Slide 1: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Search Engines How to make them work for you... www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 2: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Why use a search engine? • Finding information on the Internet • Ranked by relevance – search term (key words) – weighted by appearance and placement of key words. • Ranked by Popularity – Google, Direct Hit • Ranked by $$$ – Overture, Looksmart (Looklistings) www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 3: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Who are they? Get a flood of traffic to your website ! Submit your site to 300,000 search engines only • There are NOT 300,000 search engines! • The TOP 8: 1. Yahoo 2. Google 3. MSN 4. AOL 5. Altavista 6. Go Network (Infoseek) 7. Lycos 8. Excite $58 !!!! • represent 88.86% of all search engines. What SE do you use? www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 4: Spider v Directory Turning your Internet goals into reality… and why should I care? Directory • • • takes listings that are submitted directly placed by categories e.g. personal> health> public health Spider Engine • • • • • travels the web follows links reads content of your pages determines ranking based on what it finds on your pages will list ALL your pages in its engine Eg. Google, Altavista, All the Web usually home page only represented (more for $$$) • does not read content of your pages • determines ranking based on keywords found in category, description and title. Eg. Yahoo, ODP, Looksmart www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 5: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Anatomy of a SE Optimisation Project 1. Determine Key Words 2. Submit to Directories 3. Get Links 4. Optimise Web Pages 5. Submit to Spider Engines www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 6: Turning your Internet goals into reality… 1. Determine Keywords • What are people actually searching for? – Don’t focus on “Business Name” – Research using objective tools e.g. Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) • Choose popular, relevant, non-competitive keywords. • Weave those terms into your pages. www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 7: 1. Determine Keywords ... Turning your Internet goals into reality… What are people searching for? Research using www.wordtracker.com Initial keyword = asthma Keyword asthma womens health mens health health information allergies health care food allergies asthma symptoms asthma pictures asthma in children asthma treatment asthma information asthma cause exercise induced asthma asthma medication childhood asthma asthma attacks Count- 24hrs 6688 4892 3427 2997 2461 1884 1154 710 543 408 330 311 263 203 182 140 133 www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 8: 1. Determine Keywords … Turning your Internet goals into reality… What are people Searching for? Choose your Keywords • Theme Related • Popular • Low Competition (use wordtracker or observe number of results when you search) www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 9: 1. Determine Keywords … Turning your Internet goals into reality… What are people Searching for? Put your keywords in... For Directories: – – – – Category Title Description Domain name www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 10: 1. Determine Keywords … Turning your Internet goals into reality… What are people Searching for? Directory example... Category Title Description www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 11: Turning your Internet goals into reality… 2. Submit to Directories 1. ODP (open directory project) 2. Looksmart via ZEAL 3. Yahoo! 4. Relevant industry portals www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 12: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Q: Why? Q: How? 3. Get Links A: Link Popularity and referred traffic 1. Freely distribute articles with in-built links to your website. 2. Use keywords in the link text rather than organisation name or domain name 3. Ask to be linked in their links/resources page 4. Offer reciprocal links 5. Submit link pages to Google www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 13: Turning your Internet goals into reality… Link Text www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 14: 4. Optimise your pages Turning your Internet goals into reality… Put your keywords in... For Spider Engines: <title> <Meta> description Headings <h1><h2> Body text Link text Domain name <meta> keywords are a low priority Don’t over-do it! www.technologymatters.com.au – – – – – –
Slide 15: 4. Optimise your pages Turning your Internet goals into reality… SE’s love standard HTML but stumble over…. • • • • Frames (use the <noframes> tag to insert content) Flash Lots of Javascript Dynamic pages (generated from a database) particularly containing special characters like ? = & • Images containing text (the S.E can’t read the text in the image) www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 16: Turning your Internet goals into reality… 5. Submit to the Spider Engines Submit base domain only to: – Google – All The Web – Lycos Submit individual pages to: – Alta Vista (www.altavista.com.au, free or express service) – Inktomi (www.positiontech.com US$39 +$25/page pa) Refer to handout for other engines and directories www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 17: Turning your Internet goals into reality… 5. Monitor your position • Review website statistics – – – – Many hosting companies provide, or Free stats from www.sitemeter.com Look for “referrals” Throw away your “hit counter” • Check your rankings – Top Dog (www.topdog.com US$199) – Web Position Gold (www.web-position-gold.biz US$149), mostly US engines www.technologymatters.com.au
Slide 18: Turning your Internet goals into reality… www.technologymatters.com.au