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Pulling Rank

Doorways, cloaking, and hidden links — sounds more like a spy story rather than tactics to rise higher in the search engine wars. Getting high site rankings depends on more than just submitting your site URL to every search engine on the Net.

Search engines like Google use spiders and robots to crawl and index websites.

Directories like Yahoo! use editors to manually compile listings.

Here's a misconception about search engine submission: All you have to do is select your favorite search engines, click on "Submit your site," and soon thousands of eager Net adventurers will be beating a path to your URL.

Not quite. It takes planning, persistence, and a thorough understanding of how search engines operate to get a high ranking for your website.

If you're wondering why you should bother, consider this: Some 82% of Web surfers still rely on search engines to find what they are looking for. In fact, according to a report published by Jupiter Media Metrix in September 2001, 47% of shoppers use search engines: typing in the product name (28%), brand name (9%), or store name (5%) to find the product or service they are looking for.

Things That Go Bump on the Net

But why bother submitting your site to search engines? Don't they send out spiders, crawlers, and other Net beasties to automatically index your site? Yes, search engines commonly use spiders or robots to build their indexes. But as Danny Sullivan, editor of www.SearchEngineWatch.com explains in "How Search Engines Work," each search engine collects information in different ways (extracting information from title tags, plain text, and in some cases, meta tags) and the extent to which they crawl your site — from a few pages to the entire site — varies. The way they rank your site differs too and includes factors such as link popularity and keyword ratio/density.

To get the best results, it's advisable to familiarize yourself with search engine submission basics and manually submit the most important pages of your site. Take note: Manual submission may be tedious, but it still gets superior results over using automated submission packages. According to some industry experts, top search engines are none too keen on auto submission tools.

The top directories such as Yahoo! rely on the human factor, opting to employ editors who review submissions and rate them based on quality and content.

Mapping Out a Successful Site

To increase your chances to success, think about search engine optimization (SEO) during the initial planning stages of your site — when you are drawing up the site architecture, planning, and writing the content — not after the site launch. "If you start thinking 'SEO tactics' when designing your sites, you'll have better results," said Barbra Coll, CEO of WebMama at a Search Strategies 2001 Conference. She also highlighted the importance of site maps: "Site maps have food that search engines love, and they have links to every single page that your visitors care about." For more tips, see Search Day's "Creating Search Engine Friendly Sites."

Content, too, should be written with search engines in mind. While you should beware of peppering the pages full of keywords to the detriment of well-written copy, it is a good idea to research keywords and to prepare keyphrases to weave into the site copy. Determine key words and phrases by brainstorming with others in the industry, finding the generally accepted terms used in the industry, and making your own searches of the Web.

While understanding how search engines work is key to getting better rankings, it is equally important to understand what they consider to be spam that could get you banned from that search engine ad infinitum. Doorways (pages designed primarily for search engines) and cloaking (a method of delivering tailored content to search engine spiders) are considered spam by many search engines.

Paying Your Way

Of course, when all else fails, money talks. Many search engines today enable you to pay for rankings. With performance-based rankings, you pay only for visitors sent to your site by the search engine. If you want to ensure your site get a listing on a particular search engine, you can opt for a paid inclusion program, which, for a fee, ensures that your site is crawled and included in the search engine.

Other options include partner listings or sponsored links, paid inclusion programs that put your company's URL at the top or bottom of results. You can also bid for keywords. Check out the Compare Your Clicks! website to see a comparison chart of search engine bids.

For commercial websites, top search engine rankings can have a direct effect on the bottom line. Clicks can result in customers. It's time for SEO.