You have a great web site that is well designed, easy to navigate, and packed with interesting content. Now all you need to do is list your site with the search engines and traffic to your web site will soar, right?

Unfortunately it’s not that simple, and search engine marketing can be a complicated subject. While some people achieve a top 10 placement in a major search engine and get plenty of traffic, other similar sites may get none. Why? This article will take you through some of the basics.

Search Engine Submission:

Getting Listed

Search engines and directories are one of the primary ways that Internet users find web sites, so it’s worthwhile spending some time getting your own site listed. Each of the search engines will have a link somewhere on their web page where you can ‘submit’ your site. Alternatively, you can use a free submission service such as Submit Express (www.submitexpress.com) which will submit your site to most of the major search engines in one go, saving you considerable time. Be aware that registering and actually being listed are two different things. You have to be patient and persistent as the time lapse between registering your site and when the listing actually appears on the Web can be weeks. You should also be aware that just registering your web site with the search engines isn’t likely to lift you above the clutter of billions of web pages currently on the Net. It simply means that the search engine knows your pages exist. If your site doesn’t appear in the top 10 or top 20 results for a search, many people will miss your web site. So the next step is the complex world of search engine optimisation, which involves altering your site to help improve your chances of achieving a high ranking.

Search Engine Optimisation:

Improving the Odds

Every search engine has a unique, complex (and sometimes conflicting) method of determining which web pages come up as the top choices when you put in a search term. If this doesn’t make things hard enough, the search engines are constantly changing their ranking criteria to outsmart determined site owners vying for top positions on competitive keywords. So whatever you do today will have to be redone or continued over time. There simply is no ‘one-stop’ solution that will work for your site, on all search engines, over a sustained period. There are, however, some general rules that most search engines follow you can use as a guide:

Location of Keywords
Make sure your target keywords appear in crucial locations on your web pages. The page title is most important. Failure to put target keywords in the page title is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked. Also, place keywords high in the visible text on your web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs. Search engines assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning. When choosing your keywords, consider how people will search for your web page. The words you imagine them typing into the search box are your target keywords.

Frequency of Keywords
A search engine will analyse how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. Watch for search engine ‘spamming’, however, such as a word repeated hundreds of times on a page, which may result in your site being penalised or excluded from the index.

Meta-tags
For those with some knowledge of HTML, the most important meta-tags for search engine indexing are the description and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The keywords tag provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page.

A word of Advice: META-TAGS ARE NOT A MAGIC SOLUTION

Many site owners mistakenly assume they are the ‘secret’ to propelling their web pages to the top of the rankings, however, not all search engines read meta-tags. Additionally, those that do read meta-tags may choose to weight them differently. So meta-tags can be part of the ranking recipe, but they are not necessarily the secret ingredient.

Because of the tedium and time investment involved in search engine optimisation, you may wish to consider outsourcing this task to experts. Or, for the serious ‘do-it-yourselfers’, you may wish to invest in software such as the WebPosition Gold (www.webposition.com). This will analyse your web pages and point out elements to change to help you score higher, and is constantly updated to provide you with the latest intelligence about changing search engine algorithms.

Search Engine Marketing:

Paid Listings

Every major search engine with significant traffic accepts paid listings. This is essentially a form of advertising, which means that you can be guaranteed to appear in the top results for the terms you are interested in within 24 hours. Paid listings are an option that should be explored if you wish to quickly build visibility for your web site, or may also be a long-term option if you have the budget.

And finally, beware of ads such as: “We submit your site to 1000 search engines for only $100.” Don’t bother! Only a handful of search engines and directories are important - the rest are essentially wannabes or disguised spam lists. Some of the major ones to get you started are: AltaVista, Excite, Google, HotBot, Inktomi, Looksmart, Lycos and Yahoo. So get listing!

Melanie Robey of Jarvis Moon specialises in marketing for small business. Email Melanie at melanie@jarvismoon.com for a consultation to discuss how technology can help grow your business, or visit their web site at www.jarvismoon.com.