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Search Engines

Even if you don’t do any other form of marketing, make sure you target the search engines. The majority of users find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN so it’s vital that your website appears in the top of their results.

The major search engines include

Submit to the search engines

Firstly, register your website with the main search engines. You can do this for free, however, submitting your website to a search engine doesn't guarantee a high ranking in its index.

The process of getting your domain name listed in a prominent position can be a complex one dependant on a number of factors. Ultimately, one way to guarantee listings is to pay for it via web marketing tools packages such as Google AdWords http://adwords.google.com/

Before all this though, it is essential that you get the "bare essentials" right. This begins with registering with the respective search engines. URLs to register at include:

Many search engines allow you to register your site yourself. Go to the home page of each search engine and you'll probably find a button saying something like "Submit your URL" or just "Help". Follow the instructions from there.

Search engines periodically "crawl" the web updating massive databases of information and categories. In doing this, they use a spider, a program that searches the Web for any variety of purposes, sometimes to catalogue information or URLs, sometimes to count the number of URLs or servers.

Once you have submitted your site URL ( http://www.yourcompany.com) to your search engines, here are a few points to remember:
  • Indexing takes time! – The process of search engines updating their systems and listings is a time consuming one.
  • Watch the size of your pages – if it is large (cluttered with graphics, images etc), it will take longer to load into the browser window. If it is large, it may time out as the spider is indexing the text thus limiting your chances of getting listed appropriately.
  • Ensure that your hosting service is reliable – if you are not live to be indexed, you won’t be listed.

Optimisation

In order to achieve high positions in search engine results, you will need to optimise your website. Each search engine ranks the importance of a web page based on a specific set of rules - for example, Google ranks websites on the quality of the links to it from other websites.

The most important thing is to choose your keywords and phrases wisely. These should be relevant to your business or website as they are the words that your website will be associated with when a user enters them into a search engine. Once you have chosen them, include them in your Title Tags and throughout the content of your web pages – particularly in the headings, picture captions and text links, as search engines scan these areas first when ranking a website.

What are Keywords?

  • Any word or phrase that has particular significance to the content of your website.
  • Words that can be used by search engines – users may use these words in conducting searches related to you or your business.
  • Keywords are used to accurately describe the purpose and workings of your business as concisely and imaginatively as possible.

Once you have come up with a list of keywords for your business, there are plenty of resources online that can review and rate the effectiveness of your choice.

These include:

Pay per Click

Pay per Click (PPC) is one of the most economical and effective ways of marketing your website. By bidding for relevant keywords or phrases, you can advertise your website in prominent positions on the search engines. The cost of keywords depends on how many other companies are bidding for it, but you can expect to pay anything from 5p to £10 each time a user clicks through to your website. Pay per click providers include Overture www.overture.com and Espotting www.espotting.com and you can also bid for words on Google www.google.co.uk

The advertisements - which usually appear at the top of search listings as sponsored links, or in boxes down the side of the search results - are generally priced on a cost-per-click basis. This means you pay a fee each time a user clicks on a link through to your website.

Businesses which buy such ads typically take part in a type of auction, bidding against each other for key words related to their product or service. A tyre repair company might want to bid for words such as tyre and puncture, for example. The amount you're willing to pay for each click determines how high up the list of ads yours will appear.

Web directories

A web directory is a list of web sites grouped into categories but is controlled by human editors who make decisions on where and in what order to categorise them. People search by browsing through the categories and the following sub-categories until they find the website that suits their needs.

Major Web Directories

Many of these directories give you the opportunity to submit your site to a human editor under a particular category listing.

At registration you will also be asked to submit some key words to cross-reference your site with; by having these accurately describing your content then you are more likely to be found by the search engines web crawlers which are powered by such information.