Search engines - A1 Web Design

Whole books are published on this subject, so we are not attempting to describe every aspect fully in these notes. We just want you to get some idea about the basics of the subject, so that you are better placed to take some decisions in relation to the development and publication of your own web site, when you discuss the subject in more detail with us.

Does your site need to be designed with the search engines and directories in mind?

There are two fundamentally different ways of getting visitors to your web site.

The first occurs when your visitor knows your web site address, as a result of your informing him/her, directly or indirectly by stating your web site address on your stationery, or as a result of publicising it in your marketing/advertising campaigns, or on company vehicles and so on.

The second is more difficult to arrange, is not under the same type of control, and occurs when the visitor does not know your web site address, but reaches your web site by using an Internet search engine or directory.

Not all kinds of business need the second method, but if your business is one which does need to use the search engines and directories, then read on, because your site will need to be designed with the Internet search engines and directories in mind.

Listing your key search terms

Your first task is to list all the search terms which you think that people may type into a search engine to try to find your site. Single words as search terms (unless they are very unusual words) are almost useless as search terms. Just try entering a single word into any major search engine and see how many results you will get – often millions, and the chance of your site’s being listed in the top ten or top twenty of those millions is very small indeed.

Having listed the search terms, you need to ensure that the text you write for your web site includes each search term a few times – but not too many times. Your site will hardly ever be found via a search engine for a particular search term if that term is not included in the text for the site. And the text has to be pure text – text in an image of some kind (e.g. a photo, logo, diagram or navigation button), will never be found by a search engine. Text displayed using Flash techniques will not normally be found either.

The position of the search terms on the page is important

The nearer the search terms are to the top of the page, the better. You don’t have to include all your key search terms necessarily on the home page. Your site may naturally require to be split into pages, each devoted to a particular aspect of your business, and if that is the case, the appropriate search terms for each page need to be determined, and included on that particular page.

Rankings in search engines.

People often ask "Which position does my site occupy in a particular search engine?" They do not realise that this is normally a meaningless question, for ranking is related to a particular search term. Your site will have hundreds or even thousands of different rankings, determined by all the possible search terms which can be constructed, as well as by the number of other competing web sites using the same search term. And your site’s ranking for a given search term in one search engine will probably be different from your ranking for the same search term in another engine.

Suppose your business is a bakery and patisserie. Your site may be ranked in position 24,743 with "bakery" as the search term – one major UK engine has over 50,000 listings for "bakery". "Pattiserie" has about 6,000 entries. "Bakery and patisserie" has only about 40 entries. ‘"Bakery and patisserie" Cambridge’ on the other hand has only 2 entries. You should now appreciate the importance of multiple word search terms, and of ensuring that these appear in your web site’s text. Location can be a good discriminator, so do consider having your business address on the web site.

How does one get a high ranking?

Well, for an unusual combination of words it is not particularly difficult, provided that your site is accepted by the search engine reviewers, or by the search engine’s computer. For common phrases as search terms, it is much more difficult, and it is not possible to guarantee a high ranking for such terms. Beware of advertisements guaranteeing a top ranking for a web site - very often, this will be achieved by the use of a rare combination of words to form a key search term - so rare that it is not likely to be used very often. A top ranking for a term which is almost never used is virtually worthless.

However, it is possible to pay some companies to obtain what is called a "sponsored listing" in some of the major search engines and directories. Such listings usually appear in a clearly separate section before other listings. We can arrange such sponsored listings for you, if you wish; the plan which we operate is based on your paying so many pence per visit to your site resulting from the sponsored listing; you choose how much you wish to pay per visit, with a minimum fee of 5p; the more you choose to pay, the higher will be the ranking of your listing. This arrangement suits some web site owners, but not all. We can advise you how much you would have to pay to achieve a particular positioning for your web site and any particular search term.
Click here for more details.

Concerning non-sponsored listings, the biggest problem has multiple aspects to it: each search engine has its own set of factors for determining site ranking, the factors differ from engine to engine, the factors are not published in full on the search engines' own websites, and some factors also change from time to time. This means that it is impossible to devise a single web site or even a single web page which satisfies very well the ranking factors for all the major search engines at the same time, or indeed even for one search engine on a permanent basis. A page which does well from the ranking point of view for one engine will probably not do as well for another engine. Designing a web page taking into account these ranking factors is called page optimisation.

So you may decide that you will aim your web site at a particular search engine, and have it optimised for that engine, recognising that you probably will not do as well for other engines. Never forget that your aim is to get visitors to your site. If you compromise with the various major search engine ranking factors, and do not optimise for any of them, you may have a mediocre ranking in all of them, and not achieve a high enough ranking for any search term in any engine. This could result in very few site visits via the search engines. It would be better and would achieve more site visits, to optimise for one engine, and get some visits via that engine, and achieve a lower ranking with no or very few visits for all the other engines combined.

How to try to avoid mediocre site rankings

Given the difficulties mentioned above, is it possible to try to get better rankings then, in several search engines at the same time? Yes, there are several techniques available, which we will be pleased to discuss with you.

Monitoring/maintaining/improving a ranking

Having achieved a ranking, it should be monitored regularly, because it will change with time, as new web sites are included in the search engine for the same search term, and also as the ranking factors change occasionally. The latter changes may require small web site modifications to be implemented if the ranking suffers as a result of the change. The ranking also needs monitoring because occasionally a web site will disappear completely from a search engine for no apparent reason, and the site will need to be re-submitted. With some engines, the ranking will slowly improve with time without any change to the site being made.

We have software which we will use on a regular basis to help us monitor a site's rankings, if you so request.

Submission of web sites to search engines.

We will supply you with a set of notes explaining how you can submit your site to the major UK engines. Or you can contract with us to do this for you.

Which engines and directories should your site be submitted to? For most of the major global search engines and directories, there is a local (e.g. U.K.) version available, as well as a version available for many other individual countries.

You will need to decide whether to submit just to the UK version or to several national versions, or to the global version as well. The national versions often require that the site be written in the language of that country.

There is little to be gained by making use of services which advertise that they will, for a fee, (and in some cases a regular fee) submit your site to a thousand or more search engines. There are several reasons for this. Firstly most people are aware of only two or three of only a handful of the major search engines, and so will never search the other hundreds of engines at all. The vast majority of searches on the Internet as a whole, take place via no more than the top ten or so well-known engines, so getting included in the hundreds of minor engines will reap little reward. Secondly, these submission services are mostly operated by computers, and do not involve manual submissions. The search engines are increasingly becoming cleverer at recognising computer-controlled submissions, and ignoring them. Thirdly, repeated submission of a site to an engine can be counter-productive - it can result in exclusion of the site from that engine.

Free and paid-for submissions
In the ‘good old days’ nearly all search engines accepted web sites free of charge. The economics of operating these engines are now such that more and more engines are introducing charges. Some will not accept free submissions any more. Others are offering to assess a site within a short period (a few days) in return for a fee, but you should note that assessment does not guarantee inclusion of the site; you may pay a fee, have the site assessed and still not be included in the engine, especially if your site breaks the publicised acceptance guidelines which appear on some search engines' own web sites. You may consider it worthwhile paying to queue-jump, because the alternative could be a wait of several months whilst your site gets assessed.

If you choose to pay, consider the sponsored listings option, where you only pay a small fixed fee (which you determine), per visit to your site - click here for details.