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It
Pays To Study The Search Engines
Vive la difference
Here we were,
very complacent at the significant progress our site was making in the
search engine placement stakes. Number 3 on
Excite, with a number of hits coming in, number 7 on Northern Light, no
hits from there, and so on. We were starting to get a number of hits
from Google and Fast and then ... we appeared on Lycos, out of the blue
at Number 1, but only on one key phrase 'barnsley accountants' and when
I tried 'barnsley accountant' we fell out of site (no pun intended). What was
wrong, why couldn't Lycos recognize that accountant is in the word
accountants? Why was 'Business Start Up' getting nowhere on Lycos? In order to
solve the problem it was back to basics. What was it reading, what were
the words highlighted in the listing? How did Lycos work? After all it
is one of the major Search Engines and if they are investing all that
money advertising on TV (by the way only 1% of web site hits come from
'off-line' promotion) I should piggy back this campaign and make sure we
are well up on the Lycos listing.
Rank your Web Site at TOP in
Search Engine I know from
bitter experience, that Google works on <TITLE> and the first
paragraph or so of the <BODY>, AltaVista looks at <KEYWORD>s
and little else, but Lycos is a different beast. The secret lies in
becoming a student of search engines - looking at them for hour after
hour and trying to 'optimize' your site to reach them all without
alienating any of the major ones. Lycos seems
to work on the title, however the rest of it is driven by the
description that is contained in the <DESCRIPTION>s that we write
for every page (don't we?). I
had omitted to write descriptions for most of the 603 pages on the site
because I assumed that they were only for human reviewers and I wasn't
too interested in them at this stage of development of our web site. So
I wrote descriptions for each page, making sure that I wrote singular
'accountant' solicitor' and plural 'accountants' and solicitors' in all
the <DESCRIPTION> meta tags, in a particular section of the web
site and submitted them to Lycos - long wait - then, there we were
Barnsley Accountants, Sheffield Accountants, Doncaster Solicitors,
Rotherham Marketing Services, South Yorkshire Premises ... every time
our site was number one. Admittedly we
are operating on a limited search but oh, think of it! The implication
is that whatever business related phrase or keyword that is typed into
Lycos could be anticipated (think like the searcher thinks - not like
you think) and we will be at the top of the list. Imagine you had a yellow pages and
every time you opened it there you were - at the top of the left hand
page - bold and proud - how would that affect your web site traffic. There
are 2.3 billion web sites out there right now competing for your
customers and ... well you may love your site, you may be certain that
you have something of significant value to offer your visitors but ...
unless you study the search engines and understand them all you will
have is your heart and soul in the middle of a mass of mediocrity that
everyone has to plough through before they get to you.
Rank your Web Site at TOP in
Search Engine Two other quick tips Make your
<DESCRIPTION> and <TITLE> great because some of the engines,
Excite for example, will move you up the listings based on 'click
throughs' in other words if you are number 5 and searchers keep clicking
on your site as opposed to number 4 your site will move up, and they
will move down, that's why we're at number 3 on Excite for 'Business
Start Up'. Check your
spelling. the UK's number one producer of car valeting products is at
number 35 on Google because their web designer can't spell 'valeting'
he, or she, spells it 'veleting' - easily done but it's so common it's
almost laughable - look up Barnaly, instead of Barnsley and see what I
mean.
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