 |
Search Engine Information |
|||
|
Subject: FW: Web Site Journal - Vol. 2, No. 26 -----Original Message-----
From: register@support2.atweb.com [mailto:register@support2.atweb.com] W E B S I T E J O U R N A L Vol.2, No.26 - - - http://WebSiteJournal.netscape.com "Delivering Insight from Web Experts to Web Site Owners" June 30,1999 IN THIS ISSUE INTERVIEW: SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS TIPS & TRICKS: REGISTER THE RIGHT URL METRICS: WHAT ARE PEOPLE SEARCHING FOR ANYWAY? Studies show that up to 80% of a Web site's traffic is generated by search engines and directories. Web site owners will do anything to ensure their site is one of the first listed. This week we focus on the basics by interviewing Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Engine Watch, the most inclusive site on the Web dedicated to educating readers about search engines. Editor: How do search engines work? Sullivan: Search engines send out electronic spiders that make copies of the pages they find on the web. These are stored in an index, a big book of web pages. When people search, search engine software flips through this book to find pages that seem to match what they are looking for and delivers the results in rank of relevance to the query. Editor: How do search engines rank pages? Sullivan: They typically look to see if the search words appear in the title, meta tags and beginning of documents they have indexed. Repetition of terms is another factor, and there are a wide number of other things involved in the mix. Editor: What can Web site owners do to increase their rankings in search engines and directories? Sullivan: Make sure the terms they want to be found for appear in page titles, meta tags and in the HTML copy of their pages. Editor: What one thing would you say is most important for Web site owners to do to improve their site for search engines? Sullivan: Make those page titles count! Despite all the recent changes, page titles continue to be very important. Editor: What should Web site owners avoid doing to ensure the not drop in rankings? Sullivan: Probably not to be obsessive about search engines. They are one way of getting traffic, but not the only way. The more site owners aggressively go after search engines, they more likely they are to run into trouble. They should avoid a common spamming technique, such as submitting near-duplicate pages, heavy word repetition and using hidden text. Often, the only thing they need to really do is ensure that their pages have not been dropped from the index -- which can happen naturally. Check on things once a month, and if pages are missing, then resubmit. Editor: Do you recommend Web site owners register more than one page on their site? Sullivan: It is worth submitting all your key pages to Infoseek, AltaVista and HotBot, as these pages then appear within a few days to within two weeks. The others, and even those mentioned, will still crawl your site and find pages to list, even if you only submit one. Editor: Which search engines should Web site owners be most concerned with when registering their site? Sullivan: AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek and Lycos. It is also worth doing submissions to the important directories of Yahoo!, LookSmart and Snap. Editor: What would you suggest Web site owners do to optimize their chances of being listed in Yahoo!? Sullivan: Write to the point descriptions and pick a relevant category. Then just keep trying. *Editors note: We recommend not-resubmitting to Yahoo! More than every 6 weeks. Once you are included re-registration is generally not necessary. About the Expert TIPS & TRICKS Re-direction is when a person inputs a URL into the location bar of their browser and ends up at a different page to view. For example, when you in put http://www.espn.com the visitor goes automatically to http://espn.go.com/. Another situation is when a site has an homepage that appears for a short amount of time, say 5-10 seconds, then automatically refreshes with a different page. For an example of this technique visit http://www.alterstock.com which refreshes to http://www.alterstock.com/index1.html When registering your site with a search engine be sure to register the static page address the viewer actually sees, as many search engines have difficulties following the re-direction to the second URL. For our two examples we would recommend registering http://espn.go.com/ and http://www.alterstock.com/index1.html for better registration results. METRICS We frequently are asked what terms people are searching for in the search
engines. This week we set out to find the most popular search queries. Methodology behind the results can be found at: http://www.searchterms.com/html/methodology.html Web Site Journal, Copyright 1999 by Netscape. May be reproduced for noncommercial purposes as long as attribution is given. |
||||
|
||||
|
|
||||
