Promoting Web Sites |
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Registering
with Search Engines |
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If you have a database
driven or dynamic website, you will have further obstacles
to overcome before your website is successfully indexed by some
search engines. Read about this particular problem at
http://spider-food.net/dynamic-page-optimization.html |
Registering your Web site address
and details with the search engines listed below, and checking
that you're actually still listed with them every few months
(not every week!) should significantly increase your on-line
traffic. |
Before you start,
check our Meta Tags info to see
which engines actually use these when indexing your site. If
you want to find out more about Meta Tags, Titles
on your pages, and Meta Descriptions, take a look at
improving your web site. |
Check Out
the Search Engine Sites |
Which are the Major Search Engines? Click
here to find out
The length of time it takes to be listed with a search engine
is beyond control. It varies from search engine to search
engine. It can take anywhere from 1 to 30 days and even up
to six months. Some search engines will guarantee a
specific time frame, some will not. Where you have to pay
it can be quicker.
Once upon a time, if your site was properly built, search
engines started to pick it up after 6 months or so anyway.
Sadly, this is no longer the case, although Google
claims this is still true with their own engine. So, you have
to spend some time every few months (a bit like keeping your
accounts up to date) checking your online listings and search
engine registrations.
Please note: you don't need to be frantically re-submitting
your site to the engines every week.
If you really want to get into search engines and find out
how they work, take a look at the excellent search
engine watch web site.
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Two Very Important
Directories |
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Yahoo!
and DMOZ
(The Open Directory Project). You *must* manually register
with them before you will be listed. If you also actively promote
with other websites and directories it will all help to build
a higher profile for your site. If you can't seem to get listed
with Yahoo take a look at getting listed
with Yahoo |
1. Yahoo! |
Current intelligence reports that Yahoo!
attracts over 50,000,000 visitors per month.
As well as its own directory, Yahoo!
uses DMOZ
to supply secondary results. Hence the importance of
getting your site listed with both of these directories.
Snowgoose doesn't really like Yahoo!
but we won't argue with large numbers of the Net population!
Google
is our personal favourite. In fact, Google
is now officially the world's no. 1 search engine in
2002.
Google
is followed by Yahoo!
which is joint second with the world-dominating Microsoft
search engine product, MSN
search
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2.
Dmoz - The Open Directory Project |
We are voluntary editors for the Northumberland
and County
Durham Travel & Tourism
sections of the Dmoz Open Directory Project web
site. This is a very important web directory, reckoned
to be second in importance after Yahoo!. Its huge catalogue
is used by several of the major search engines, including
AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot,
Google, Lycos and Netscape Search,
so being listed here is a major step in your promotional
campaign. To be included your web site must be of reasonable
quality and content.
To get listed in the Open Directory Project (Northumberland
and Durham only), send your web site address to dmozediting@snowgoose.co.uk
for review and we'll add you in the right place!
Please note the above only applies to websites
which are relevant to these two regions. We cannot review
or list sites which fall outside of these geographical
regions.
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If you need more reassurance about the importance of DMOZ,
the following is an extract from Google's
guidlelines on getting listed (January 2003):
"Google partners on the Web include Yahoo! and Netscape.
If you are having difficulty getting listed in the Google
index, you may want to consider submitting your site to either
or both of these directories. You can submit to Yahoo! by
visiting http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/.
You can submit your site to Netscape's Open Directory Project
(DMOZ) by visiting www.dmoz.org.
Once your site is included in either of these directories,
Google will often index your site within six to eight weeks".
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ISP
searches |
Did you know that many ISP's (that's
the service you use to connect to the Internet) also provide
search facilities, the results of which are powered by the big
Engines? AOL, Freeserve
and Virgin, for example,
use Google
to provide you with search results from their websites, as does
the excellent BBC site. |
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Registering
with the Engines |
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We've made it easier for you. In the lists
below, click on the "( register
) " link next to the engine you want and it will take
you straight to their registration page. We've listed the first
3 engines according to their popularity, i.e. the number of
people reputedly using them. |
We've listed the engines/directories which still
allow free site submissions at the beginning (unfortunately
this list is now becoming smaller), with engines/directories
which only accept paid submissions
further down. |
Google is at position 1. Current industry intelligence
(January 2003) suggests that Google now attracts 80-90% of
all search traffic on the web. Need we say more?
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FREE
SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSIONS
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Look at the Search Site first: |
Then Register your site here: |
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( register)
uses Google results
Note: free submission for charities only
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( register)
Used to be Direct Hit. Not free
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AOL |
No need! Uses Google results |
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( register)
Partner with LookSmart
(free submission needs some thought!)
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PAID SEARCH
ENGINE SUBMISSIONS
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NOTE: Yahoo
rejects 70% of free web site submissions. Proceed with
care! Snowgoose thinks it's a waste of time using the
free submission if you are a commercial business. You
can use Yahoo! Express where your site is reviewed within
7 days for an annual fee of $299 (this used to be a
one-off fee until back end of 2001 - such is life!)
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NOTE: Suggest
a change to your Yahoo Listing. Proceed with care!
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(register)
express starts at $39 |
NOTE: Inkomi
currently feeds into AOL, HotBot, Overture, iWon and
MSN. Worth a try if you have the budget.
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NOTE: MSN
is a real biggie, being part of the Microsoft family.
A serious rival to Yahoo!
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NOTE: Looksmart
feeds into iWon, MSN and AltaVista.
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NOTE: Overture
is one of the biggies. Snowgoose suggest paying to be
listed if your budget will stretch to it. You can also
try their free submission service, but it needs some
thought!
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simpler version of Altavista above.
no means of registering.
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( register)
Feeds to Inktomi (NB. no longer free as of spring
2001)
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META
TAGS |
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(check below to see which engines use them) |
AltaVista |
Meta tags supported? Yes
Spamming penalty? Yes |
Excite |
Meta tags supported? Yes
Spamming penalty? Yes |
HotBot |
Meta tags supported? Yes
Spamming penalty? Yes |
InfoSeek |
Meta tags supported? Yes
Spamming penalty? Yes |
Lycos |
Meta tags supported? No
Spamming penalty? Yes |
Northern Light |
Meta tags supported? No
Spamming penalty? No |
Web Crawler |
Meta tags supported? Description
tag only
Spamming penalty? Yes |
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What is Spamming? |
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