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The other day I got a call from a friend of a client, asking what
they could do to get listed in search engines. They had paid a
considerable amount to get a good-looking, professional web site using
Flash. It has animations, clever features, and absolutely no listings
on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. But those engines can't read graphics - or at
least, they don't read graphics. They read text. Without text, there's
no search engine listings.
Part of my strategy for driving traffic is to use appropriate web site technologies. That means eschewing Flash and the like for simple html - albeit enhanced by style sheets (CSS) and, where appropriate, Javascript menus. Just about everything in my sites is readable by search engines.
Another part of my strategy is sensible use of headers, keywords, and such. Every photo has a relevant "alt" tag (alternate text) since photos are not readable by Google - it can't tell a 1964 Plymouth Valiant from a photo of John Major - but alt tags are. In addition, I usually, but admittedly not always, fill out the meta tags for headers and descriptions on the off-chance they might be useful. I organize pages by header - "the basics of driving traffic" at the top of the page is defined by a simple <h1> (heading one) tag, and subheads are <h2> instead of a custom tag. I try to get appropriate keywords into the headers, without making it obvious that I'm targeting search engines.
When possible, but keywords into the site name or the page name (the filename, that is), remembering that hyphens are the best word separators (search engines tend to see underlines as their own characters, and spaces just don't work well on the Web). (To completely follow my own advice, of course, I should really rename this site...! Perhaps web-design-tips-and-linux-and-apache-troubleshooting.com is open?)
The next step is links. Once a site is fairly well developed, I head over to the Open Directory (dmoz.org) and submit a request for a link, being very careful not to write anything they'd consider spam. Sometimes it works - most of my sites are listed - and sometimes a screwy editor gets in the way - acarplace.com is not listed, though many sleazy quasi-review sites are. It may be one day, it may be two years, but you may eventually get a free listing. Then again, you may not, and like most other webmasters, I'm afraid to say anything bad about them, because they have a combination of lots of power and no accountability. The Open Directory heavily influences Google, the most important search engine - and, fortunately, the best run.
Other links, which you can start seeking before you're ready for the Open Directory, are beneficial, especially because word has it that Google rates you more highly if they find you through another site's links before you submit your site. In short, get links to your site out there, then wait to be discovered. You know what sites are relevant to yours.
Those of us who are not sleazeballs should ignore those programs
that claim to get you lots of links. Most are worthless or, if not
worthless, grand sources of spam. Go to sites that are relevant and
find their link areas, then submit your site through those channels; if
needed, write to the webmaster. Have a link section of your own and be
moderately picky about who gets in. You'll get lots of irrelevant link
trades that appear to be hand-written. Many are not. Be careful
and always check out the page your link will be on. Is it linked from
their main page? Is it filled with dozens of irrelevant links? You
don't need that.Remember, Google considers the quality of the pages that link to you.
It does help, by the way, to get a good link program to manage your links to other sites (that's part of reciprocating). Think about categories in advance. You'll probably need lots of "vendor" categories - sales folk should be kept separate from information providers and enthusiasts. There are good free programs and good cheap programs. We paid a fairly sizable sum for Gossamer Threads' Links program and it frankly wasn't worth the price, since they never put a minute's work into it after we bought it years ago (they came out with Links SQL and abandoned Links). Free is better and there are good free links programs.
Google seems to like long pages with lots of text - especially when it doesn't duplicate any other pages on the web. Google also likes it when a site is linked from relevant pages of other sites with high "pageranks." There are services that resell text ads on sites with a high rank in Google, which can be helpful; or you can offer webmasters of good sites a deal yourself. But it's probably best to do it organically, by trading links with high quality, relevant sites.
Most of the advice below is meant for people who have information-oriented sites, such as enthusiasts or troubleshooting. Commercial sites that don't have information so much as products can either add information, or look to ads. For example, the best advice I could give the person with the Flash site (who did not want to convert it to css or make a separate search-engine-friendly site) was to buy AdSense ads. Google's Adsense, which pays for this site, puts small text ads into relevant web sites; it can be a cost-effective way to get hits and exposure, especially if you choose your keywords well. Overture has a similar service, but they don't share much of their revenue - if any - with small web site operators. That's one thing that's great about AdSense - they treat the small guy very fairly.
Other ways to get your site known and listed are postings on relevant forums - not so much "here's my site" but adding a link to your site in relevant, helpful answers to other posts - and the same sort of thing on newsgroups. If there's an FAQ on the subject your web site covers, write to the maintainer and see if you can get a link.
By the way, for this site, we're not following much of our own advice...! We’re hoping you find us anyway. We'll find out one way or another...
The main thing to remember if you get visitors "organically" is to have patience. It can take months to get any real traffic going; and Google's updates are very slow. Though your site may be visited quickly - within a week or two - it may take a month for your site to get spidered and start showing up in searches, and it can take several months before your site is high enough up in ordinary searches to have an impact on visitorship.