[thelist] Search engine Optimization Questions

[Moe Rubenzahl]

It's a jungle out there. The vast majority are either crooked or
incompetent. I chose one that seemed reputable and was very
dissatisfied. Waste of money.

I am pretty sure there are good ones. You should definitely do the
basics yourself -- you can make headway for less of an investment and
you should know the basics anyway, before you try to hire.

Following is a clip on this topic:

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A few folks asked if I would share what I learned about promoting
sites through search engines. Here is an overview.

First: There is a MASSIVE amount of material out there. You can spend
weeks studying this (I know, because I did!). And many, many days
implementing the results. There are literally people who devote their
lives to this field. There are chat communities and billions of sites.

But: You don't need to obsess. The 80-20 rule applies. Spend 20% of
the effort and achieve 80% of the result. Fact is that most sites
don't even use META tags (a very easy step) so just doing that
elevates you in some ratings.

A very good single summary paper:

   http://www.andreas.com/faq-searchengines.html

That will be all many people need.

Best source of detailed info on the topic:

   http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Summary of my research:

Step one is to develop keywords and incorporate them in your pages.
Then, submit your pages to the engines.

PREPARING YOUR PAGES

- To ready your pages, you need to look at the following:

>  Title tag: Under 100 characters
>  Description META tag: Under 150 characters
>  Keyword META tag: Some say 847 characters. Some say between 847 and
>1000. Several say under 1000.
>  Content: The text on the page itself.

Not all engines look at all of these but it's easy to get them all
right and forget about who does what to whom. Best results come when
all of these are in agreement and are sharply focused on whatever it
is that will bring people to your page.

- You definitely want to keyword your home page and major entries
(e.g. product line pages, major application pages, employment and
investor pages).

- What keywords? That is the biggest challenge and rather than spell
it out here, see:

   http://www.stars.com/Search/Meta/Tag.html
   http://www.thewritemarket.com/search/keywordstag.htm

Many rules apply to keywords. Several sources say list the important
ones first and keep repeated words to a minimum (e.g. if you have
"electric train, diesel train, train parts, train engines" you should
ease up on the trains.) Balance between general words that many
people will use; and specific words that YOUR customers will use.

- Don't spam. All the engines have measures to avoid spam and if you
pull one of these tricks, you may be forcibly de-listed. Stupid
tricks include listing a word many times; using colored letters on
same-color background to invisibly splatter your page with words;
using teeny tiny letters. Forget anything devious -- there is nothing
you can try that the porn sites have not already used to ruin.

SUBMISSION

Once your pages are tuned, submit them to the engines.

- Key search engines, in approximate order for my application (yours
will vary -- in particular, most people will include AOL and Yahoo
among their top choices and other engines feed various ISPs and
partners. For instance, AOL uses ODP data; Yahoo uses Google for
their engine data; Looksmart's directory feeds MSN which is the
default on new Windows machines):

  - AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=addurl
  - Yahoo http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html
  - Excite http://www.excite.com/info/add_url
  - Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html
  - Looksmart http://www.looksmart.com
  - All The Web (FAST) http://www.ussc.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3
  - Open Directory Project (ODP) http://dirt.dmoz.org/add.html
  - GoTo.com http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/
  - Infoseek/Go http://infoseek.go.com/AddUrl?pg=SubmitUrl.html&lk=noframes
  - Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html

(This list is tilted toward engineering users who favor the engines I
listed first. Good news is that MOST of what you do will help you
with all engines -- the engine choice does not greatly affect your
strategy.)

- Yahoo has a two-tier system. They look at the descriptions in their
company listings; and they use Google to search the web. Your company
description is very, very important for Yahoo users. One source at
Yahoo said they use the description from MarketGuide to develop the
description; but they have a description field in the Yahoo
submission page and another source indicated that is what they use.
Best guess is to work on both, which requires endless e-mail to both
companies. Unless you have a friend at Yahoo, you just have to keep
working them. Just getting my listing placed in the right category
took me four months -- and that was -with- my inside friend's help!
Yahoo very strongly resists any attempt to control their listings so
be prepared to compromise or acquiesce!

But they are number one, so you have to go this route. If you are not
yet listed in Yahoo, use their Express Submission service and be
careful to negotiate a good description. See
www.searchenginewatch.com for guidelines.

- Don't overlook the ODP, Open Directory Project. Like Yahoo, it is a
human-run directory and uses volunteers to run each category. But a
message asking for a change was implemented in one day. Not clear
just how important they are but as of now, various folks, such as
Netscape and AOL and Google, use ODP data.

- The rest of the engines send robots your way. Process is this: You
get your pages ready, then send the robots your URL (using the Submit
addresses listed above). They come and do their thing and you're
listed.

Algorithms vary and places like SearchEngineWatch attempt to discover
and report how they work. Best info seemed to be:

   http://www.searchenginewatch.com
   http://www.laisha.com/search/

But don't sweat it too much unless you plan on developing pages
designed for each engine (some people do).

- When you submit, try not to submit dozens of pages to one engine.
Spread the task over a few days.

- Submission services are generally considered a waste, especially
the ones that charge you. Submit to the top 15 manually; then use
free submission services if you'd like to reach some others.

- It takes a while, sometimes, for your submission to be processed.
Often a long while, especially Yahoo. Yahoo will promise to review
your submission in seven days if you pay them $300 a year:

   http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add

Note that this only affects speed of review -- it has no affect on
whether you get listed.  They now require this for commercial
entities.

- The above will get you decent placement with most engines. Beyond
that, my main conclusion is that search engine positioning is not
nearly as important as the typical CEO thinks. ;-) But unfortunately,
that makes it pretty darned important.

So to go a step beyond:

- Web Position Gold ($150) is a PC program that monitors your
placement and suggests actions to improve it. It gets rave reviews. I
think it is quite useful to monitor results; highly suspicious of the
automatic submission gadgetry.

- There are many, many  services that purport to help you boost your
listing. Most seem to be bogus -- or, at least, not very effective.
If you go with WebPositionGaold, you will see that they recommend
coastalsites.com. I tried them and don't recommend them.

- You can also pay for higher placement with some engines. Used to be
only a few offered this; now most do. See:

   http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/paid-listings.html

- Smart (but sneaky) technique: Search using your desired keywords
and see who appears at top. Go to their page and view the HTML, then
emulate what they did!