Web site promotion and
search engine marketing
Findability: The importance
of web site positioning on UK search engines in your
internet marketing plan can not be under estimated.
Web site positioning, or search engine
positioning, is one of the most preferred marketing strategies
for websites. It is especially
very popular among small and medium sized UK businesses that
are under a strict budget and in need of such inexpensive
sources of traffic to their websites.
How UK Search Engines Acquire Content
To maintain a competitive edge, commercial
search engines companies closely guard how they acquire and
rank their content. No two search engines select their content
in the same way, and they change their algorithms often. (An
algorithm is a set of rules or commands.) Since these algorithms
are not published, developers have difficulty creating web
pages that will attract a particular search engine. However,
most UK search engines have a few common traits and these
issues will be addressed in this section.
Search Engine Spiders
Most UK search engines acquire content by using spider programs
that "crawl" your web site and index its contents.
The search engines keep a "seed list" of URLs that
are used to start the "spider" program on its way
to your web site. While the guiding algorithms for each spider
are configured differently, all spiders capture specific information
from the pages. Some spiders capture the title and first 1,000
characters of content. Others capture the title plus the description
and keyword META tags. Some capture a combination of all of
these.
Indexing your internet marketing and web site promotion
Large or small, an organisation must find the means to be
listed by the major UK search engines and directories.Search
engine optimisation is one of the quickest and most cost-effective
means for drawing traffic to a web site. You can get your
web site listed by submitting information about the web site
to a search engine (or search engine listing service) requesting
that your internet marketing and web site promotion be indexed.
Although many listing services are free, some charge a fee.
Once you’ve submitted your request, it can take several
weeks or even months for your internet marketing and web site
promotion to be indexed. If you can’t wait, some UK search
engines offer "express" indexing for an additional
fee. Express indexing moves your web site to the head of the
indexing queue so your internet marketing and web site promotion
will be indexed sooner.
Directories
You may also submit information to a directory site that
categorizes the World Wide Web based solely on input that
has been submitted. The site’s representative submits
information such as a site title, description, keywords, and
URL. This information is then categorized by topic. In this
case, a search engine never accesses the actual web site’s
content. When someone searches with a keyword, it is referenced
against the database of sites for the closest match.
Editorial Selection
The editorial selection process uses human editors who assess
site content for searchable words and concepts. Yahoo uses
editorial selection. Although it is a more personalized approach,
the process does have problems. For example, editors often
use inconsistent selection methodology. Also, editorial selection
is not easily scalable and is a labor-intensive process that
often causes lengthy backlogs.
Link Analysis
Link analysis is one of the newer ranking methods that analyses
the number and quality of links to and from your internet
marketing and web site promotion . If many sites are linked
to yours through a specific keyword, your internet marketing
and web site promotion is considered to be a relevant site.
In turn any sites that you link to also become more relevant.
To find out more about link analysis, check out the following
site:
Google is a search engine that utilizes link analysis.
Popularity
A site’s popularity is based on user traffic. Search
engines monitor the search results people select most often
for a given query. The links that appear to be the most popular
are then listed in a sidebar called something like the "Top
10 Most Popular Sites." .
Paid Placement
If your internet marketing and web site promotion appears
in the first 10 search results, you have prominent web presence.
To gain this competitive edge, some UK search engines invite
site owners to purchase or bid on key words that pertain to
their web site. For example, if the site features sports-related
information, the keyword "sports" might be purchased,
ensuring that the site’s URL would be included in the
first set of search results for "sports." The purchase
agreement may also guarantee that a clickable ad for the sports
site will appear on the page with the results.
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