Hello!
Welcome to the February 4th issue of Scribbles!. In this issue we're going to explore a couple of simple techniques for getting your web site noticed by Search Engines and into Online Directories.
In This Issue
- Simple Search Engine Optimization - Part 1
- Getting Google to Notice You!
- What do Search Engines "see"?
- Making your search terms important.
- Getting Listed in Online Directories
- What's the difference between search engines and directories?
- Why should your site be listed in an Online Directory?
- Submitting your site to DMOZ and Yahoo!.
Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Last time we wrote about getting your business cards and letterhead updated so that your web site's address is prominently featured. Now it's time to attract a little more attention on the Web itself via search engines and online directories. Although we won't be exploring links from other sites to yours (that's for our next issue!), we will be looking at things that you can do right now to help your search engine rankings.
Many people who use the Web will almost automatically use Google, Yahoo, Ask or AOL Search when they begin to look for solutions to a need, want or problem they are experiencing. How will they find your site from among the hundreds of thousands of search results returned by these behemoths? Better yet, how do Google et. al. learn about your site in the first place?
Getting Google to Notice You!
- What do search engine Web Crawlers actually "see"?
In a nutshell, a search engine (or more accurately, a search engine's web crawler) can only "read" the HTML and textl content on the pages it lands on in your site. Naturally, you want Google, Yahoo!, Ask, etc. to rank your page as significant when compared to the terms used by people who are searching for your product or service. By the way, here's the scoop on search engines and Flash right from the source: "Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?" As that page indicates, play it safe by having plenty of descriptive textl content on your site.
For example, let's say you run a landscaping business in Chattanooga Tennessee. You've been running the business successfully and want to expand your online presence. After careful consideration and a number of web searches you decide that your best bet to get noticed is to put the words "top landscape service in Chattanooga Tennessee" on your site. How do you persuade a search engine spider that this is a significant term? There are several ways, and since they work in concert with each other it's best to combine them.
- Title
Open up your favorite web browser and go to your web site's Home page. After the page loads, look all the way at the top left corner of the window border. That's the Title of the page, followed by the brand name of the Internet browser. If our Chattanooga Landscaper's web designer is on the ball, that Title should read be something along the lines of "Chattanooga Landscaping - top landscape service - Chattanooga Tennessee".
- Keywords & Description
Keywords are individual words that describe your business. While not as important as they once were, a web designer will ask you for these keywords and will embed them into the code of your pages. Our Chattanooga landscaper would do well to have the words "landscaper, landscaping, top landscaper, top landscaping, landscaping service, Chattanooga, Tennessee" embedded in the meta tag called "keywords".
The Description is a phrase that describes your business. Going on what you've learned so far (i.e., search engine "spiders" enjoy a certain amount of repetition), you might guess that our landscaper will want his page's description to be something along the lines of "Chattanooga Landscapers is the top landscaping service in Chattanooga Tennessee." And you'd be right! Incidentally, Meta tags such as Description and Keywords are not normally visible to web site visitors - they are meant to be 'read' by web crawlers. To see the Meta tags on your web page, click on "View source..." in your browser's menu bar under View. Towards the top of the code locate the following tag:
<meta name="keyword" content="...">
The words after "content" are the keywords that you and your web designer or SEO specialist determined were relevant to your web site.
- Making your search terms important.
Now take a look at the text content of your page. Our web crawler has already made a note of the terms that were repeated in the Title, Keywords and Description, and has attached some significance to them. To make those words even more important, they can be highlighted in the body text of the page using various HTML tags. Our landscaper's web designer, savvy SEO person that she is, would scatter the following throughout her customer's pages:
- A "headline" tag:
Chattanooga's Top Landscaping Service
- An "emphasis" or "italic" tag:
"...one of the top landscapers in Tennessee..."
- A "strong" or "bold" tag:
"...landscaper from Chattanooga..."
By scattering those words and phrases throughout the text of the site and using those highlighting techniques our landscaper is telling the search engine crawlers that those terms are significant.
Getting Listed In Online Directories
- What's the difference between search engines and directories?
While directory listings and directory search results are significant in a number of ways, there are three major differences between Search Engines and Online Directories:
- Directories don't read or store information so they can't return searches based on page content.
- Directories don't read or store information from sub-pages within a site.
- Directories don't use web crawlers to go out on the Web and catalog web sites.
The take-away here is to remember that directories don't index web pages. Instead, they catalog entire sites. Every web site submitted to a directory is assigned to a category.
- Why should your site be listed in an Online Directory?
Let's take a look at two major directories, The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and Yahoo (dir.yahoo.com), and why it's important to get listed in them. Just type the URL of your web site in the Search field of either site to see if it's listed.
The Open Directory Project "...powers the core directory services for the Web's largest and most popular search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others." Getting your site listed and linked at dmoz.org means that the same link could show up as links from many other directories and search engines as well.
The Yahoo! Directory is also an important player in the online directory business. It is a major part of the Yahoo! search system, one of the most heavily trafficked sites in the world. According to their site, "[it]...returns a list of web pages containing the words you entered. These results are a combination of relevant web pages and web sites provided by Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Directory." The Yahoo! Directory is crawled by Google's spiders, so getting in will boost your Google Pagerank a little. Other search engines will also use the Yahoo! Directory to help categorize your site.
- Submitting your site to DMOZ and Yahoo!.
Getting listed in The Open Directory Project is a fairly straightforward proposition. Go to http://www.dmoz.org, navigate to the category and sub-category that best fits you business, click the "Suggest URL" ink at the top of the page and then simply follow the instructions on the submission page. It may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to appear in this directory. As with most things SEO, patience is a virtue.
Our landscaper decides to submit his URL at http://www.dmoz.org. The sub category would be something along the lines of Business, Construction_and_Maintenance, Commercial_Contractors, Exterior, Landscaping. Or he may want to check the Chattanooga business listings. Either way, once he's in DMOZ, his site will be picked up by major search engines and other directories.
Getting listed in The Yahoo! Directory is an entirely different proposition. Yahoo listings, once free, were difficult to submit and would not be published for months. That's all changed. Yahoo! listings now take only about a week to get published. The bad news is that for commercial web sites this service costs $299. To submit your site, go to http://dir.yahoo.com (take your credit card with you!) and navigate to the category that best suits your business. Once you've found the best category, look for the "Suggest a Site" link. Click the links and follow the instructions on the page that loads.
Parting Thoughts
In this issue we've touched very lightly on the subject of Search Engine Optimization. Although the techniques described above are simple, they can be used on your site to give you a head start over the majority of the web sites out there.
To ensure that your site gets the best coverage possible use appropriate and meaningful Title, Keywords and Description on the pages of your site. Carry those same terms over to the text content of your pages, highlighting them in ways that make search engine spiders take note. Finally, make your site even more visible by making sure that it is in The Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory.
Coming February 18
Next time we'll wrap up our Simple SEO with a quick look at incoming links (i.e. links from another website to yours), why they mean so much to search engine rankings and how you can get quality links for your site.
- Simple Search Engine Optimization - Part 2
Until then, best regards!
Ed Moore
www.animai.com
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