1 / 18

Getting Your Web Site Listed

Getting Your Web Site Listed. Danny Sullivan Editor, Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/. Session’s Goal. Cover the best way to increase the percentage of your web site listed with crawler-based search engines Discuss importance of submitting to human-powered directories

arwen
Download Presentation

Getting Your Web Site Listed

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Getting Your Web Site Listed Danny SullivanEditor, Search Engine Watchhttp://searchenginewatch.com/

  2. Session’s Goal • Cover the best way to increase the percentage of your web site listed with crawler-based search engines • Discuss importance of submitting to human-powered directories • Not covering issues of improving ranking!

  3. Types of Search Services • “Search engines” crawl the web and read your web pages • “Directories” like Yahoo depend on human-provided information to categorize sites • Most search services are a hybrid of both, but more dominant in one area

  4. How Search Engines Work • Read pages they find on the web • Store text in an “index” • When you search, they look for pages with matching text • Other factors involved in “ranking” those pages, such as “link popularity”

  5. The Major Search Engines • Northern Light (big, but low traffic) • FAST Search (big, but even less traffic) • AltaVista (big and popular) • Inktomi (HotBot, UK Max) • Google (Netscape Search) • Excite (WebCrawler) • Go (Infoseek) • Lycos (links at end)

  6. Search engines should find you naturally, but submitting helps speed the process and can increase your representation Look for Add URL link at bottom of home page Submit your home page and a few key “section” pages Turnaround from a few days to 2 months Submitting To Search Engines

  7. AltaVista, Inktomi, Northern Light will add the most, usually within a month Excite, Go (Infoseek) will gather a fair amount; Lycos gathers little Index sizes are going up, but the web is outpacing them…nor is size everything Here are more actions to help even the odds… Deep Crawlers

  8. A “deep” submit is directly submitting pages from “inside” the web site – can help improve the odds these will get listed. At Go, you can email hundreds of URLs. Consider doing this. At HotBot/Inktomi, you can submit up to 50 pages per day. Possibly worth doing. At AltaVista, you can submit up to 5 pages per day. Probably not worth the effort. Elsewhere, not worth doing a “deep” submit. “Deep” Submit

  9. Expect search engines to max out at around 500 pages from any particular site Increase representation by subdividing large sites logically into subdomains Search engines will crawl each subsite to more depth Here’s an example... Big Site? Split It Up

  10. Subdomains vs. Subdirectories

  11. Don't use them. Period. If you do use them, search engines will have difficulty crawling your site. I Was Framed

  12. Dynamic delivery systems that use ? symbols in the URL string prevent search engines from getting to your pages http://www.nike.com/ObjectBuilder/ObjectBuilder.iwx?ProcessName=IndexPage&Section_Id=17200&NewApplication=t Eliminate the ? symbol, and your life will be rosy Look for workarounds, such as Apache rewrite or Cold Fusion alternatives Before you move to a dynamic delivery system, check out any potential problems. Dynamic Roadblocks

  13. How Directories Work • Editors find sites, describe them, put them in a category • Site owners can also submit to be listed • A short description represents the entire web site • Usually has secondary results from a crawler-based search engine

  14. The Major Directories • Yahoo • The Open Directory • (Netscape, Lycos, AOL Search, others) • LookSmart • UK Plus • Snap

  15. Directories probably won't find you or may list you badly unless you submit Find the right category (more in a moment), then use Add URL link at top or bottom of page Write down who submitted (and email address), when submitted, which category submitted to and other details You’ll need this info for the inevitable resubmission attempt – it will save you time. Submitting To Directories

  16. Take your time and submit to these right Write 3 descriptions: 15, 20 and 25 words long, which incorporate your key terms Search for the most important term you want to be found for and submit to first category that's listed which seems appropriate for your site Be sure to note the contact name and email address you provided on the submit form If you don't get in, keep trying Submitting To Directories

  17. Directories tend not to list subsections of a web site. In contrast, they do tend to see subdomains as independent web sites deserving their own listings So, another reason to go with subdomains over subdirectories Subdomain Advantage

  18. Other Tips / Misc • Under represented? Get in touch! • Need Search Engine Links? See:http://searchenginewatch.com/links/

More Related