These days having a website is vital for most businesses but unless your site can be found, there is little or not point in having one. This is where the search engines come into the frame. In order to attract the search engines, the website has to be constructed correctly and have well written content. There are many ways of getting your website listed on the search engines and many search engines to choose from. It is important to understand how the search engines work in order to make the most of any internet marketing campaigns you deploy.
Search engines use automated software (known as robots or spiders) to follow links on Websites, harvesting information as they go. When someone submits a query to a search engine, the engine returns a list of sites, ranking them on their relevance to the keywords used in the search. How search engines assess your site and determine the relevance of the words often depends on how the specific search engine works. Some engines, such as Excite, use artificial intelligence to recognize concepts that frequently appear together. Other search engines, list the more popular sites first. There is no way to guarantee that your site will come up on top in a search. After all, we can’t all come up on top!
Which search engines should I register with?
All of them, well most of them wouldn’t hurt. It is often quoted that the top 7 search engines account for 95% of web traffic combined; Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, HotBot, Lycos and WebCrawler. Actually, Yahoo isn’t really a search engine, but rather a directory. There are hundreds for you to choose from.
How long does it take to be listed?
Don’t expect your site to show up in search engines immediately. It can take anything from 24 hours to 6 weeks or more! It depends on the search engine. Most search engine crawlers typically retrieve only a few pages from each site on each visit and visits can be weeks apart.
How do I get my Website to the top of search engines?
I have read so much that if your Website doesn’t appear within the top 10 of search engine listings, then people aren’t likely to find you. This may be true, but it’s not the only place where people can find you and with millions of Websites out there, we can’t all be in the top 10! I have found a lot of new Websites by links from other Websites There is no simple trick that will get your Website to the top of search engines. Also the search engines change the way they prioritize the listings every few months, so you can spend all your time trying to beat the system.
Further information
