ComputerLink articles by Brian Pitre

Managing Your Site's Search Engine Listing

Everyone wants their Website to be listed first in Search Engines. However, from a practical perspective, isn’t that a physical impossibility? I will say that it is possible to improve where your Website shows up in Search Engine results.

Search engines are greatly misunderstood by the general public, and it’s exactly that misunderstanding that creates the vast number of unsolicited email offers stating things like “We will list you in 1000 search engines for $39.00” or “We’ll make you first in all search engines for only $39.00!” In reality, 9 out of 10 of those offers are useless.

There is no quick solution to search engine placement because of the multitude of variables in the process, starting with the basic understanding that all search engines are different.

Think about it. Each search engine site’s goal is to distinguish itself from the others and to improve traffic and utilization of their site. Therefore, they constantly strive to be different from one another.

A few years ago, a number of search engines used word frequency on the home page to rank the order of returned Websites. Once that was discovered, the common practice became creating an exceptionally long home page where there would be 100 occurrences of the word you wanted to be found by. These became known as “pop-tarts” in the Web development vernacular because, for a time, they would cause the site to pop to the top of the list. Needless to say, word got out and the practice became so wide spread that search engines changed their algorithm to exclude, or diminish, the value of word frequency.

The order in which your Website appears in a specific search engine can be improved with some clear guidelines and few key elements that can provide Search Engine improvement.

First, you must target the specific search engines that you would like to optimize. Typically, it is not necessary to target more than about a dozen of the most widely used search engines.

Second, selecting the search term or keyword (meta-tag) you want to optimize is crucially important. The word, or term, must not be too broad. For example, “advertising” would make it difficult to get ranked very high due to the shear volume of Websites using that word. The determination of keywords for search engines is crucial to your overall success. Up to 25 keywords can be submitted. Because all search engines are different, some of them use only 8, 15, or 20 keywords. I recommend that you prioritize the keywords, ranking the best search terms first and organizing them in descending order of importance. This way, if there are only 8 words a search engine will accept, they are the first words in the list.

Next, many search engines use a 25 word written description of your business. In this description, using as many of the ranked keywords as possible can be a great help.

The next step is to select a software package to analyze your current submissions at the search engines that you have entered your site. This type of software should be capable of accurately reporting your current rank in sites, pages, and positions in specific search engines. The better software packages also show the frequency of keywords that are used most frequently to find your site and an analysis of meta-tag use, titles, contents and navigation. With an understanding of where your site currently stands, adjustments can be made and results can be resubmitted to the various search engines. In some cases it may be necessary to re-code Webpages, re-title your pages, and/or possibly modify page content.

Unfortunately, the process of resubmission and the time it takes varies considerably from one search engine to the next; therefore there is no instant gratification. In some cases, up to 90 days is necessary before noticeable results are achieved.

Once your changes have been made, then it’s important to monitor the results on a monthly basis with the software package you have chosen. Make sure to repeat the process of resubmission about every three months to insure that you can attain the best possible position.

One final thought…A common misconception is that search engines are how Websites are usually found. This is not true. Statistically, the number one way people find a Website is seeing the URL in print, so make sure that your URL is on everything your company prints, including advertisements, stationary, business cards, invoices, and anywhere it can be displayed.