Home > Features > Improving search engine ranking

Getting a Good Ranking

If you decide you do want to be listed on search engines, then making sure your site is well ranked will be important. Here are a few tips for a Search Friendly site.

Keywords
Write down a concise list of words that would be used to look for your site. Include any misspellings if your company name or services might be long or complex and avoid using marketing buzzwords like Biggest or Best. Include these keywords in your page title, Meta tags, heading and page content.

Meta Tags
If you page uses Flash or frames, Meta tags can sometimes be the only information available to web crawlers. More information on Meta Tags and their implementation is available at the following sites.

Content
It's important that your page title and Meta tags reflect the content of your page and site. With advanced search engine technology, some engines can analyze sites that have abused Meta Tags or keywords for the purpose of high ranking.

HTML links
If your site uses images to link pages, make sure you also have text only links to the primary pages. Some old search engines cannot utilize images or image maps. This also aids users with visual disabilities, who may be accessing the site using a text reader.

Manual Submission
Although the automated submission services work, with the majority of the UK using just 5 search engines, it's worth manually submitting. This way you can keep a close check on when they are indexed, or if there are any problems.

Check Up
Once your pages are submitted, whether it is manually or automatically, it's worth checking every couple of weeks that they are still appearing.

Top UK Search Engines

Here is a list as of February 2002 of the top search engines (by number of visits)

• MSN
• Yahoo
• Ask Jeeves
• Google
• Lycos

Getting Listed

Each Search Engine uses a different submission process. Here is a list of the top 5 with information and links to their submission pages.

Yahoo
You will need to navigate the Yahoo directory to find the correct category, then click the link at the bottom of the page to 'Submit a Site'.
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/url/

Google
You simple add your URL and the Googlebot crawler will do the rest!
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN
MSN is powered by Inktomi - a crawler based engine similar to Google. It also powers AOL, HotBot and NBCi. The cost for submission to Inktomi, which will list your site in all the engines above, is $39 per year, per URL.
http://www.inktomi.com/products/search/pagesubmission.html

Ask Jeeves
Powered by Teoma. Submission costs $30 per year and are handled by Ineedhits.com
http://ask.ineedhits.com/

Lycos
Offers three different options for site submission with a whole host of features. Free submission is still available.
http://search.lycos.com/searchservices/

To Pay or Not to Pay

There are several reasons you might pay for search related services:

Fee-Based Submission
As mentioned in some of the options above, some search engines will no longer allow you to submit your site for free. Even sites that allow free submission will sometime not allow commercial, or income generating sites to have a free submission.

Search Submission Services
For a fee, these companies will automatically submit your site to the well know, and not so well known, search engines. If you don't have time to go through all the different submission processes then these services are available starting at around $15.

Priority or Express Listing
Some sites allow you to pay a fee to have your site reviewed quickly. This is no guarantee that your site will be listed, but gives you an answer within a specified period of time. At Google, you can pay a small fee to have your site appear a priority for a specified search. The prices range from $8 to $15 per thousand ads shown.

Should I pay?

Like a press ad or direct mail campaign, expenses like these should be considered part of your overall marketing plan. If your site will be a major source of income or new business, then the revenue generated would offset what would be paid initially. On the other hand if your site is used in combination with other marketing material (e.g. course material for students) traffic will be generated in other ways and a search engine priority not required.

Opinion

From personal experience, Speckled Frog has been listed with the major search engines for free. However the majority of preferred hit (hits that might actually become new business) have come from various business directories in the Cambridge region. By adding links to those sites we are able to narrow our target audience and means that we have a higher percentage of qualified visits.