Strategies to Use with Individual Search Engines: Google - Part 1

Here we'll talk about the difference of search engines, how they differ in the unique ranking algorithms, technology, and their resources that influence the way they rank pages. We'll begin in order of importance, beginning with the whale of the ocean, Google.

Google

Website: http://www.google.com

Contact Info: http://www.google.com/contact/index.html

User Agent:

Googlebot/2.1 ( http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

Google also has a separate image indexing spider:

Googlebot-Image/1.0 ( http//:www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

Robots.txt Identifier:

User-agent: Googlebot

Robots Details 

http://www.google.com/bot.html

Google spiders are also known as crawlers, robots or bots, with some exceptions. And in terms of security, everything that is not password protected on your site is likely indexable by Google

URLs those even faintly matches session ID's are avoided by Google's Spiders.

Support 

Web media Support:

HTML, SHTML, PPT, RTF, WKS, LWP, WRI, PDF, ASP, JSP, PHP, XML, Cfm, DOC, XLS, and SWF files can be crawled and indexed.

Meta Tag Support:

Google ignores Meta tags completely, but it also makes use of your meta tag description that you have written for your webpage's search results. Therefore, it is important that the keywords and description meta tags are well-written. All extra meta tags can be securely overlooked.

Index Refresh:

Websites with regular updated content and adequate incoming links are crawled by search engines more often. Since, Google keeps its index always updated.

Submission Page: 

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Well, you do not need to compulsorily make submissions to Google. It is counted unnecessary by most. Instead get as many links as you can. Pages those are indexed solely by Google are indexed quickly and mainly when it comes across links on high PageRank sites.

Webmaster Guidelines: 

http://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html

This page will tell you about what Google takes to spam (rather not an important page). Disappointingly you will not find anything that will tell what will rank you high on Google. Because at large all the official search engine webmasters do not give proper suggestions on how to get the best rankings on search engines.

Provides Search Results for:

Google, Netscape, Eathlink, AOL, iWon, Alexa, Disney sites, Go.com

Provides Pay Per Click Results for:

Google AdWords, AOL, Ask, HotBot, iWon, Lycos, Netscape

Directory results:

Google draws its directory reports from Open directory project i.e. http://www.dmozcom/

Checking Your Site's Status in Google: 

To know which of your website's pages have been indexed by Google, type the following in Google: site:www.your-site-here.com

To know which pages Google sees linked to any of your pages: link:http://www.your-site.com/your-page.html

See to it that you replace www.your-site.com with your own site's domain and your-page.html with the path to the page you want to check.

Note: Google has purposely altered its link query system in order to hide the actual number of incoming links that exist. Their aim is to not let you know about the links they know of, rather only to make it tough for optimizers to maneuver Google's search results.

Now that Google will not tell you about the links they know about, we test Yahoo by entering%u2026 link:http://www.your-site.com

In Yahoo's search box. By doing this you will get a list of sites that are linking to you. And if you want to search links that are pointing to a particular domain then type: linkdomain:http://www.our-site.com

After all the research you will get a somewhat clear picture of what Google looks for when calculating a site's link popularity. Similarly, the time you create a link, it will take some time before it appears in the link check.

Another fact is that Google does not allow you to integrate other search operators with the link operator as Yahoo does. This is the only one reason why Yahoo has more effective link checking tool than any other.

Start with Google: 

Google is the king out there with whom no one can try to win. It has now adapted the modern way of valuing a page's incoming links over all the other ranking standards. Earlier, other search engines tried to do the same thing but weren't as successful as Google in using link data to provide the most relevant results for a search. Google has

provided highly relevant results to searchers, making it the most successful search engine in the world of internet ever. (In fact, so much that today people have replaced the word 'search' with 'Google' and say "I will Google it" instead of "I will search it")

Google reach is so wide and authentic that even everyone insists SEOs to start of their optimization strategies for their website for Google.

It is so because Google holds the largest share of the search market compared to other search engines. As a result, by and large, Google will be the one to send you more traffic than any other.

To give a good start to any venture, it is advisable to begin with the best the business i.e. Google in this case, which will send you substantial traffic. After your site is successfully set up your site on Google then you can work on developing other pages for ranking purposes on other search engines.

You don't need to work hard for optimizing your site on other search engines if you rank decently on Google, because ranking well Google itself then you will definitely rank well in Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc. Yet, be aware of the fact that your site's rankings won't be same in all search engines but yes, they will be distinctively better on Google than any other.

Guiding light to rank high on Google: 

We'd like to mention few mannerisms of some search engines to make you aware of them. For instance, in case of Google's Sandbox effect, new-comers would not know that it does not allow new sites to rank highly on Google at least for the first couple of months they're online. Only to make you familiar with the several ranking algorithms Google has either developed or appeared to make heavy use of PageRank, Topic Sensitive PageRank, TrustRank, LocalRank, Hilltop, Latent Semantic Indexing, and Temporal Analysis.

We'll try to sum up the relevant information contained in all these algorithms in one paragraph:

It is beneficial to get links from authoritative, trusted and pages with high PageRank in correspondence to your topic which are currently ranking high for the keywords you have chosen. Furthermore, monitor those pages until they are hosted on numerous IP addresses with your keyword being placed in the anchor text of the link and is also located close to other keywords that are similar to your targeted keywords. At last, try to differentiate between keywords inthe anchor text of those links in order to refrain from giving Google the hint that you are trying to influence your search rank.

We tried to make complex things simple in a precise paragraph. So there you go, the simple way to rank well on Google. Things are easy to read but difficult when performed. Definitely, it is challenging to rank but we will make things as simple as we can, in the next part we will discuss more about Google. You can refer SEO Infographics for detailed information on Search Engine Ranking Factors.

Leading NJ SEO Company, Semaphore has came up with SEO Infographics that helps you understand search engine ranking factors, Semaphore also offers Hire SEO Expert Services to ensure smooth execution of projects.

Steps to Get Your Site Listed in Search Engine Part - 2

About directories:

If you want to be listed then directories are the place for you, as they actually need you to submit your website to them. By submitting your website to directories you will get good amount of links and driving traffic to your site.

We start with the below mentioned directories:

DMOZ (http://dmoz.org/)

DMOZ is also known as The Open Directory Project (ODP). DMOZ is the among oldest and most important of the directories. It is free to add your site on DMOZ but it can take almost a year to get included. Yet, incoming links from DMOZ are notably valuable for they deliver outputs to several other directories including Google's. Above that the submission to indexing process is the reason to submit your site as soon as possible.

DMOZ is run by volunteer editors, which will take longer for you to get listed on the site because they are loaded with submissions round the clock and with limited resources to work with, as a result there have been cases when sites have had to wait for over a year before getting listed. 

Getting a DMOZ listing is pleasant since it will help you get into Google’s directory. But do not mix it up with Google’s main search engine results index. 

That’s it, after you have done your part of submitting your site to DMOZ, leave the rest. For more comprehensive clarification, visit DMOZ’s website for instructions. 

Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/)

Yahoo Directory is considered to be among the oldest existing directories on the World Wide Web and yet it lacks search results for Yahoo, which are eventfully provided by Yahoo's search engine. Hence, do not get confused between the two. (Yahoo’s directory listing are searched through http://search.yahoo.com/search/dir) 

Incoming links from Yahoo’s directory increases your website’s value in the eyes of search engine giants and therefore to be listed on Yahoo’s directory is important. Non-commercial sites can get listed for free, whereas, good sites get listed quickly enough. Furthermore, commercial sites are charged an yearly review fees, despite that they are not guaranteed a listing at once. Within two days you will receive a reply along with a listing in the index, only if your site matches all their guidelines. 

People who can afford to spend good and who want to instantly boost their website traffic are suggested to get listed on Yahoo Directory via relevant inbound links. On the other hand, if budget is restricted or generic search ranking is not given considerable importance, we would recommend them to concentrate on pay-per-click management and also get listed on Yahoo's default search engine results for boosting their website traffic. 

Being on Yahoo directory is of great advantage as it gets your site listed into quickly being propagated out on to Yahoo's International Directories like those found in Asia, India, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia and many other countries. You do get multiple inbound links for the review fees you pay.

Other minor search engines

Are you thinking about other search engines – AltaVista, AlltheWeb, LookSmart & Lycos? Yes, they are missing from our mention of search engines. It is so because of two reasons: either one of the major search engine giant has brought them up or their traffic has been denied to the extent where optimizing for them will bring no results. 

For example, AltaVista and AlltheWeb are owned by Yahoo, who is deciding about what to do with them now. These sites do represent a reflection of their new Yahoo ownership. Therefore, we make an assumption that if you successfully enter Yahoo, you also undoubtedly enter the other two sites as well. The question that crops up is, what role are they left to play under the Yahoo banner. 

Lycos and LookSmart, have gone out of traffic drastically. As a consequence, the Search engine industry is witnessing the growth of consolidations that is changing the face of search engines. With Google and Yahoo being the master owners of not-so-popular search engines, or these small search engines licensing their paid and unpaid search results from Google or Yahoo.

A number of small search engines hold the capacity to take the position of major search engines, those like Amazon's A9 and AOL Search. Since then, they have been developing and adding new features and making every effort to develop search market share. Nonetheless, they receive their search results from major search engines mentioned before. Therefore, optimizing for Google and Yahoo means that you will do pretty well in A9 and AOL.

Semaphore Software, the SEO service provider tries to help you to get your site listed on popular search engines from the above article. NJ SEO Company offers complete SEO services including getting your site ranked on search engines.