This document gives an overview of how search engines work and how we can work together to support our local businesses on being found through the web-abyss of the Internet.
Our primary way to get people to find your site is by using television, radio, newspapers, and flyers to promote your business. We do this by direct and indirect advertising. Direct advertising is where we directly promote your business while indirect advertising is where we promote our LocalBiz.com site so that people will visit our site and find your business. Our LocalBiz site is the primary search place for potential customers to visit, and then, only find your business while searching for products and services on the Internet.
We also are submitting your site and our site to the popular web search engines so that when someone searches for products and services within our geographical location, they will find your site. Unfortunately this latter way of getting indexed on these popular search engines can take some time and resources. However, by understanding how these search engines work, and by working together, we can make it so that our sites get indexed more quickly and we get ranked higher in these popular search engines.
Internet search engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various search engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:
Early search engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top search engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.
Search engines have developed along with other forms of technology. In the past, the standard for getting your web site indexed by a search engine was to include meta tags in your web page header. But as more and more webmasters abused this information Search Engines adapted their rules. They became more concerned with how many sites were linked into your website, the page titles, and page content. But behind these directories are databases that have to be maintained. For instance, Google purportedly uses a string of servers (the number of which they won’t disclose) to house all of its information.
Google prides itself on providing its users with a two-second return on User Queries.
The Internet is much too vast for humans to do the cataloging, so Search Engine companies like Google put computers and programs to the task. Search Engines gather their information via programs called “robots”, “spiders”, and a operation called “crawling”. These programs search the internet on a routine schedule, adding pages to their collection from newly developed ones, or deleting pages from extinct pages. They also gather information such as how many pages are linked to a certain site, number of visits to a site, and the number of times a site is updated. It’s important to understand that links to your site are used as a path in the Internet, ultimately creating a web of sites, and a pathway for the “crawlers” to find your site. If you are not linked into to multiple web sites, then the “crawling” process will work very poorly, ultimately taking much longer to find your site than it should.
There are other ways for search engines to find your site. The location submission which is individual for every Search Engine can be used multiple times. This process is not as successful as properly positioned links, meta-tags, site content, and frequent updates. It can however prove to be resourceful when a site first appears on the internet, allowing you to build your network of linked sites while the Search Engine catalogues your site.
Many businesses have sprung up in the past five years, offering services that will get you listed higher in search engines and their results page. You can buy programs from the Internet that will with one form submit your site to over 200 Search Engines. But the same limitations to the location submission applies. These programs do not replace good, relevant content, frequent updates, or a large network of links on supporting sites.
For the CU Local Biz.com member, how the search engines operate can have a number of effects on your website. For instance, if your site is left virtually untouched for a number of years, then it may not be catalogued properly in major search engines. It’s good to update at least every six months, if not more often in the case of sites that sell products online. It is also good to be linked up from various other sites, including sites of other businesses, local directories, and friends and family. Basically you want your name to be in as many places on the Internet as possible. With more and more sites, going up every day, it is important to get yours noticed.
To get your site exposed, you’ve made the right choice by becoming a member of CU Local Biz.com. If we host your domain name, we submit your site to Search Engines throughout the year. We maintain our site on a daily basis, updating, revamping, and adding new items. Because you are linked through our member pages, and off every page, you’re site is all ready on its way to becoming one of the most popular for certain searches. Did we create your website? If we did, we added meta tags that indicate the services and products you provide, along with a description that will show up after your site link on most search engines. We also submitted your site to different databases for inclusion in their directories.
Just as we advertise our site via cable commercials, billboards, newspaper ads, and on business cards, it is important for you to get the word out about your website. By including your web address on any advertising your business does, you up the number of people visiting your site, which helps in Search Engine cataloging.
As Search Engine’s continue to spit out results to user queries, the ways in
which those results are found and retrieved will continue to change. We are
dedicated to providing our customers with a fair chance at Search Engine
ranking. We design customer sites with these objectives in mind: how can we
increase site hits and functionality. Through our online and traditional
advertising and our long-standing history on the Web, we have a distinct
advantage above other sites available today.
Hopefully this document has answered some of your questions about search engines and how to get your site found in them. We are committed to getting our customers submitted in the popular search engines and to help support locally owned businesses through the use of the Internet. Please contact us with any questions you may have about search engines.