More Advanced Search Engine Tricks


Beyond the basics mentioned above, "link relevance" has recently become an important factor in the way search engines decide which sites to show readers first in response to keyword-based searches. Up-and-comer Google, especially, uses the number of sites that link to yours as a measure of its popularity. This tends to give preference to seniority; a site that has been online continuously under the same domain name for five years is obviously going to have more outside sites link to it than one that was put up last month, even if the new site is superior in content and layout. This link popularity makes it hard for a new site to get attention, but it also protects searchers from sites that come and go, and helps stabilize the World Wide Web in general. But there is a way to "cheat" this system or at least to give your new site an even chance against older, better-known online brands

This is where programs and services that claim to submit your site to thousands of search engines or make some similar boast can be useful. Now, there aren't 20,000 true Web search engines. There may be that many directories, possibly more, but most of them are tiny and won't do you any good. Worse, many of the "directory" sites to which most of the automatic submission systems will submit your site are "Free For All" (FFA) links sites that post submitted links in random order. These sites are not really used by anyone who wants to find product or services on the World Wide Web. Almost all of them are run by low-end promoters who use them to gather lists of "opportunity seekers" or "Internet marketers" they can sell to yet other "opportunity seekers" as "opt-in, targeted email lists" to which large quantities of spam can be sent.

The only reason to bother with this shady side of the Internet is that getting lots of links to your site on many other sites, even crummy sites, makes your site look popular, and this can help it rise to the top on search engine and directory pages that use link popularity as one of their selection criteria.

But before you play the FFA game, get a "throwaway" email address, one you will never use for anything but site submissions, and make sure that is the one that goes in all the "your email address" forms in the submissions software, any submission service's Web page, or directly into any form on a directory site you are not absolutely sure is on the up-and-up and will not abuse your contact information.

Now get one of the "submit to thousands of search engines and directories" programs or sign up with one of the services that does this, make sure you disable submissions to the major search engines from which you may get substantial numbers of qualified readers, and submit away.

Another good way to improve search engine placement is to have, and submit, multiple domains; that is, to have "sections" of your site that all have their own sets of metatags and their own content. This is both easy and legitimate, although on some hosting services' lower-cost plans it may cost extra. The trick is, instead of having your site sections filed in the traditional manner, like this:

BigBusiness.com (homepage)

BigBusiness.com/products

BigBusiness.com/about

BigBusiness.com/press

BigBusiness.com/news

BigBusiness.com/contact

… and so on, do it this way:

BigBusiness.com/ (home page)

Products.BigBusiness.com

About.BigBusiness.com

Press.BigBusiness.com

News.BigBusiness.com

Contact.BigBusiness.com

Now you have six separate domain names, at least the way many search engines define a "domain," even though you have only one registered domain name.

You can give each of these "Third Level Domains," as they are called in the trade, a little extra search engine oomph by giving each one its own set of metatags that reflects its own content instead of using a single generic set of tags for all of your site's pages.



The Online Rules of Successful Companies. The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
The Online Rules of Successful Companies: The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits
ISBN: 0130668427
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 88
Authors: Robin Miller

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