acquisition of Overture), AltaVista reaches
over 45 million visitors worldwide and one of the few still
offering free submission.
Altavista also
displays Yahoo's Sponsored Search top 4 bid positions at the
top of the search results page.
9) Inktomi:
Currently owned
by Yahoo (acquired in early 2003), Inktomi at one time provided
results to many engines and directories such as Yahoo, Hotbot,
Iwon, and more. The benefit of listing with Inktomi in the past
was the exposure your site will receive with its search partners.
Sadly, that isn't the case anymore.
10) Excite:
Once a major player,
Excite now resembles more of a Portal since being bought out
a few years ago by @home, which subsequently went bankrupt.
Search results are now pulled from Overture and Looksmart. As
you can no longer submit directly to Excite, if you want to
be listed here you'll need to open an account with one of the
above to make an appearance.
11) LookSmart:
A directory compiled
by humans providing results to other sites. Now strictly a Pay
Per Click directory, it will cost you a $49.00 set-up fee and
.15 per click thru with a minimum of $150.00 account deposit.
Looksmart angered a lot of its users when they announced this
change. It remains to be seen if this policy shift results in
the death of Looksmart or turns out to be a smart business decision.
A new agreement has just been signed which will allow LookSmart's
listings to appear on InfoSpace's meta-search product over at
Excite and WebCrawler.com . Looksmart also provides results
to InfoSpace's other sites http://www.Metacrawler.com and http://www.Dogpile.com
12) Hotbot:
Hotbot is owned
by Lycos (acquired in 1998) and is not the force it once was.
Although one of the Internet's first search engines founded
in 1996, it has since reduced its scope.
13) Netscape
Search:
Owned by AOL/Time
Warner, results on Netscape are powered by Google .
14) Teoma:
Formerly called
Direct Hit, Teoma has now merged with Ask.com. Teoma, which
means "expert" in Gaelic, has been the heart of Ask
search technology since 2001. The power of the Teoma algorithm,
now known as ExpertRank, makes Ask search technology one of
the world's most powerful and unique search engines.
15) Lycos:
Lycos, originally
launched in 1994, is one of the Internet's oldest search engines.
They currently get their results partially from Looksmart's
human edited directory, and Yahoo for their crawler search.
Need professional
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Top Internet Search
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