Latest
Bytes on Search Engine Marketing
by David Gikandi
The
search engine world is always changing. They are always up to
something new, using new technology, coming up with new requirements
and rules, and, of course, running into new glitches.
As a web site owner, you need to know exactly what they are
up to at any one moment so that you can get your site well placed
in their indexes. After all, search engines deliver the bulk
of the traffic most sites get, so you cannot afford to ignore
them. So let us have a look at what exactly is going on with
various engines and how we can us this knowledge to our marketing
benefit.
Tip:
Use unique IP addresses for each site
Consider using a unique domain name and IP addresses for your
doorways. Once in a while, it can happen that you go too far
in your efforts to use various kinds of gateway pages (doorways,
information frames, etc) to get higher placements on search
engines.
For example:
You may be using too many keywords that are too alike and thereby
ending up with duplicate pages or a cluster of high rankings
for the same keyword. AltaVista is especially watchful for such
mistakes. The penalties for such an error are usually just the
penalization of the offending page, or at worst case the search
engine may block any new submissions from the offending site.
To make sure that such a mistake will have no negative effect
on your web site even if your gateway pages do spam an engine
due to improper use, it is highly recommend that you get a unique
domain name that has its own IP address (those numbers that
look like 206.67...789 that your hosting service tells you point
to your domain name).
Get two domain names, one for your site and one for your web
promotion material such as doorways. For best effect, ensure
that these domains are hosted by different hosting services.
That guarantees that each domain name will definitely have a
unique IP address. If you want to stick to one hosting service,
ask your web hosting service to make sure that each domain name
is assigned an IP address that is unique to it. While you are
at it, get your hosting service to ensure that (a) the IP address
given to you is not shared by other sites on their server and
(b) it has not been used before by a previous site that was
on their server. Any of these situations can cause you to get
penalized by the engines by spamming done by the sites that
share your IP address or the one that used to own it.
Another good reason to have two domains is that AltaVista and
Infoseek seem to have a limit on the total number of pages you
can have indexed from one site. Infoseek supposedly limits this
to 600 pages per domain. AltaVista's limit is much higher, if
they do have one. So having two domains and splitting your pages
among them can be a good idea if you have many pages.
Finally, for most of the major engines, having links to your
main site from another domain adds to your rankings. So your
main site will rank better if the doorways pointing to it are
from a different domain than from within it. Yet another good
reason to get a new domain name and hosting account just for
your doorways. While you are at it, try to get a long domain
name for your doorways that is made up of your most important
keywords.
For example:
If your site is about real estate in New York, you might want
to get the name www.realestatenewyorkapartmentshouses.com or
something like that. Keywords in the domain add to higher rankings.
How-to: How to submit to the search engines
For all the major search engines, it is highly recommended that
you only submit your home pages and hallway pages (hallways
are pages that contain links to all your site's pages so search
engines can find them). Let the search engine crawl and find
your other pages. Make sure that you wait at least 30 minutes
in between each submission (e.g. if you want to submit a home
page and two hallway pages to Hotbot, submit the home page,
wait at least 30 minutes, submit the hallway page, wait again,
then the next hallway page).
For best results, submit these pages manually using the search
engine's submission page. Do not submit your other site pages.
This is in line with the latest recommendations issued by the
search engines. In fact, on some engines you may get tagged
for spam review or get extra submitted pages ranked lower if
you submit anything other than the home and hallway pages. For
all engines, re-submit your home and hallway pages once every
fortnight to ensure that they remain indexed.
Tip:
Infoseek submission Infoseek's Add URL function had been down
for quite a while but is now back up. However, it seems to now
take about 5 - 7 weeks for newly submitted sites to get indexed.
Also, it now only accepts submissions for the home page and
not any other sub page. Fortunately their crawling seems to
be good and eventually the spider will come to your home page
and follow all links it finds on the home page to index sub
pages. So forget about submitting other pages on your site -
just submit the home page and make sure that all other pages
on your site can somehow be reached from the home page by the
crawler. Infoseek also uses channels as a search option. If
you merely submit to the usual Add URL link for the general
search engine, you wont be found in the channels. So browse
the Channels on Infoseek and find one suitable for your site
and submit your home page there.
Tip:
Excite delays and subdirectories issue Excite is still, in our
experience, the slowest of the major engines when it comes to
getting new pages indexed. It takes months to get pages indexed
at times. We hope this is going to improve soon. We are sure
a negative image is not what they want so we are betting that
they are working on fixing this. The point to note is that Excite
seems to be indexing every few months, talking in pages that
were previously submitted before. So you should go read and
treat it as if it works - submit your site as usual and re-submit
every fortnight. When they do index again, at least you will
be in the queue and get indexed. Excite also seems to drop pages
in subdirectories, favoring those pages in the root directory.
It is highly recommend that you have your doorways and most
other pages in the root directory (that's where your home page
is) and make sure you have your own domain name. If you cannot
do that, get a separate domain name and hosting account just
for your doorways (even better!) so that you can have them in
the root directory.
Tip:
Lycos Nothing much new hear but one small tip. The best way
to get into Lycos is to submit your site to Lycos as usual AND
submit to www.dmoz.org, the
Open Directory Project that Lycos and many other engines use
as a source of results on certain searches. Lycos also uses
the FAST engine for some of its results so you should also submit
your site to the FAST engine (at www.alltheweb.com.)
Tip:
Hotbot Hotbot is still mysteriously dropping pages off their
index for no apparent reason. Other than that, they are doing
fine. Here is a tip from www.searchengine-news.com.
Their newsletter said that the fastest way to get indexed by
Hotbot at the moment is to submit to Canada.com at http://canada.com/search/web/addurl.asp.
Try it! You should also submit to www.dmoz.org,
the Open Directory Project, which Hotbot uses.
Hotbot is also the first engine to index dynamic pages (pages
created on the fly from a database or CGI script). To have your
dynamic pages indexed, if you have any, simply submit your dynamic
page with all the arguments added onto the URL (e.g. www.mysite.com/page.asp?catalog=5369&state=florida)
or submit a static page with a bunch of dynamic URLs you need
indexed.
Note:
AltaVista "Too many URLs problem" AltaVista recently
installed an ultra-tight and aggressive spam filter which according
to numerous reports is causing a very large problem to thousands
of web site owners. The spam filter is often improperly tagging
many pages as spam. The good news is that your site is not dropped
off their index if you do get tagged, but the offending pages
are given low ranking and you are blocked from submitting any
new ones. So it isn't a very grave situation and especially
because way too many webmasters have been affected unfairly
this situation will likely get better soon. For most webmasters,
simply avoiding the known spam techniques such as hidden text
etc and abstaining from submitting more than one page a day
at the most should keep you clear off their spam filter. If
you feel you have been cut off from new submissions unfairly,
simply use AltaVista's feedback form and let them know and they
will put you back up.
Tip: DirectHit, LookSmart and Open Directory Project
submissions Several search engines such as HotBot and Lycos
use DirectHit and the Open Directory Project as a major source
of their search results. It has been found advantageous, for
this reason, to also submit your site directly to DirectHit
at http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html
as this gets you a better position much faster because DirectHit
updates its engine much more timely than the engines that use
it such as Lycos and Hotbot. You should also submit to www.dmoz.org,
the Open Directory Project, as this is the only way to get into
certain results served by an increasing number of search engines
(over 20 major search engines and directories use it).
LookSmart is also being used by a very large number of search
engines and directories so be sure to submit there too at www.looksmart.com.
Suggestion:
Automatic submission tools plus getting listed on as many
places as possible Automatic submission tool (software or web
based) are extremely useful and timesaving when it comes to
submitting your site to several hundred search engines and directories.
By all means, use them. But make sure that you do not use them
for Infoseek and AltaVista if you are submitting more than just
one page. These two engines have high-speed submission detection
that can get your submitted page penalized. How this works is
that they watch for more than one submission per, say, 30 minutes
from any one site. So if you submit two pages from your site
to Infoseek or AltaVista in less than 30 minutes, that's not
good for you. On the other hand, you should use these tools
and get yourself listed on as many places on the web as possible
- directories, search engines, free-for-all link pages, About.com,
etc. It is very important, especially for Infoseek rankings,
that you have as many incoming links into your site from other
sites as possible, especially from larger sites such as Yahoo
and About.com.
Final Note:
Delayed index updates Most of the major engines are now
taking between 30 and 90 days to refresh their databases, although
their information pages claim shorter periods than that. What
this means is that a page you submit today and any pages on
your site linked from it will appear on search results in 30
to 90 days. Excite is especially slow. The Internet community
believes that this situation will definitely change because
no engine wants to have old information in its database - its
bad customer service to its users. So they will work at correcting
these delays.
This is a time of great opportunity, and marketing your site
through search engines is one of the world's greatest advertising
opportunities. Where else can you reach such vast numbers of
people worldwide at practically no cost to you? So it does pay
to keep a close tab on the engines and use them wisely but ethically
to your advantage.
If you need any more information on this topic, please see the
Additional Resources section at http://www.positionweaver.com.
Article by David Gikandi (support@positionweaver.com),
CEO at SearchPositioning.com. PositionWeaver.com features tools
and resources that get you top positions for your web site on
AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Northern Light and
other search engines. It also has forums, articles, links, and
other resources useful for the website owner and marketer. You
can also download free trial copies of the PositionWeaver Gold
and PRO software packages for Windows from this site.
