Google serves around 80% of all searches
carried out in the world. Every search engine has slightly
different "rules" as to what is relevant content
for its users. Google does the best job at this, and because
Google do such a good job, everybody uses it. This is why
it is important that your website is designed to satisfy Googles
algorithm, to get it to the top of the list of tens of thousands
of other websites in your area.
You may see competitors claiming "we will submit your
website to 1000's of search engines" - this is a complete
waste of time. Have you ever heard of bigsearch.com
- bestsearch.com or searchnet.com ?
Nothing to be ashamed of - neither has anybody else. Those
1000's of search engines very rarely get used and if you need
to provide an e-mail address for submission, it is highly
likely that very soon after, you will be bombarded with spam
.
What our competitors will also do is submit your website
to those 1000's of search engines with the click of one button
by the use of software. Most search engines that are worth
submitting to will detect and block these types of submissions.
We submit your website manually to ensure acceptance and indexing.
In fact, you can even do
this yourself but submission alone will not have any
effect on where your website is ranked without prior optimisation.
We also carry out search engine submissions on each of the
other major search engines including MSN, Alta Vista and Alltheweb.
Remember to check where our competitors are listed, are they
listed on the first page for the keywords you found BangaloreWebHosting.com
?
The Google search engine also currently feeds results to AOL
- Freeserve - BBC - Netscape and other smaller engines to
give your website even further exposure should you achieve
a high listing on Google.
Unethical practice
Beware of web design companies or so called "search
engine submission companies" e-mailing you out of the
blue offering you a one off chance of "aggressive submission"
or offering any unrealistic guarantees for minimal cost. Beware
of any search engine submission company that talks about using
the following tactics to gain you greater exposure:
Shadow or additional domain names used for search engine
ranking purposes
Pages set up just to rank highly with no or little use
to your users
Pages set up that quickly redirect to another page or
website
Hidden text or links, in fact - hidden anything
Any page that shows one thing to a search engine and another
thing to your users
Duplicated pages
Be sure to ask the submission company for evidence of results
gained for their own website along with their clients. Look
out for any of those shady tactics used above. Any company
using any of those unethical tactics listed above are in for
a rocky ride and will not see long term success, in fact,
it is highly likely that they will be banned from the most
important search engines in time.
Myth - "Changing your meta tags to match that
of the top companies in your category will improve your websites
performance, after all, it works for your competitors!"
There are said to be over 100 "rules" to make a
website rank highly on the most important search engines.
Meta tags paint only a very small part of a much larger picture.
Copying your competitors meta tags is likely to land you in
hot water and will do nothing to improve your own positions.
We were astounded when we saw competitors blatantly using
our meta tags but luckily for us, it had no effect whatsoever
on their search engine ranking.
Myth - “Your website needs regular submission to the
major search engines”
Regular search engine submission does not improve your websites
performance on the search engines. This may have been true
back in the 1990's but this information is now out of date.
If your company is paying for search engine submissions to
free search engines such as Google, Alta Visa, Alltheweb,
MSN. Stop at once.
Fact - Some search engines require a one
off or annual payment to list your website or webpages known
as pay for inclusion or PFI. Some are worthwhile whilst others
will show no or little return.
Fact - Some online directories require a
one off or annual payment to list your website. However, there
are several directories that will list your website without
cost. The ODP is a very important directory to be listed in,
but it can often take several months before submissions are
accepted as each website is reviewed by a human. For many
categories, there is a large backlog of pending submissions.
http://dmoz.org/
Pay per click inclusion (PPC)
Do not confuse getting listed in the natural area with paying
for clicks. There are several search engines that offer to
include your website for your specific chosen keywords at
a cost per click. The cost per click is determined by your
competitors as a bidding scheme is in place. You only pay
when people looking for your products actually click through
to your website. You can usually identify paid advertisements
on Google as they are listed under the heading "Sponsored
Links". Two advertisements with light blue backgrounds
are occasionally listed above the natural listings and several
are listed to the right hand side of the page. Prices start
from 0.04p per click and depending on the competitiveness
of your business, this can be as high as £5 per click
or even more. MSN and Yahoo place paid links at the top of
the page under the heading "sponsored sites" or
"sponsored results".
If you are currently paying for your clicks from any search
engine, we could save you thousands of Rupees each year and
help your business to thrive by optimising your website to
help it gain high natural listings.
