FAQ: Search Engines Optimization Services

Search Engines Optimization Questions:

How do Search Engines work?
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Search engines, such as Lycos, create their listings automatically. They get information from many sources in a web site including Title, Keywords, Description and Page Content. Each engine operates under it's own rules. Some use all of the above sources, while some use a combination and leave out others. Please see the Meta Tags section for more information. When your site is updated, search engines eventually find these changes. Page headlines and titles, body content, and other factors also play a role. Some search engines index more web pages than others or re-index them more often. That is why no two search engines have the exact same results.

What are Directories?
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A directory such as Yahoo depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Updating your web pages has no effect on your Directory listing. Ways to improve a listing rank in a search engine do not apply to a directory. With Directories, a good site with plenty of useful content could be more likely to get reviewed or be reviewed sooner than a poor one.

How do Search Engines rank a site?
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When you search for a topic using a search engine, it will sort through millions of pages it has cataloged and return those that best match your search keywords. The system isn't perfect however. You will notice that occasionaly, pages unrelated to your search will show up and it can sometimes be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for.

Search engines certain rules to decide which pages are the best relate to your search. These pages are matched mainly upon the frequency and location of the keywords you provided in that web page. More on Keywords Tag.

Most search engines also emphasize the TITLE tag of your web page. When searching for "Baseball Tickets", the search engine first compares sites with "Baseball Tickets" in the Title Tag. More on Title Tag.

Search engines check if your search words are near the top of a web page, in a headline, and where they are located in the paragraphs of text. The Assumption is that any site that is a good match will have those search words near the beginning of the text or highlighted as headings. This is only part of search engine optimization services. More on headings.

What are Meta Tags?
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Meta Tags are a very important part of a web page. Meta tags are used by many search engines (not all) to get information about websites. This information is put into a database by the search engine and is then used to determine if your site should appear for specific searches and how high up on the list it should rank. There most important Meta tags are Keywords, Description, and the Title tag.

Visitors to a site do not see the meta tags excepte the Title tag located at the top of their browser.

What is the Keywords Meta Tag?
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Keywords is a name for the terms people type into search engines when searching for something. For example, if you were looking for sites about Donald Duck, you would go to a search engine and type in the words "Donald Duck". The search engine then searches it's databases for sites that contain those words and then it displays a list of those sites. The Keyword tag is part of our Arizona search engine optimization services.

How do I choose keywords?
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In order to make a list of keywords, write down on a piece of paper single words or short phrases that you think others would use in a search engine to try to find your product or service. List 50 to 100 words or phrases.

For example, if your site is focused on Fishing Equipment. When someone uses "fishing equipment" as keywords in a search, you want your web page to be listed in the results towards the top. Each page should have different keywords that relate to that page's specific content. For example, another page about "fish lures" should have "fish lures" included in that pages keywords.

List your keywords as phrases two or more words long. This will help distinguish your sites from the thousands of others with a single keyword. Instead of using keywords like "fishing, equipment" you should also use phrases like "fishing equipment", "fishing supplies", or "bright fish lures".

The more important the keyword or phrase; the sooner it should be listed in the list of 50-100. All other keywords and phrases should be listed in the order of most important to least important. Do not right the same keyword over and over as this may be considered spamming and the site may be ignored. Also limit your keywords as some engines use a scoring method where it counts how often your keyword appears in proportion to the number of keywords.

Here is how your keywords should look:

<meta name="keywords" content="Glass, wholesale glass, art glass, etched glass, blown glass, glass ornament, cut glass, glass sculpture, decorative glass, crystal bell, handmade glass, angelfish, glass fish, dinner bell, genuine crystal, lead, decorative, pressed glass, glass design, etched glass, glass rose, gold-plated, glass dolphin, ice, carved glass, glass eagle, glass elephant, etc...">

Be sure to use the plural of words when possible. For example: use hoses instead use hose. This way, people searching for either a hose or hoses will find you.

What is the Description Meta Tag?
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A Description Meta tag is text that shows up in most of the search engines below your website name. Try to provide the most important information about your company or site in 2 sentences or less. Make sure to use your most important keywords as early as possible in the sentences.

Here is what a properly written description should look like remembering our most important keyword and keyphrase is "paint" and "painting supplies":

<meta name="description" content="Glass ornaments and sculptures provided by Benson Glass Company. Products include etched glass, crystal, blown glass, and more...">

What is the Title Tag?
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Many consider the Title Tag the most important part of a web page. The Title tag appears at the very top of the browser. The title section usually has an important influence on the ranking of your site in search engines. Limit your web site title to no more than 100 letters and spaces. Your most important keyword should apperar as the first word(s) in your Title, Keyword, and Description Tags. This is a fundamental of search engine optimization services. Here is the code for the Title tag:

<TITLE>Insert Title here</TITLE>

What are Alt Tags?
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This tag is included in the image code when displaying images. Several words can be attached to the ALT area. The content of the ALT tag is seen when a use moves their mouse over the image that the ALT tag is assigned to. Many search engines consider the information in the ALT tag as regular text. This can help put important keywords near the top of the page without actually displaying it. The code for the Alt Tag is:

<IMG SRC="http://imagehere.gif" ALT="Keyword, keyword phrase etc">

Are page layout & content important?
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Yes, some search engines ignore meta tags completely and get all information from page layout and content. Even if a search engine still uses Meta tags, page layout and content has a strong influence over search engine positioning. For proper search engine optimization, your keywords must appear throughout the body content. Put them at the top, middle, and bottem. The most important keywords should be Headings. This places importance on them and some search engines use this when ranking.

The number of times a keyword appears on a page affects the ranking. Avoid writting the same word over and over as this is considered spamming an may cause the site to be ignored.

Are Headings important?
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Many Search Engines give a higher ranking to pages with text placed in certain areas of the web page and formatted a certain way. One example of this is a Header or Heading. A Header or Heading is large print or subtitles on a page. This is text placed at the top of your web page and formatted with header tags. Headings appear in various sizes and are controlled by the HTML tags <H1>, to <H6>. Below is the Heading code and sizes :

<H1>Insert header here</H1>

H1 Is This Size

H2 Is This Size

H3 Is This Size

H4 Is This Size

H5 Is This Size

H6 Is This Size

Why isn't my site getting listed?
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Below are some common search engine optimization reasons why your site isn't getting listed:

What is LookSmart's Search Engine Criteria?
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In order to be accepted into the LookSmart directory and distributed across the LookSmart Network, your site must meet certain standards of content and quality. These standards ensure that we provide our partner sites with quality listings and an optimized search experience.

Your site must be in English and be of use to an audience located in the United States. Sites not appropriate for the United States should be submitted to one of LookSmart's Global Directories. .

Your site must have your own original content.

Your site cannot contain pornography, pornographic or adult advertising, erotica or adults-only content, gratuitous or graphic violence, material that infringes on or violates someone's rights, defamatory or offensive material, or material that promotes/disseminates illegal activities.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that the content and activities on your site are in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. To the extent that pharmaceuticals and/or medical devices may be offered or promoted on your site, you certify that you are a licensed health care provider or other entity authorized to prescribe, distribute or otherwise deal in such products under the jurisdictions in which they are sold.

Your site must be up and running seven days a week and 24 hours a day.

Your site must not be under construction, and all links must be working.

Your site must be sufficiently quick to load.

Your site cannot mirror the content of another Web site, or redirect to another Web site, nor can your site be a doorway to another Web site.

You may only submit one URL for your business via the Small Business Listing service. To list multiple sub pages from your site, we offer our LookListings option. If this URL limit is exceeded, LookSmart reserves the right to reject additional submissions. Rejected submissions will not be refunded. Please refer to our FAQ for further information.

DMOZ Search Engine Criteria?
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Determine whether a site is appropriate for submission to the ODP:

Do not submit mirror sites. Mirror sites are sites that contain identical content, but have altogether different URLs.

Do not submit URLs that contain only the same or similar content as other sites you may have listed in the directory. Sites with overlapping and repetitive content are not helpful to users of the directory. multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites.

Do not disguise your submission and submit the same URL more than once. Example: http://www.dmoz.org and http://www.dmoz.org/index.htm.

Do not submit any site with an address that redirects to another address.

The Open Directory has a policy against the inclusion of sites with illegal content. Examples of illegal material include child pornography; libel; material that infringes any intellectual property right; and material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence).

Do not submit sites "under construction." Wait until a site is complete before submitting it. Sites that are incomplete, contain "Under Construction" notices, or contain broken graphics or links aren't good candidates for the directory.

Submit pornographic sites to the appropriate category under Adult.

Submit non-English sites to the appropriate category under World.

Don't submit sites consisting largely of affiliate links.

Inktomi Search Engine Criteria?
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Unfortunately, not all Web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Inktomi does not want these pages in the index.

What Inktomi Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Inktomi does not want include:

Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
The use of text that is hidden from the user
Pages that give the search engine a different page than the public sees (cloaking)
Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
Pages built primarily for the search engines
Misuse of competitor names
Multiple sites offering the same content
Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

Google Search Engine Criteria?
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Reasons your site may not be included despite search engine optimization services.

Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index.

You employ doorway pages. Google does not encourage the use of doorway pages. We want to point users to content pages, not to doorways or splash screens.

Your page uses frames. Google supports frames to the extent that it can. Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don't fit the conceptual model of the web (every page corresponds to a single URL). If a user's query matches the site as a whole, Google returns the frame set. If a user's query matches an individual page on the site, Google returns that page. That individual page is not displayed in a frame -- because there may be no frame set corresponding to that page.

Additionally, Google does not like:

Hidden text or hidden links.
Stuffing pages with irrelevant keywords.

AltaVista Search Engine Criteria?
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AltaVista strives to provide the most relevant search results on the Web.

In order to maintain the integrity of the search index, we must sometimes exclude submissions that manipulate search results. Examples of such manipulation include, but are not limited to, the following:

Pages with text that is not easily read, either because it is too small or is obscured by the background of the page.
Pages with off-topic or excessive keywords.
Duplication of content, either by excessive submission of the same page, submitting the same pages from multiple domains, or submitting the same content from multiple hosts.
Machine-generated pages with minimal or no content, the sole purpose of which is to get a user to click to another page.
Pages that contain only links to other pages.
Pages of which the primary intent is to redirect users to another page.
Attempts to fill AltaVista's index with misleading or promotional pages lower the value of the index for everyone. We do not allow URL submissions from customers who spam the index and will exclude all such pages from the index.

Lycos Search Engine Criteria?
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Q: Are there any guidelines to follow for submitting my site?
Please review these guidelines before submitting your site. Sites not meeting these guidelines will not be considered for inclusion in the directory.

Your site must be in English and be of use to an audience located in the United States.

Your site should have original content.
Your site cannot contain material that infringes on or violates someone's rights, or material that promotes or disseminates illegal activities.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that the content and activities on your site are in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. To the extent that pharmaceuticals and/or medical devices may be offered or promoted on your site, you certify that you are a licensed heath care provider or other entity authorized to prescribe, distribute or otherwise deal in such products in the jurisdictions in which they are sold.

Your site must contain sufficient pages and recognizable content.
Your site must be up and running 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
Your site should not be under construction, and all links must be working.
Your site must be quick to load.
Your site cannot mirror or redirect to another Web site.
Your site must not attempt to "spam", i.e. deliberately interfere with our search relevancy algorithms.