Keys to Search Engine Optimization Success

Search engine marketing is one of the most effective ways to attract visitors to your site. This is because search engines are by far and away the most popular starting point for Internet users seeking specific information. Over the past 18 months, advertising budgets are increasingly allocating more dollars to search engine marketing - away from traditional media such as TV, radio and print. While this may sound very appealing, there is a lot to learn before you start down the SEM path.

Basically, there are three ways to be found on a search engine. You can submit your information, be “spidered” by the search engines, or advertise on the site.

Self-registration
Most search engines accept free site submissions from site operators (i.e. you or your company). To register with an engine you submit your Web site’s title, key words, key word descriptions and other bits of information. It's important to note that the guidelines for submission vary by search engine. Some limit the number of keywords you can use; others have no limits. For more information visit www.searchenginewatch.com.

Of the 150+ search engines, you should focus on those that account for most of the search traffic: Yahoo, Google, MSN , AllTheWeb, AOL , AskJeeves, Lycos, Looksmart, Teoma and HotBot. In addition to these, online directories offer specialized searches and more qualified traffic in specific verticals. These typically exist within each industry and are relatively easy to find.

It generally takes 2 weeks to 6 months for submissions to take effect. You can expedite the process by paying each search engine to register you (prices range from $30 to $300 per search engine). If getting listed quickly is important, we recommend paying the fee.

Spiders
In addition to self-registration, most search engines use spiders to search the Web and look for titles, keywords, keyword descriptions, as well as the content on your site. A spider is a program that “crawls” around your site, indexes all of the information on each page and sends the information back to the search engine to be saved in a database. A spider canvases Web sites by following links wherever it finds them. Sophisticated spiders look for hot-linked words and assign greater relevance to them. Most search engines have multiple spiders working simultaneously to cover the millions of Web sites they must visit every day. Issues to consider include:

• Site design impacts how effectively a search engine can index your site. If you have text embedded within multiple images and tables, the spider sees massive amounts of code instead of text. This makes it harder to index.
• Use keywords in your text and whenever possible, link them to other pages on your site. Spiders view text in the top half of your page to be more relevant.
• Engines such as Google look at the popularity of your site, such as the number of links to your site. This is where affiliate marketing programs with reciprocal links will help you increase your site's popularity.
• Popularity is also evaluated based on the number of clicks you get. The more popular you are, the higher your site will get ranked. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle where the most popular sites get the most visibility, which makes them more popular, and so on.
• Niche online directories offer much more specialized searches and more qualified traffic in specific verticals. These typically exist within each industry and are relatively easy to find.