|
| Smart Web Center - Basic Search Engine Tutorial |
|
Search Engine Hype
Just type in search engine rankings in a search engine and you will be presented with thousands of web pages filled with amazing, contradictory, alarming, confusing and fascinating information about getting your site to the top of the search engine listings. One site will tell you they can guarantee top rankings in the search engines. The next will tell you that any site that guarantees that is either an idiot or a crook. The next will tell you that top lrankings in a search engine are irrelevant and to ignore search engines. There are horror stories about being banned, banished to supplementary results, being in the wrong neighborhood and host of instructions on what you'd better not do or else. You'll see herds of people stampeding to follow the next latest, greatest automagical method of climbing to the top of Mount Google where the fat cats live, basking in the glorious light of the number one position on Google. Most of it is just hype. It isn't reality. Reality Check The reality is that every website lives on the World Wide Web, the land of hypertext. A web is a complex, interconnected structure. Hyper simply means over or beyond. Hypertext is a way of organizing material to overcome the limitations of traditional text . Traditional text is linear. You read one page after another in the order of the pages. Hypertext is not linear. You can read some hypertext, then click on a link in the middle of what you are reading to jump to some other hypertext and from there to another. If you learn a little bit about writing web pages, you learn that to create a link to another page, you have to make "anchor" tags. An anchor is a connecting point. In a link, there are always two anchors, the anchor that contains the destination information and an anchor at the other end of the link. Draw two little circles on a piece of paper. Now draw a line that goes from the one circle to the other connecting them together. The two little circles are anchors. The line that connects them is a link. Links are connections. Diagram of a web Connections are what the web is really all about. If you are well connected, you will do well. Search Engine Optimization The idea of search engine optimization is to set your web pages up so that a search engine can properly index your website. If you do it right and follow all of the tips and tricks correctly, your brand new site will show up in the first few pages of major search engine results. Time for another reality check. Your website does not exist to serve a search engine. It exists to serve the visitors to your website. Search engines have nothing to do with being well connected. Search engines are just online businesses that offer a service. The service consists of indexing web pages so people can search them. An entire industry has built up around them. They make their money by giving you advice on how to get your pages indexed in search engines. Search engines come and go. In 1999, the number one search engine was Alta Vista. A few years later it was just a subsidiary of Overture, a leading pay per click advertising company. It was eclipsed by new search engines. Search engines want you to be reliant on them. They take whatever actions are necessary to stifle and overcome their competition. They penalize activities that reduce their effectiveness. Search engines are competitive with one another. They seek to make themselves "the" destination for finding websites. Search Engine Madness You are told that you should only link to certain websites, in certain ways so you can make sure your standing is high in a search engine. Swapping links with other websites is discouraged. Participating in link exchanges is discouraged. Banners are discouraged. Affiliate links are discouraged. Duplicate content is discouraged. PR releases are discouraged. You do it all as best you can amidst the noise and confusion. Let's take an example. You have just lanched your new website. You submit your home page to Google.com. After you have submitted your site, you go and check to see if it is showing up. Nothing. Your new site isn't listed. You research why and find out that you are in a "sandbox" because you have a new site and you are going to be sandboxed for as long as a few months. All that work for NOTHING. You add two hundred pages of wonderful images in your new art gallery. You carefully set them up to work well in the search engines. From time to time you check to see if they are listed. Nothing. You research it and find out that they are not listed because they don't have a high ranking and have been relegated to supplementary search results. And so it goes. How It Really Works Your first task is to put up a really good website that serves your visitors. That's ground zero. Make the site great for your visitors. Don't mess with it just to serve the search engines. Then set about building up connections. Submit to the big search engines and directories. Then forget about them. Now roll up your sleeves and get to work finding other websites that would be happy to send people to your site. Don't be afraid to give them a link in return. Base your choices on what's good for your visitors not on what's good for the search engines. If you have a good website and make sure that you link to sites that are just as good, you will become well connected. People will bookmark your website. They will tell others about your website in person or through email. They will add you to their social directories. They add you to their private newsgroups. They add shortcuts to their desktop. They won't tell you that they've done this. They remember your domain name and type it in. One person in a large office finds out about your gorgeous personalized gift items. When someone retires they suggest your gift item as the perfect going away gift. Now 130 employees become aware of what you have to offer. They love the gift when it arrives. The person who got the gift tells her friends about it. You have no idea this has happed. Little directories on websites that the big search engines ignore will pick you up. Little known blogs will mention your site. You will not know about this. But you will see it in your visitor numbers. Work on being well connected and never mind the search engines. They are just a tiny fraction of the real connections that are available to you. So get connected! |