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There are bascially 2 steps to search engine marketing, but they are done repetitively.
- Analyze
- Submit
- Analyze
- Submit
The Time Element
There will be no instant results. Getting a good search engine ranking
takes time. That's one of the best ways to identify charlatans from real
experts. Anybody who promises instant gratification is in the voodoo business.
Search engines do not publish their precise methods of working, but most
anecdotal evidence points to the importance of time. They simply do not
trust new sites to deliver the goods. Also the engines are oversubscribed
and have too many sites to index, so they're prone to dropping new sites
from their listings on the grounds that many young sites are destined
not to reach maturity, so it would be silly to take them too seriously
while they're still in diapers.
You need to allow six months to a year for a decent search engine strategy
to work. It will then continue to work for a long time, with minimal effort.
But in the first few months it might not be a star performer. If your
site doesn't provide what visitors want to see then it might never perform
at all, but once again, that's a different story.
During the first year of promoting a new site, you may have to resubmit
your site a number of times because it's repeatedly dropped by the search
engines. That's fine. It's part of the game. They're just checking that
you're serious.
You may also experience long delays between submission and actual listing.
Look at the details provided by the search engine when you make your submission
— often they'll tell you how long the delay will be. Allow a few
weeks extra, to be on the safe side, before resubmitting.
All your submissions should be done manually, and it's a good idea to
keep a record of them so you don't bug specific engines too
often. If you do, you will be penalized. Automatic submission
systems ("With one keystroke register your site with
1,500 search engines!") are for suckers. The search engines
quickly identify them and ignores them, or, worse still, punish
the sites that use them.
Spiders are Machines
Spiders (or robots) are software programs the search engine
companies create to trawl the Web and index sites. They create
massive databases that the engines then use to return search
results.
They follow rules of logic, impeccably, and have no flexibility. They
have no idea what your site really looks like, nor do they have a sense
of humor. It's highly unlikely that a real human will look at your site
as part of the indexing process. The exception is when you apply for a
listing with a directory such as Yahoo!.
When designing your site, it's important to remember that it will be
read by machines. This means, for example, if you turn all your major
page headings into graphics, the spiders won't be able to recognize where
your main heading are and identify the core text areas that follow, even
though this would pose no problem for a human viewer.
On the other hand, if you go all out for machine-readability,
you may well get the thumbs-down from a Yahoo or DMOZ reviewer,
who has no interest in how your pages appear to a machine.
It's all a question of balance.
Here is some info on how that works. There are other mathematical algorithms
in place that we must consider as well as popularity in gaining positioning.
Remember that the web is 1's and 0's a binary state. It really does not
recognize words as we know them.
Link Popularity Made Simple
There are many low cost ways to market your site on the Web.
All require tiresome manual research and constant attention.
However, I can assure you that they will eventually pay off
if you do it right. The search engines are a wonderful resource.
One of the newer, more advanced, very accurate and rapidly
growing is Google. Google's proprietary PageRank © system
is used to determine how relevant your site is. Here is what
makes Google tick.
First, to view your sites Page ranking, simply download the
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and visit your sites
home page. Ironically, while we researched Google we stumbled
upon the formula by conducting a search in Google.
The original* PageRank formula: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1)
+ ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
For math wizards:
PR(x) is the PageRank of x, C(x) is the number of outbound
links on a page x, d is a damping factor set between 0 and
1 and is controlled by Google.
In plain english:)
Your sites PageRank is almost completely dependent upon links
to your site, backward or reverse links, reduced, to some
degree, by the total number of links to other sites on that
page. A link to your site will have the highest amount of
impact on your PageRank if:
1) The page linking to yours has a high PageRank.
2) The total number of links on that page is low, ideally,
just the one link to your site. A site with a high PageRank
and a large number of outbound links can nullify the impact
on your PageRank.
To increase your PageRank, simply get as many links to your
site from pages with a high PageRank and a low number of total
links. Theoretically you can obtain a PageRank of 100% . You
can also increase your PageRank by attaining many links to
your site, no matter what their PageRank, as long as they
are ranked. This is a good overall strategy since it will
help you across the board.
Another contributing factor to your sites Google ranking
is the IR score. This score relates the relevance of the search
query to the actual text in the linking page and your site.
One of IR factors is the anchor text, or the text in the link
to your page. According to a Google's creator, "Anchors
often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages."
Thus, for sites that allow you to add URL's be sure to put
a link title with descriptive keywords. Google also uses your
page title, font sizes, formatting, keyword positions, and
proximity. Remember this though: Computers determine the search
results, but it's humans that will, or won't, click on the
links, so be sure titles with keywords make sense.
In Summary:
Whether it is Google, other search engines or pay-per-clicks,
the meticulous selection of key-phrases, and descriptions
utilizing these key-phrases, are crucial to successful Web
marketing campaigns. The final piece, probably the most important
to determine ROI, is a tracking system to inform marketing
personnel if the clicks being generated with any campaign
result in sales. There are many campaign variables that even
though you produced a 5% click-through rate, might still not
result in sales.
This explains link popularity (specifically Google's use of
link popularity) as it pertains to search engine rankings.
The explanation requires some mathematics, but you don't need
a strong mathematical background to understand it -- high
school algebra will get you through. You won't find specific
methods for improving your search engine rankings, but reading
this may help you select the more productive options offered
to you for improving rankings.
Ever since Yahoo! replaced Inktomi as their search engine with Google,
with their link-oriented ranking algorithm, the Web has been abuzz with
the importance of "link popularity". It is now "crucial"
that we attend to our links. We read, over and over, sentences like, "To
push your site towards the top of search results, it's important to have
many web sites point or link to your site." Further, we're told that
some links are better than others, that (for instance) links from .gov
or .edu sites matter more than those from cousin Sally, that free-for-all
link sites don't matter at all (or that they help immensely)... and on
and on.
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