Understanding search engines can help raise the status and bring
more traffic to your website
Search engines can be broadly divided into two categories:
spider-based search engines and directory (human operative-based)
search engines. The latter rely on people surfing the net and
reviewing the sites they find. The former uses data retrieval
software tools to go out and find information.
If a website's traffic is low, there are usually numerous reasons:
poor design or navigation; lack of interesting content; bad coding
which crashes browser; or perhaps, invisibility.The web is a big
"place". It's not just a question of being "out there", but of
being visible to your audience. This doesn't necessarily mean
spending millions on an advertising campaign. But it does mean
designing your site in such a way as to make it visible for the
search engines. Any site will probably get a search engine listing
somewhere. What is important is whether it is ranked at or near the
top of the results or on page 15. If it is not on the first page,
only about five per cent of potential visitors will click on the
link and visit your site. The good news is that small changes can
make a lot of difference. There are some fairly dubious methods of
getting listed, but these generally will only work in the short
term as spider search engines have spam tools to prevent them being
tricked into listing a site because it has multiple identical
meta-tags which trigger listings. On the subject of metatags, a
little reminder. It is illegal to use a competitor's business name
in your metatags without just cause, or to draw people onto your
site through such trickery. It's also not good for the company's
reputation and is more likely to end in litigation than traffic if
you are caught doing so.
Why do search engines work?Search
engines do have the potential to generate a lot of traffic for your
site, particularly if you have a service or a product that isn't
generally available. This is because the Web is so big that when
Joe Public wants to buy or find out about something, the easiest
way is often to key in that subject or the name of a search engine.
Bigger search engines have more listings and are more up-to-date
because they can afford to overhaul their directory entries more
often. This is a definite advantage because the Web changes so
often and you want to know that as soon as your new content is put
onto the Web, it will start appearing within the search engine's
results.Some search engines use a mixture of both human operatives
and spiders to find listings. One very well known directory that
does this is Yahoo! This has both advantages and disadvantages. If
your web page is well designed so that the spiders can pick up
keywords or subjects to report back, then you are likely to find
that true (non-human) search engines will give you a good report.
However, if your web pages are less well-designed and the spiders
miss the important bits, you have a chance that if a human editor
looks at the site, they will pick up vital details that may improve
your ranking. The downside of this is, of course, that the human
editor will take longer to note changes to your site, that is, if
they ever get round to changing the listing at all.
How do they
workSearch engines use spiders or crawlers that visit websites,
read them, follow links and see what's there. The spider then
revisits every month or so and looks for changes. It then reports
back to what is called the index. The index is the Web equivalent
of the Doomsday Book. It keeps a copy of every web page within it
and when the web pages change, the changes are made in the
index.Unfortunately, it does take time between the spider visiting
your site and it turning up within the index. All those pages that
are listed in the index are available for searching with the search
engine, but it is not until the spider has reported back to the
index that this can happen.Search engines also have another set of
software tools that searches through the index and ranks results
according to what it considers most relevant. Different search
engines have different slants to their rankings. For example a
search engine aimed at researchers (like Northern light) will list
more academic papers than one aimed at home users (like AOL NetFind
for example.)
Why do they sometimes get it wrong?A lot of the
time when search engines fail to match the requirements of their
users it can be attributed to users not knowing how to search
properly. For example, if someone wants to buy a part for their car
they may well search under the term "oil filter". They might be
lucky and find what they want, but they may just as easily get a
list of oil sellers and oilrigs. Search engines can't ask
questions. If the same user telephoned Yellow Pages and said he was
looking for an oil filter, the operator who makes intelligent
guesses would assume that what he was looking for was a car repair
company or a car spares supplier. For this reason search engines
list pages that have the keywords in their title. So, for example,
if you keywords said "Oil filters and carburettors" then it would
be likely to come out as one of the first entries. Search engines
may also look at what position on the page these terms come. They
would, for example, consider a word within the first paragraph as
more important in searching terms than one buried deep at the
bottom of the page.Search engines also examine the frequency of
words. So the ideal oil filter website would have the headline
"Company X's Oil Filters" and would follow with a paragraph
describing what sort of "oil filters" were available, that your
company could fit "oil filter" etc. However, different search
engines weight different criteria differently so the same search
terms, put into two different search engines, will bring wildly
different results. For example, Excite uses popularity as a
measure. If your site has a lot of upstream links, it will come out
better on Excite. Search engines with directories attached may give
greater preference to those sites that they have reviewed. This is
because they consider that if a site was good enough to merit a
review, it's content is likely to be more relevant to search engine
users.Many web designers mistakenly believe that by including
hundreds of meta-tags to put their site at the top of the search
engine. However, this is unwise if it is the only method used to
improve ranking. Many sites never use meta-tags and still get a
very high rating in search engines. Whether or not meta-tags work
depends on which search engine potential customers use. Lycos
ignores meta-tags, whereas Infoseek uses them. Meta-tags will never
make up for a badly designed site that does not contain keywords
within the title of first paragraph.The other reason not to use
meta-tags is that some search engines have anti-spam devices built
into them. This practice is called stuffing or stacking. If your
site repeats the word "encryption" hundreds of times, either in
meta-tags or within the body copy (in order to boost its rating),
most search engines will ignore it. Search engines also follow up
complaints from users and will de-list sites that use this
practice.
Effective ways of improving your rankingNo one way
will ever work for every single search engine, which is why it's
vital to take search engines into account when planning
websites.The first task is to select keywords that will describe
your site to the search engines. The words you think potential
searchers will search for are the words you should pick. For
example, let's say you sell plastic widgets; your keywords would be
"plastic widgets". Each page can have different keywords, for
example, if another page advertises rubber widgets then your
keywords should reflect this. It's unwise to use just one word for
your keyword, even a very specific word has many interpretations,
and your site is liable to be swamped amongst many others that do
have very specific strings of words. Search engines pay more heed
to keywords high up in the page. Bear in mind that tables can
appear less relevant to search engines because they break apart
when search engines read them. JavaScript can have a similar affect
on search engine robots.The content of your pages, and changes to
it, will only improve your chances if those changes are relevant to
the keywords. Adding meta-tags will not help this if the page has
nothing to do with the topic it claims to detail in the keywords.
Don't put very small font sizes or text in the same colour as the
background to spam the search engines, if it's not visible, most
search engines won't index it.Finally, think about expanding text
references where it is appropriate. For example, if a site sells
organic food, expanding references to "organic food" and "organic
vegetable" may help reinforce your keywords in a natural manner,
which is of course how people search.
The good newsEven if a
site doesn't get a high ranking, it doesn't mean it will have low
traffic. Top keywords are used by many of the top sites (try
searching under "books" for a demonstration of this). Alternative
forms of traffic generation, whether by traditional marketing or
e-recommendations, have a significant role to play in keeping the
traffic flowing.
Rachel Hodgkins