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I hope you enjoy this month's topic. This is your newsletter, so if you like or don't like something about it, please email us at newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com and we will adapt. Like everything on the Web, we too at Bull Moose Marketing need to be flexible... Thanks for reading, Nick Ellinger CEO, Bull Moose Marketing, LLC. |
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Why Am I Not In Search Engines? There are a number of reasons why a site may not be listed. Here are a few: Spam is about as attractive to search engines as Spam is to a vegetarian. Different search engines use different filters to prevent from getting spammed. If you repeat the same words over and over, either in your page or your META tags, you can get banned. Also, gateway pages for specific keywords used to be a popular technique; now, it can get you banned. Finally, sometimes it is as simple as the company you keep. You can get canned (rim shot) because you share a host with a number of spamming or adult Web sites. Some popular free hosters are banned because of this problem. Frames may give your site a clean, organized look, but framed sites are nearly impossible to read for spiders (which are what search engines use to index sites). Additionally, they make it difficult to navigate with the back and forward buttons in browsers. You can accomplish the same results with a ColdFusion or ASP query that grabs a consistent navigation element (similar to how the Bull Moose Marketing site. Splash pages can be attractive, but if they are low on content, the pages will be low on the search engines' priority list. Spiders don't know what to do with low-or-no text pages and/or low-or-no link pages. If you must have a splash page, try what we do -- put some text (including your important keywords) and links on your splash page. To dominate, you must submit. There is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or free lunch. However, many believe that if you build it, they will automatically come. You must submit your sites to search engines. Most of the major search engines -- Altavista, Excite, Lycos, Hotbot, etc. -- have sections wherein a person can list their site free of charge. Do it every so often (once a week). Be patient; many sites take months to list your site. Can you stop when your site is listed? Well, you can scale back. However, you should still resubmit approximately every 2-4 weeks. Why? Because search engines drop old sites and the best way to avoid being cut is to pretend like you are a new site. Customization is the hallmark of a good site. Whether you are a political candidate or the next Amazon, it is great to greet people by name and remember them. However, many search engines can only index static pages. This means that pages that are customized to a user can't show up. For example, Barnes and Noble's site gives every user a visit ID that tracks them through the site. This means that the page is rewritten for different users. It also means these pages can be listed. The way around this is to submit the pages to search engines without their associated query strings. Use humans to get a sure thing. Zeal and Dmoz are directory sites that feed into a number of popular search engines. They are edited largely like volunteers, so if you submit your site in the appropriate category, you will probably know within a week if you are listed. If not, try again. There is actual accountability with these sites, so they give most prompt responses. If you want a sure thing, become a volunteer editor. Divide and conquer. While a spider will get all of the associated pages from the front page, you may have content that fits a niche. You can increase your links by listing individual pages of your site under specific interest sites. Take American Dental Specialty, a client site of ours. Not only did we submit the front page to search engines, we also went through the patient pages and listed them individually in Zeal (see above). These pages help bring in more interest and they help increase the sites' link popularity, which increases the search engine listings. Take this principle and expand. If you are a political candidate, list all of your issue pages (please tell us you have issue pages) in the directory under the various issues so that someone interested in those issues can stumble across your site. If you are a bookstore, take your popular books (or the ones that aren't selling) and list them individually. Need other resources? Let us know at newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com. |
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