Industry Issues

How can I get my site listed with search engines?
It sounds like a pretty simple question, but the unfortunate reality for many companies is that the most common search engines used on the Internet will never reference their web site.

There are some relatively simple steps to take that will increase the probability that your site will at least be listed in the search results for Internet browsers wanting to visit your site. Keep in mind there are in excess of 8 billion web pages on the Internet today and being at the “top of the list” is not always a realistic goal.

According to Search Engine Watch, there are two distinct problems to address: search engine submission and search engine optimization. Let’s look at each term in more detail.

• Search Engine Submission: Getting Listed
  "Search engine submission" refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engine registration.

  Being listed on a search engine has little bearing on where you will be ranked in the search results. It simply means that the search engine knows your web pages exist.

• Search Engine Optimization: Improving the Odds
  "Search engine optimization" refers to building your web site so that its content is easily searchable and referenced by common search engines. Reviewing WebTrend reports will point you to common keywords being used to find your site. The closer the content of your site to the searcher’s keyword, the better your ranking will be in the search results.
• Search Engine Placement & Positioning: Ranking Well
  To get that "top ten" ranking for a particular keyword or search is the ultimate goal for many people. The reality is that many common techniques, such as including meta data in the header of your home page, no longer make your site more accessible. Search engines are getting faster and better at determining the fit of your site with the search criteria being submitted.
• Search Engines
  The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.
• Crawler-based Search Engines
  Crawler-based search engines such as Google create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then users search through what they have found.

  If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles; body copy and other elements all play a role.

  A key driver to your ranking in the search results is how many other sites are linked to yours. The more sites that are linked the more integral you become to the “web” and the higher crawler-based search engines will rank your site.

• Web Site Directories
  Online directories depend on you for their listings. You submit a short description (meta data) to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. Online directories typically charge a monthly fee to host and maintain your descriptions so it is best to understand the most common ones being referenced by your audiences.

  Meta data can also be embedded in the header information of your web page. Although it is not displayed on your site, search engines look for matches in these descriptions.

  Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site with good content might be more likely to be reviewed for free than a poor site.

• Hybrid Search Engines
  Today, it is extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listing over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.

Conclusions
These terms also highlight the fact that doing well with search engines is not just about submitting right, optimizing well or getting a good ranking for a particular term. It's about the overall job of improving how your site interacts with search engines, so that the audience you seek can find you.

These "essentials" steps outline the basics of search engine submission. If all you do is the basics, you'll receive traffic from search engines. However, if you have time, you should also read beyond the basics to understand how optimization can increase your traffic and other ways you can market your site with search engines.