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Search Engine
Submission
Search engines
are one of the primary ways that Internet users
find web sites. That's why a web site with good
search engine listings may see a dramatic increase
in traffic. Everyone wants those good listings.
Unfortunately, many web sites appear poorly in search
engine rankings or may not be listed at all because
they fail to consider how search engines work. In
particular, submitting to search engines is only
part of the challenge of getting good search engine
positioning. It's also important to prepare a web
site through "search engine optimization." Search
engine optimization means ensuring that your web
pages are accessible to search engines and focused
in ways that help improve the chances they will
be found. This guide is not a primer on ways to
trick or "spam" the search engines. In fact, there
aren't "search engine secrets" that will guarantee
a top listing. But there are a number of small changes
you can make that can sometimes produce big results
Search engines
such as AltaVista (www.altavista.com)
and Google (www.google.com)
index the contents of Web pages for free for the
benefit of people who want to find information on
the Internet. They send out webcrawlers -- robot
programs that automatically find and retrieve Web
pages and add the information to their indexes.
They find Web pages from links to them on other
pages. If your Web site is new, there are probably
very few links to it; and it could take many months
for the webcrawlers to find you on their own. So
go to each of the search engines and where and how
to "Add URL". )For links straight to the free submission
pages of the major search engines, go to
www.samizdat.com/submit.html, (so you don't
have to hunt and click multiple times, working your
way through the maze at each search engine site.)
That article also includes brief descriptions of
the strengths and weaknesses of the various search
engines.
Enter the URL of
your home page, or better still the URL of a "sitemap"
of your page. Keep in mind that some crawlers will
only go one layer deep at your site. In other words,
if you submit your home page and it has links to
about a dozen other pages, and then have links from
them to other pages and from them to others, etc.,
the crawlers will only follow the links from your
home page. Hence you are best off creating a "sitemap"
page, with links to every page at your site and
submitting that page, instead of your home page.
For details on that approach see the article at
www.samizdat.com/site.html
Your information
will probably be indexed eventually, don't hold
your breath -- it could take anywhere from a month
to three months from the time of your submission.
Recently, search engines have been pushing hard
to convince Web site owners to pay for rapid and/or
guaranteed inclusion of pages in their indexes.
As part of that effort they have degraded and slowed
down their free submission process. If you are desperate
and have money to burn, check their offers. But
they typically charge for each and every URL to
be included (not just for a complete crawl from
your home page or sitemap page), and the cost can
be astronomical for even a medium-size site.
By the way, if
you follow the design recommendations discussed
in
Chapter Two, your chances of being found and
well indexed will be much better.
For more details
about how search engines work and how to use them
for the benefit of your site, see the tutorial at
www.samizdat.com/tutorial.html
For advice
about common problems that may prevent you from
being well indexed and that derive from misguided
notions of "branding" and from Web page design tools
that generate unnecessarily complex pages see
"How to use content to attract traffic to your Web
site, even when branding rules saddle you with a
search-engine unfriendly design". You
also might want to check the other search-related
articles at
www.samizdat.com/search.html
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