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How Search Engines and Directories Work

Anyone who accesses the Internet in search of information will inevitably head straight for a search engine or a directory. Most people hold the impression that they are one and the same, but there are some fundamental differences between search engines and directories. This article will explore in detail the differences between search engines and directories.

About Internet Search Engines

A web search engine is essentially a website that allows you to input a word or phrase related to whatever you are searching for. A series of relevant results will then be produced, containing links to websites that might contain what you are looking for. Some of the popular search engines include Google, Yahoo and Nexplore. The main page of most popular search engines is exceedingly simple, containing a single entry field where you can input your query, then click a search button, whereupon most major search engines will search its database for sites matching your entry.

A results page will appear with the top 10 website results for your query, with options to link to the following pages of results as well. Web search engines make use of various factors when ranking sites, such as the number of times a relevant word or phrase is used in the text on the site, how many other sites are linked to it, the number of times keywords can be found in the site’s code, many others. Most of the top search engines operate in much the same way as each other, although they may use slightly different criteria in ranking websites.

True search engines work by first using a program known as a crawler or spider. This program trawls the Internet, following links and indexing the websites they find in a database. Once a spider program has indexed a website, the search engine will revisit the site regularly in order to keep its records updated. Some search engines may even use spider programs multiple times each day, especially if they think the websites indexed by the engine need to be updated.

You will find that there are many search engines available that specialize in searching for other file types or information types. Some items search engines may specialize in indexing are images, files, music, and many more. Some search engines are also particularly useful for finding specific types of sites such as shopping sites.

About Internet Directories

Directories function very differently from search engines. Directories do not make use of spider or crawler programs. Instead, directories are usually manually maintained by humans. A directory will usually have an editor who vets submissions to the directory or else it will have someone who actively searches the Internet for sites to add to their listings. Directories may vary in size from the small to the truly massive. An excellent example of a large directory is http://Dmoz.org. It is a not-for-profit directory edited completely by volunteers. The Internet also contains countless smaller directories that specialize in a particular niche. No matter what you are looking for on the web, you are bound to find a directory that caters to it.

Comparing Search Engines And Directories

A directory edited by someone will usually contain listings of sites of higher quality since, unlike a search engine; sites added to a directory must undergo a manual inspection and approval process. A directory also separates its listings according to categories – something search engines do not do. A search engine will contain a great deal more links than a directory, however, and the results you find on a search engine are also likely to be fresher.

Whether you decide to make use of a search engine or a directory really depends on what it is you are searching for and which of them is able to offer you better results to suit your needs.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Optimization Services specializing in Top Search Engines and search engine optimization articles .

High Search Engine Ranking Techniques

It is often very confusing and frustrating to get your website ranked in the top ten. However, there are a few simple steps you can take to build your site up in the internet search engine rankings. Use these recommended white hat techniques to get your site up there and avoid any black hat techniques that might get you banned by major search engines.

Title Tags Are Important

Make sure you include title tags in your html code. The title tags should be included on each page of your site and they should include your keywords. For example, do not just name your page home. If your company is “Ted’s Bows,” you could name your home page, “Ted’s Bows Home Page”. Pick a different name for each page and make sure they are relevant to your website.

Include a Site Map

Think of a site map just like a road map for the spiders surfing your website. A site map tells these spiders which pages you think are relevant and important. If you want your pages ranked in the search engines, you must have a correct site map. You can include basic information about what you offer and what you sell. You then show the url of each page you think is important, along with a short description of each page. This will help the search engines know what your page is about and what is important on it.

Don’t Forget Your Meta’s

Each page of your website should be optimized with meta tag keywords and a meta tag description. These tags are used to tell the search engines what words phrases of topics your website is about. Do not include words that are not relevant to your site. You need to include any terms you want to show up in the search engines for. This is a free and easy way to tell the search engines what you want them to know.

Consider the Name of Your Website

If your website sells socks, you probably do not want to name it “All about Cats”. As you would assume, the name or url of your site should have relevance to what you are offering. If you sell socks and your name is Roy, consider “Roy’s Socks”. If this name is taken, you could choose something like “Roy’s Socks Online”. Just make sure the topic of your site is included in the url.

Link, Link, and Then Link Some More

One of the most important aspects of building up your rankings with popular search engines is getting links. You need to have links from other popular sites that rank high in the search engines. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t always easy. You need to have one way links that come from other sites without having to place your own link to them. In this case, you can wait for it to happen or ask other sites to link to you. Some will say yes and some won’t; the secret is to continue asking until you have a large number of links.

On Page Content

When the spiders crawl your page, they will count the number of words you have and then calculate which words are used the most. If you only have one hundred words and you use your keyword once, you might not be showing the appropriate relevance. In general, a web page should be at least 500 words long and should contain your keyword approximately 2-3% of the time. This means that if you sell shoes, you would have the word shoes on your web page at least 10 times. However, do not stuff the page. Use the words in correct grammar and spelling to get the best results.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Optimization Services specializing in Meta Search Engines and search engine marketing articles .

What Are Search Engines and How Do They Work?

If you are asking this question, you are not alone. Many small business owners and people who are self employed understand they need a website, but don’t have a clue how to make visitors come to it. The truth is, understanding websites is pretty simple; bringing tons of visitors is another topic altogether though. Let’s start with how search engines work to index your website and what is so vital about them.

What are Search Engines?

Search engines are like phone books for the internet. In the same way you look to the phone book to find a local business, a search engine allows you to look for online businesses. You simply type in the word or words that represent what you are searching for and you get a list of possible sites. The search engines use what they call “spiders” to crawl the internet and index websites by term. For example, a spider from a search engine would crawl through your site and see the word shoes. If “Shoes” is the most used word on your web page, you’ll get indexed for shoes, along with every other site using that word. However, if your site uses the term “Shoes Boston,” you would be indexed for that term. For this reason, you need to include words relevant to what you are selling or offering.

Why are Search Engines Important?

The majority of people use search engines to find what they are looking for. No matter how much you advertise your website and url, the fact is very few people will remember it. Most people simply search by the name of your company or the industry it is a part of. However, all search engines only lists ten search results on each page. Statistics show that very few people go past page two of the search results. Therefore, if you are on page nine or you are listing 150,000 out of one million, you may never get seen.

How Do You Get On Page One Or Two Of Popular Search Engines?

Having your site displayed on page or two of the most popular search engine results is not easy. There are a number of things to consider such as keywords, meta tags, headers, and even the website name you choose. You also have to know which sites to link to and which to stay away from. It is not an easy process, but with a little time and determination, you can get your site up there. The process is called SEO or search engine optimization. If you do a search for either term you will quickly see that it is the foundation on which search engines work. There are companies that do nothing but optimize websites each day. There are also sites that sell links to promote your website. Some of these sites are great; they help you get on page one and develop a good website. However, some companies use techniques that are not so prudent and can not only keep you off page one, but they can also get you banned from the search engines all together.

What Should You Avoid?

Avoid using companies that stuff your pages full of keywords or link you to hundreds of sites in one day! These techniques are not useful and the major search engines will quickly catch on. You need to use techniques that build your site up in a natural order that would occur without these companies. You should slowly add links, use lots of new relevant content, and grow your site over time. Do not try to force the process or use bad techniques. Do things correctly and you will quickly be on page one of the search results.

Seomul Evans is a senior consultant with a Dallas Search Engine Marketing Company specializing in Top Search Engines and small business blogger .

How Do Search Engines Index Websites?

You have finally done it. After days or weeks of hard work, your website is finally complete. Now what? Well, now you have the fun task of drawing visitors to your web pages. That doesn’t sound so easy does it? However, it is not as hard as it sounds. You simply have to make the search engines index your website and find it appealing. Search engines use complicated computer algorithms called search engine spiders to crawl through your web pages and index them in the search engine directory. These spiders read through all the text on all your pages and decide what your pages are about. They then use the determination to index your website with other sites of a similar theme.

How Do You Get Indexed Quickly?

So how do you get your website indexed quickly and how do you get high rankings with some of the major search engines? It really isn’t as complicated as it seems. There are a few quick and easy tips you can use to get your website indexed in as little as 24 hours. Most SEO experts will tell you that you need to first submit your website to the search engines. This is a very simple way to get indexed. Most search engines have a specific page that you can submit your website on. Some search engines even allow you to write a short description about your web page. That way you get to have some input with the search engine.

Use Blog Sites TO Get Indexed

Another quick and easy way to get your website indexed is by using a blogging site. You can create a blog about your website in just a few minutes and the best part is it’s free! Sites such as Wordpress and Blogger allow you to create free blogs and you can say what ever you want. You can talk about the industry you are in, the products you sell, or just tell your visitors about you. You can even add links to your web page which will help your web page get indexed faster. The more content you add and the more links, the quicker you will get indexed. If you can draw a large number of visitors to your blog, you will get a very high ranking in most search engines.

Do Not Forget the Social Sites in You Index Scheme

Another great way to get your website indexed quickly with high rankings is using social networks. You can use sites such as Digg and Delicious to get noticed. These sites allow visitors to submit content for other visitors. For example, if you find something on the Internet that you find interesting, you can submit it for everyone else to see. Then everyone gets to vote on how valuable the information in its. If you submit important news or interesting content you can quickly find your link on the front page of these websites. That can be a huge boost to your ranking with web search engines. These sites can also help bring visitors to your page since they provide links to the content they display. The site is free and you can submit your own content.

In Conclusion

These are all great tips to get your website indexed correctly. If you are not listed in the search engine results, there is no way for your customers to find you. Getting your website indexed quickly is a critical part of building your website. After all, you put a lot of effort into building your website. Now spend a short time getting your website ranked and the rewards will last a lifetime.

Seomul Evans is a senior Dallas Search Engine Optimization consultant specializing in Pay Per Click advertising and online marketing articles .

A Linking Campaign is Critical in Getting Noticed by Search Engines!

For most major search engines, links are a critical component of rankings. Search engines look at links as recommendations from other websites. The engines surmise that if your site is popular enough to have other people link to it, then it must be important. Therefore, the more links you have, the more popular you are, and the higher you will rank in search engine results. Seems simple, doesn’t it! However, it can take a great deal of effort and time to build up a large number of links.

What Are Your Options

If you know nothing about building links, you may want to hire a company to handle the process for you. Your other options would be to buy links from a company or just hire someone to work in your company on the campaign. As you can imagine, in every case, it will cost you a pretty penny and it can still take some time. There is no magic button to get the job done and walk away. Let’s compare your options for getting someone else to build your links.

• Hire A company – You can find a number of companies that offer link building services. These companies usually have tons of contacts and can get you highly ranked links very easily. However, the problem with hiring a company is not knowing what links you will get. While some companies only use white hat techniques, others may link you to sites that eventually lead to trouble. If you go with this option, make sure you get a detailed report of all the links and check them out personally.

• Buy Your Links – Most of the major search engines frown on buying links and they will eventually determine which links are bought. There are ways to get around this by purchasing three way links, but you do have to be careful. Make sure that the company you build your links from allows a plan where you can slowly build links. You don’t want to have 500 links placed in one day. The search engines will obviously see this as a problem.

• Hire A Company Employee – You could hire someone in your company to work on your link building campaign as their job. Depending on the number of links you want, you could hire someone full time or maybe just part time. This would allow you the opportunity to directly oversee your link building campaign. However, it would mean taking on all the things that come with a new employee, like sick days, vacation insurance, and unemployment. This can end up being a high price tag to get the job done.

DIY - Do It Yourself

Even if you have no prior experience, you could run your own link building campaign. There are thousands of tutorials on the web today to offer tips and tricks. There are also software programs and websites that help you build your own links for a small fee. If you can put forth the time and the effort, building your own links is really the best approach to take. You can also have a clearer picture of what you have done and what you should do next. In the end, no one is going to care about the outcome of your link building campaign as much as you do.

Keep Up The Good Work

A link building campaign should be ongoing. Just because a site is popular that you link to now, does not mean it will be in the future. Websites come and go; you need to continually build new links from popular site if you want to be popular with the search engines.

Seomul Evans is a senior Link Popularity Expert specializing in Internet Search Engines and marketing articles .

Popular Search Engine Components

There are a number of different search engines on the internet today. While the most popular engines are Yahoo and Google, search engines like Nexplore and Alexa are quickly gaining ground. Luckily for the consumer, most search engines offer the same components. However, each search engine does have its own perks and benefits. It simply depends on what you need most from a search engine as to which one you should use. Some people actually use a couple different engines depending on what they are looking for. Let’s take a look at the different search engines and what each offers.

Google

The main page of the Google search engine is pretty simple. It offers a clean look that is very user friendly. You can choose to enter a term and receive a list of results, or choose “I’m Feeling Lucky” to go directly to a site related to your search term. You can also choose whether you want to search the entire web or if you want to look in a particular category like photos, maps, news, or even blogs. This is a great feature, for example, if you are particularly looking for a photo of a cat rather than information about cats. If you choose to search for a term, on the web and receive a list of sites, you will see a search engines results page show up. This page will tell you how many sites there are on the internet that use the term you searched for. You will also see that the page is divided into two sections. The left side of the page is called organic search results and the right side is paid search results. Organic results are the ones that Google lists as relevant for your keyword, while paid results are companies that paid to be listed on the page.

Yahoo

The home page for Yahoo is built as a regular web page. However, it provides links down the left side of the page rather than other Yahoo pages. You can use the home page to find games, look for a job, or even search for a new home. There is also a box in the upper right hand side of the screen to access your Yahoo services, like mail, messenger, and events calendar. At the top of the page, you can enter search terms and specify by web, photos, or even videos, just like Google. The search results page looks the same as well. You can choose from organic results or paid results. You will also find there are suggestions for search terms similar to the ones you entered. If you entered a general term, you will find more specific search terms to choose from.

Nexplore

The Nexplore search engine is very similar to both Yahoo and Google. You can specify your search down to pictures, blogs, or even podcasts. When you search a term, you will find there are three spaces for search results. There will be sponsored search results at the top of the page and down the right hand side. These are the paid results, and then on the left side, under the first few sponsored results, are the organic results. One feature this search engine does have that other two don’t is the ability to customize your results. You can view your results with a description and the url or customize the view to show a picture of the website or just a list of urls. These can be great if you prefer pictures or a longer list of results on each page.

As you can see, most search engines offer the same features with just a few variances. However, you will see that the first result for a keyword is not always the same with each engine. Each search engine ranks the websites in their own way.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Optimization consultant specializing in Popular Search Engines and search engine marketing .

The Most Important Search Engine Don’ts

While there are a number of great things you can do to optimize your site for the search engines, there are a few that simply need to be avoided. These techniques can do one of two things. They may lower your search engine rankings or they could even get you banned completely from the search results. Do not waste all your effort just to end up at the bottom of the results page because of one mistake. However, in most cases, you can make one or two mistakes, but if you go all out using bad techniques you will be caught. Don’t think you can get away with it. So, what should you avoid?

Avoid Link Farms, They Do You No Good

Link farms are BAD! That’s all there is to it. When you link to a farm, you are not only wasting your money, you will hurt your rankings permanently in most cases. Search engines generally know about link farms long before anyone ever pays for their services. Don’t think that new link farms are ok. Besides, most link farms do not have a high ranking in search engines anyway. Therefore, you are likely to see positive results even if you don’t get caught.

Don’t Pay High Prices for a Quick Fix

You will see hundreds, if not thousands of websites online, promoting a quick fix for your search engine results. Most of these sites offer a few hundred links in one or two days. However, this does you no good; you need to build links slowly. Some even offer to search for your keywords for a few hundred bucks. In most cases, you do not need these services; you can pick your keywords based on what you sell and where you are located. Look around and see what your competitors are using and you can figure it out yourself. You may even discover that some of these companies offer quick results. However, when they are out of the picture, the search engine discovers that bad tactics were used to raise your ranking and you are left holding the bag.

Forget Drop Down Menus For Site Direction

Many sites use drop down menus to show the pages on their website. This is not a good idea. Popular search engine spiders are not able to access drop down menus. You need to list text links to your website pages. This will make it easier for the search engines to crawl your pages and get them indexed. If you leave out your text links, you may have very low search engine ranking. Search engines want to see large websites with relevant material. If all they see is your home page, you can count yourself out.

Forgo the Flash Animation

Don’t use flash animation to convey your message. This does not mean you cannot have a flash banner at the top of your page. However, if your page is full of flash ads or banners, you may have problems getting the ranking you are looking for. Search engine spiders can only read text at this point. You need to make sure that the text on your site includes your site name and keywords, as well as your flash boxes. Consider this, if you are selling products and they are all within flash boxes, the search engines do not read the product names or pictures. You must have image descriptions or text under and around the boxes to let the search engines know what you are offering.

As you can see, there are a number of things you definitely should not do when promoting and building your website. If you build your site properly, without trying to force the results too quickly, you are sure to see better results.

Seomul Evans is a senior Organic Search Engine Optimization expert specializing in New Search Engines and a SEO Blog contributor.

Top Five Ways to Get Noticed by Search Engines

The truth is, the best way to get noticed by search engines is to be better than the competition. However, not everyone knows what they need to be better at. It all comes down to search engine optimization and there are certain things you need to do. You don’t have to be the best on the internet; you just have to be better than the people you are competing with on your keywords. Consider the following areas if you want to be number one in the search engine results.

Pick the Right Url

The first step in getting high search engine rankings begins even before you build your website. You need to pick a site name that has something to do with the products or services you will be offering. For example, if you are selling dog collars, you may not want your website named Cats_R_Us.com. You should think about the keywords you will want to target, and try to incorporate them into your site name.

Name Your Pages Correctly

When you are building your website, you should include the best page names possible. Don’t use page titles like “home page”, and “about us”. You should include your keywords in your page titles. For example instead of “Home Page” you could say “Dog Collars Home”, or you could use “About Dog http://Collars.com”. Try to use your keywords as much as you can when naming your web pages.

Optimize Your Meta Tags

Meta tags are an important part of getting your site ranked high in the search engines. Meta keywords and meta phrases are some of the first things that search engine spiders see when crawling your website. These should be optimized to include the keywords or phrases you think best describe your website page. Each page will have its own metas and they should be optimized for what is on that page. Make sure you keep these up to date as you make changes to pages and discontinue products or services.

Optimize Your On Page Text

If you are writing the text on your page, you should include your keywords as a natural part of the page. Do not stuff the page with keywords, but make sure they are included. On average, a good number is to include your keywords 4% of the time. This means that a 500 word page would have your keywords listed 20 times. This should be done naturally, as a part of the headers and the text. The keys should be used in a grammatically correct way and never use improper spelling.

Age of Site

While you can’t make your site older than it really is, this is something to consider. Do not change your website every few months. Some people do this. They get fed up with a site because it isn’t working and they start something new. The problem is that search engines do look at your websites age as a factor for ranking it. This doesn’t mean that a new site cannot get high ranks. It just means that in the same way you get higher ranks after months of building links, age will also raise your search engine rankings.

These are just a few of the ways you can build you site to get higher search engine rankings. There are dozens more ways today. The key is to create a user friendly site that convinces visitors to stay and buy while they are there. After all, it does no good to bring in 20,000 visitors if you can only close two sales.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Optimization Services specializing in Meta Search Engines and asearch engine marketing articles contributor.

Use Local Search Marketing to Get the Search Engines’ Attention

As the number of websites on the Internet grows, it is getting harder and harder to grab the attention of the popular search engines. Some keywords such as car or shoes have millions of sites dedicated to the topic. If you are the new guy competing in this market, you can be sure you won’t hit the first page of the major search engines. The truth of the matter is, more and more people are now looking to the Internet for information as well. You will find that many people forgo the phone book for the newspaper in favor of the Internet when searching for services or products. For this reason, you have to be on the web and you have to make sure the search engines find you important.

What’s the Secret?

While there is no guaranteed way to reach the first page of the search results with top search engines, there are a few tips and tricks to make sure your customers can find you. If you offer your products and services to specific regions or areas, the best thing you can do is take advantage of local search marketing. Local search marketing is the process of specifically designing your website to target your specific area. For example, if you are in Colorado and you sell cars, your keyword could be Colorado cars rather than simply Colorado or cars. You could even be more specific such as Denver, Colorado cars. If you are an auto dealer in the Denver area, this is the region you should be marketing to in the first place. Targeting a specific region can cut down the number of competitors you face from the millions to the thousands or even hundreds of websites.

The Correct Process

The best way to make sure you are reaching your target audience is to search your own keywords. If you sell dog collars in Florida, then search Florida dog collar. If you are not in the top 10, you need to make some changes. Start with on page optimization. This means adding local keywords like Florida to your web page. You can rename your web pages to include the location or you can include the keyword in your text. Another great tip is adding your address somewhere on each page. This will insure that the search engines know your location. You can also use local directories, such as the yellow pages to list your business and add a link to your web page. Anytime you have links or advertising for your page, you need to make sure the location is included.

Why Is This So Important?

In recent studies, it has been discovered that over 700,000,000 local search terms are entered in the search engines every month. This is in the United States alone. In addition, many studies suggest that 30 billion or more local searches will take place next year. If that is not enough to sway you, consider this: over half of the searches that take place in a visit to a local sales counter or store. Imagine if you could reach 1,000 local searchers a month. That could mean 500 new in-store visitors. It is definitely worth the effort. With the competition growing at an alarming rate, using local search marketing is one of the best ways to ensure continued business. Don’t pass up this excellent opportunity.

In Conclusion

By adding a few local words such as your city, county, state, or country, you could potentially see thousands of new visitors each month. That is a very small amount of work to see such a high return. Very few other techniques on the Internet today can offer you such great results. Local search marketing truly is one of the best ways to get your name noticed in cyber space.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search marketing expert specializing in New Search Engines and a internet marketing articles contributor.

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

In today’s day in age everyone knows what a search engine in is. However, most people do not understand how search engines work. It really isn’t as difficult as most people think. Search engines are basically like phone books for the Internet. They look through websites and decide which pages are relevant for the keywords searchers enter into the search engine. For example, when you enter the word cars the search engines will display a list of sites that deal with cars.

How Do Search Engines Decide Relevance?

Search engines use specific algorithms to decide which websites are relevant for specific keywords. They use programs to crawl through each site and decide what the website is about. These programs look at a number of things to determine what the site pertains to. It looks at the name of the website as well as the text on the page. There are also a number of items such as Meta tags and website names that are considered by these algorithms. It seems very complicated, however, if you understand what the search engines are looking for, you can quickly optimize your website.

On Page Optimization

On page optimization is the process of optimizing the web page that the visitor sees. You would optimize things such as text on the page, headers, and page titles. This means you would need to include the keywords you will be using for your website in these areas. Most SEO experts agree that using keywords 4% of the time is exactly what is needed for search engine optimization. This means that if you have a web page with 500 words you should include your keywords at least 20 times. However, don’t go overboard using keywords too many times can actually cost you credibility with the search engines. This is considered as page stuffing. It is frowned upon and considered a bad tactic to take.

Off Page Optimization

Off page optimization is the process of optimizing things your customers won’t see. Off page optimization includes your link building campaign and use of social networking. These items are kind of like advertising on the Internet. Your goal should be to get a link on as many websites as possible. However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Most people only want to link to websites that have excellent content. Therefore, you need to make sure your page has something other people want to talk about. This can be the latest fashions, news, or simply information others might find helpful. Whatever the case your website pass to provide something for your visitors, and other peoples visitors, before you will get links. You do have the option of using social networking sites to build up hype about what you have to offer. In this regard you get to control what is said.

SEO is an Ongoing Process!

The thing you need to consider is that SEO is an ongoing process. You cannot simply post a few pages, obtain a few links, and brag on a few social sites, then expect to be the number one site in the search engines. Anything you can do someone else can do as well. For this reason your SEO campaign should be ongoing and be continually updated with new techniques a new strategies. Search engines are constantly evolving and changing the practices they will allow and will not allow. In the same manner websites are always changing as well. Sites you link to today can go bad, very quickly, tomorrow. For these reasons you need to constantly monitor your search engine standings and make changes as they are needed. Do not simply sit back and think you have finished the job, things you do today to raise your results could be ineffective tomorrow. The truth is SEO is an ongoing battle and as long as there are web masters who try unethical techniques the changes will be ongoing.

Seomul Evans is a senior Search Engine Optimization Services consultant specializing in Meta Search Engines and SEO articles .

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