Search Engines...

What are search engines?

Search engines, such as Google, provide a way for internet users to identify websites based on a set of search criteria such as keywords. This then aids in the search for information or services.

For example, if you wanted to locate an 'IT Consultant in Manchester' you may type:

IT Consultant Manchester UK

in to the search box on your favourite search engine and would expect to see a list of all websites related to IT Consultants in Manchester UK, ordered by relevance.

Why should I bother?

More than 90% of all websites are listed in search engines, and the key is not only to be listed in a search engine but to ensure your website lists high. A huge failure of websites run by many small businesses is that their website is not tuned to what they would like to be found by, allowing their competitors to reach their audience before them by appearing higher in the search results.

Failure to get your website both listed, and listed high by relevance, could mean that your customers look at your competitor's website and never reach yours.

How do I list my website in a search engine?

The steps to get yourself listed in a search engine are rather simple as most have a link on their homepage labelled 'Submit A Site' however this can be a tedious process to submit to multiple search engines.

In addition to actually submitting your website to a search engine there is a requirement for your website to be optimized so that it ranks high in search results reaching your customers and intended audience first.

Although this can be very difficult and the results cannot be guaranteed, there are a few steps that you can take to improve your website's ranking.

1. Add META Tags to identify your website, describe what your website is all about and what Keywords you would like to be found for in search engines.
2. Make sure the content of your website is actually relevant to what you would like to be found for.
3. Improve the content of your page by ensuring that all images have an alternative attribute defined and completed (this is the rollover tooltip for images).
4. In addition to the alternative attribute for images, you should complete the title attribute for hyperlinks to describe where the hyperlink, if followed, would lead to.
5. Complete a robots.txt file to identify which pages should not be included on a search engine, if any.
6. Include information about the re-indexing frequency in the META Tags.
7. Use some analysis tools to indicate the relevancy of your pages and to identify which areas need the most improvement.