The Truth About Search Engine Submission
Some of the most frequently asked questions about search engine optimization are:
Should I submit my site to search engines and directories? Should I submit manually or automatically using a software?
The truth is search engines hate automatic submissions. They get millions of attempted automatic submissions each day and, as a result, go to great lengths to try to stop them – such as requiring passwords and/or fill-in details before the submission is accepted.
As for directories, automatic submission software has been banned by many because it cannot always place links in relevant categories. In addition, whether you hire a directory submitter or use submission software yourself, you are essentially setting your site up for failure. Read more
How To Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
The following is a guide on optimizing your website and improving its rankings on search engine results pages, according to Microsoft’s Small Business Center.
1. Potential site design problems
- Search engines do a poor job of indexing frames and your site is better off without them.
- Most search engines cannot or will not list dynamic URLs that contain any of the following: ?, &, %, +, =, cgi-bin, or .cgi.
- Search engines cannot index splash pages that are made mostly or entirely from Flash. Hyperlinks made with Flash cannot be spidered by the search engines. So, unless you add standard HTML hyperlinks, none of your pages will be spidered.
- Sites that use Image Maps for navigation run the risk of not being accessible to search engines because the web crawler often gets trapped in the code that makes up the Image Map.
- Search engines also cannot follow links found in Javascript.
- Any of the previous three indexing problems can be addressed by creating a site map page using standard HTML links that link to every page and adding a standard HTML link on each page that links back to the site map.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.
Webmasters began optimizing their sites for search engines in the mid-1990s. Site owners realized the importance of having their sites appear at the top of search engine results in order to ensure traffic to their sites. Most web users will not scroll down through pages of results but will visit those sites that appear at the top of the first page of results.
At first, search engines relied only on factors that were within the webmaster’s control and, as a result, they became victims of abuse and manipulation. Webmasters were guilty of including irrelevant keywords on their sites to increase the number of visits to their websites and thereby increase their ad revenue. Read more
Search Engine Optimization Basics: How Search Engines Work
To succeed in search engine optimization, you have to understand how search engines work.
A search engine is an information retrieval system which is designed to find information stored on any kind of computer system, whether it be an office network or the World Wide Web.
A search engine allows the user to ask for desired information by specifying a word or phrase and retrieves a list of all items in its database that contain the specific word or phrase. Usually, the results list is arranged with respect to relevancy to the original search. Search engines regularly update their databases and retrieve desired information quickly and efficiently. Read more