TOPTEN SEARCH ENGINES
Top ten search search engines is the phrase search engine marketers remember, since these account for the vast bulk of Internet searches. Some 85% of webpages are found through natural search engines — i.e. rather than through the pay-per-click variety — and searchers rarely use more than the best known, then only consulting the first few listings. It's therefore imperative to know the identity of these 'top ten search engines', and how to exploit their preferences to obtain the ranking that gives you decent traffic.
Your options:
employ a search engine marketing company.
pay for a good ranking.
do the work yourself with special tools and online services.
submit for free and without tools.
Your choice will be dictated by time and budget, but costs will rule out the first two for most small presses.
DIY with Special Tools and Online Services
Given the costs of professional services, many webmasters do their own ranking optimization, using software to speed up the continual process of crafting pages for optimum ranking, submitting to search engines/directories, and monitoring the rankings that result. Some useful services/software:
AddWeb. Various products and services. Addweb Website Promoter analyzes, rebuilds and submits: from $70/3 months.
Agent Web Ranking. Analysis, submission and ranking reporting software: $150 and $500/year.
Axandra. Optimizes pages, promotes and tracks results. Standard version $180: business version $350. Free trial. .
Good Keywords. Free software to generate the best keywords for your pages.
GRSeo. Checks your pages under 62 criteria. Program £149: 12 monthly updates currently free.
Search Engine Commando. Upgrade of TopDog. Checks your ranking on the search engines and submits to 120 search engines. $179.
SEOToolkit. Bundle of sophisticated tools: $300 and $495: free evaluation version.
Web Position 4. Optimizes pages, submits and checks ranking on the search engines. $149 and $389.
Manual Optimization and Submission
It's a lot of work, but you can get by without purchasing special software. These online services provide a cheaper alternative to purchasing software to run on your PC.
Keyword Density. Free analysis of keyword densities on your pages.
Link Popularity. Free service that counts links to your site.
Market Leap. Three free tools: link popularity, search engine listing, and site pages listed by search engines.
Search Engine Rankings. Free check on your ranking in 15 search engines.
Webjectives. Analyzes keyword density on your pages: free service.
Wordtracker. Helps you find the best keywords (popular, with minimum competition) and estimate resulting traffic. Essential. $8.13/day, $27.10/week, $54.2/month.
Keyword Discovery. Database of 10 billion keywords compiled from 37 search engines. $9.95/day but free trial.
Optimizing your Site
Even if you employ a search engine marketing company, you will have to optimize your site for proper ranking by search engines and directories. In fact, unless you're using other (and generally more expensive) marketing approaches, you will actually build your site to be optimally visible on the net. That entails:
choosing a good domain name. One that includes your keywords will help the ranking: e.g. oklahoma-poetry-society.org rather than oklposoc.org.
deciding on keywords that reflect your business, are popular, and receive minimal competition from other sites. Use Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. You'll have to experiment but our experience suggests that a well-designed subsidiary page should rank well if the number of competing Google sites does not exceed 5,000. For the index page you should be able to beat 10,000 competing sites.
dividing your site into content-rich pages that will each contain a keyword or group of keywords. Each page will individually aim at a decent ranking. You may wish to optimize the pulling power of your keywords by testing alternatives in a short advertising campaign on one of the ppc search engines.
adding proper metatags to each page: for title, description and keywords. Add an s to increase coverage. Place headline text before any image(s) on the page. Write your copy to draw visitors, as Google and other search engines will use your page descriptions and introductory text in their listings.
ensuring copy for each page reflects the metatags. Keywords should appear in the copy, in a particular density and pattern.
minimizing elements that impede ranking: javascript, database content, frames, nested tables and multiple graphics.
use text for links rather than images: especially important for Google. The text should be the keyword phrase used by outside visitors to find the page.
keep javascript off the page by using an exterior file. E.g. <script language=javascript src="javascript/remote_file.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
use SSI (server side includes) in place of database-generated pages.
Keep old pages until website traffic statistics show that they're not being visited any more (often a couple of months).
You can improve your ranking to some extent by employing site submission software but the overriding factors are 1. competing sites with your keywords, 2. incoming external links to your site (Google) and 3. professionalism of the opposition. Good pages will rise to the top, but the process will take longer if there are tens or hundreds of thousands of competing sites — sometimes a year or two.
Top Ten Search Engines and Directories
Achieving a decent ranking in the top ten search engines is becoming more difficult and more expensive, with both directories and search engines setting high appraisal/submission fees and relying increasingly on paid advertising. There are thousands of search engines, but the following are the only really important ones, accounting for over 99% of search traffic.
Taking Submissions
The pay-for-appraisal search engines and directories to which you should submit are pre-eminently Yahoo and LookSmart. Submission is still free at Google. Also — if your site is not purely commercial, and/or has useful content — consider Open Directory, Fast and AltaVista.
Remember that directories list hierarchically by topic, and your submissions are vetted by humans. By contrast, search engines are non-personal devices using complex (secret and changing) algorithms to rank sites, displaying them according to the keywords typed in by search engine users.
Traffic percentages below are taken from Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings of July 2004, which were based on the findings of 225,000 individuals in 26 countries. Nielson's figures have been reconstituted to a 100% base. Relations between directories and search engines are complicated, with data taken from one source being used and reused by others.
Google. Now the largest of the search engines: accounts for 26.7% of search traffic. Also uses data from Open Directory and supplies data to Yahoo, AOL and Netscape Netsearch. Submission is still free, though Google is turning more to paid advertising.
Yahoo. Directory: accounts for 20.2 of search traffic: most important and most discriminating of the directories. Noncommercial sites can be submitted for free: commercial sites cost $299/year for appraisal. If accepted, there is a $299/year charge to maintain the listing.
Ask Jeeves. Search engine: accounts for 4.5% of search traffic. Ask Jeeves discontinued their site listing service on 31st August 2004, and now offer two pay-per-click services. Branded Responses place your ad in highly targeted positions. Premier Listings place your add in top positions. Inclusion apparently costs $30, but inquire for more details and prices.
Overture. Formerly GoTo, now a pay-to-click search engine. Accounts for 3.3% of search traffic. Provides data to Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and Netscape, and also takes data from Inktomi. Several services now exist, but basically you choose how much to pay for click-throughs to your site by selecting search words at various prices, and setting a monthly budget. Minimum monthly spend is $20.
My Way. Accounts for 2.8% of search traffic. Takes data from Ask Jeeves, but you can also advertise with them: fees on application.
Lycos. Directory/Search engine: accounts for 2.4% of search traffic. Takes data from Open Directory and Fast. Submission is now by advertising, pay-for-clicks and/or banner advertising. Email them for details.
Websearch. accounts for 2.4% of search traffic. Part of Infospace Networks: advertising rates on application.
Infospace Networks. account for 2.0% of search traffic. Shows results in Dogpile and Webcrawler. You need to advertise in their Yellow Pages: prices on application.
Altavista. Search engine: accounts for 1.7% of search traffic. Also uses a directory supplied by LookSmart and Overture. Site data is also fed to Yahoo, but submissions go through Overture's system (i.e. the paid-for Site Match service, or free if the site meets Yahoo's free inclusion requirements).
LookSmart. Now a pay-by-click search engine charging a flat rate of 15 cents per click through. Budgets can only be set at the campaign level, and the monthly minimum charge is $15, whatever your traffic. Setup is $49, and an initial deposit of $150 is required. LookSmart accounts for less then 0.5% of search traffic, but is important because it supplies data to Microsoft Network, AltaVista, Excite and other search engines.
Fast/All the Web Search engine: accounts for 0.2% of search traffic. Supplies data to many search engines. Submission is free via Yahoo, but otherwise through Overture (paid-for advertising and pay-for-clicks).
HotBot. Search engine: accounts for 0.1% of search traffic. Uses data from Inktomi, Lycos, Direct Hit and Open Directory. Submission via Lycos (pay-for-clicks).
Open Directory. Directory: accounts for only 0.01% of search traffic, but is important for supplying data to other search engines, especially Lycos and AOL. Submission is free, but a listing tends to be a slow and uncertain business.
Not Taking Submissions
These search engines build or use databases created by other search engines and directories. You cannot submit to them, therefore, but you should check your site rankings here.
MSN. Search engine: accounts for 17.6% of search traffic. Uses LookSmart, Open Directory and Inktomi data. (But you can pay for inclusion in Inktomi at Position Technologies.)
AOL. Directory: accounts for 8.7% of search traffic. Uses Open Directory and Inktomi data, and provides data to Netscape.
Information.com. Accounts for 2.6% of search traffic.
Netscape Netcenter. Search engine: accounts for 1.9% of search traffic. Uses GoTo and Open Directory data.
Highbeam. Accounts for 1.5% of search traffic, more in the nature of articles than website listings.
Teoma. Search engine: probably accounts for less than 0.5% of traffic. Uses Open Directory data and sponsored listings from Google. Supplies data to HotBot, Ask Jeeves and MSN.
iWon. Search engine. Probably accounts for less than 0.5% of search traffic. All data from Inktomi.
NBCi. Search engine: probably accounts for less than 0.5% of search traffic. All data from LookSmart.
Dogpile. Search engine: probably accounts for less than 0.5% of search traffic. Uses data from many sources.
Search. Search engine: probably accounts for less than 0.5% of search traffic. Uses data from many sources.
Metacrawler. Search engine: accounts for 0.1% of search traffic. Searches the other search engines.
Understanding Search Engines
You'll find these useful:
A Promotion Guide. Clear online tutorial on most aspects of website promotion.
Bruce Clay. Internet business consultants with excellent advice on optimization, marketing and Internet strategy.
High Rankings Advisor. Many useful articles on search engine optimization and submission.
PayPerClickSearchEngines. A guide to the top ten pay-per-click search engines: includes brief reviews.
Search Engine Marketing. Cautionary note from a SEM professional: December 2004 Clickz article.
Search Engine Positioning. Simple guide emphasizing the key points.
Search Marketing. Guide to search engine advertising and pay-per-click search engines. Also lists ppc management software/services.
Virtual Promote. Jim World's practical guide to what's really entailed.
More advanced/lengthy treatments: