Search Engines
Search engines are online directories of web sites and web pages that web visitors use to find a topic of interest or a specific site. They help organize the Web so that visitors can make some sense out of the vastness of the Internet (Dawes and Sweeney, 2000). One of the goals when setting up your web site is to ensure its prominence in search engine results so that potential customers can find it.
It is gratifying to type your artist's name into a search engine and have their official web site listed as the first result. That is likely to happen for well-established artists, but it is not as common with lesser-known acts, especially if the band or artist's name is a common one or is associated with another product. Even if the site does come up as one of the search results, the web visitor will need to have knowledge of the artist and the intent to seek out that particular artist online. What about potential fans who are not yet familiar with the artist? How do you reach them? And how do you improve your standing in search engine results when the person doing the search is using more vague terms, such as "blues music" or "female blues vocalists in Atlanta."
As of press time for this book, the most popular search engines are those shown in Figure 11.1.
Nielsen found that Google had 55.2% of the search engine market in May 2007. In another study, the online analyst service Hitwise found that Google accounted for 64% of all U.S. searches in August of 2007, with Yahoo! capturing 23%. By February 2008, Google was up to 66% and Yahoo! had 20%.
The various popular search engines each have their own way of categorizing and prioritizing their listings and search results. It is wise to understand how each finds and categorizes new web pages and then proceed with establishing your presence on each. Even though search engines are likely to find your site and list it, you should still submit a request to be listed and be prepared to list the relevant keywords and subject categories that apply to your site. Some of these
Search Engine Popularity - Share of Searches
EarthLink Search, 0.4%
EarthLink Search, 0.4%
- Source: Nielsen/NetRatings Megaview Search, May 2007
figure 11.1
Search engine popularity.
search engines use spiders, software programs that scour the Internet and analyze web pages. Others use humans, or a combination of both.
Numerous commercial services offer search engine optimization. Webopedia defines search engine optimization as "the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user" (www.Webopedia.com). Most search engines rank their results based on several factors. By paying attention to these factors, you can improve the chances of getting a top listing:
1. Keywords. Choose keywords that are targeted and represent the web site's topic accurately. These keywords should appear in the page text in addition to being listed in the meta tag keyword section. Many search engines rely on page text to confirm that the site's topic is accurate and corresponds to the keywords. If certain words have alternative spellings or are commonly misspelled, the variations should be listed in the meta tag section because these misspellings will not be visible to the web visitor. Keywords should also appear high on the page, within the first 100 characters. When ranking results, search engines give higher priority to keywords that appear high on the page, in the title, in the description, in the URL, in headings, in the ALT tag for graphics,1 and in the link text for inbound links (Monash, 2004).
2. Content. Make sure the content of the site is represented accurately. Search engines monitor traffic to your site. If web visitors quickly leave your site because it is not what they expected, search engines will know that the subject matter is not what the visitor is looking for based on the search terms they entered (Walker, 2006). The search engine may then lower the ranking if many search engine users fail to click through and explore your site.
3. Links. The number and quality of inbound links helps the search engine spiders determine the validity and popularity of your site. Link popularity is one factor the search engines gauge when determining ranking. If many people link to your site, then it must be one of the more popular sites. Danny Sullivan on SearchEngineWatch.com has suggested the following:
Go to the major search engines. Search for your target keywords. Look at the pages that appear in the top results. Now visit those pages and ask the site owners if they will link to you. Not everyone will, especially sites that are extremely competitive with yours. However, there will be noncompetitive sites that will link to you—especially if you offer to link back.
(Sullivan, 2007)
There are three ways to get a web site listed in a search engine: (1) submit the site directly to the search engine via an URL submission form, (2) wait for the search engine to find the site, (3) pay the search engine to index the site. Sometimes the submission form is buried deep in a search engine's site; for Google, you must click the link "about Google" and then select "submit your content to Google" from a menu. Yahoo! has a link at the bottom of the page that says, "Suggest a site." More information is available on search engine optimization in Chapter 7.
Continue reading here: Youtube
Was this article helpful?
