Welcome to the second installment of our Secrets of Search Engine Optimization marketing tip. If you missed last week’s Part I of this tip, too bad! (just kidding — read Secrets of Search Engine Optimization 2001-Part I.

This week’s tip deals with search engines vs. directories, link popularity, dynamically created pages, paid-for search engine listings, and the importance of manual submittals.

Search Engines vs. Directories

It’s important to have the perspective as you approach search engine optimization that that there is a difference between true search engines and directories. While submitting your site to search engines on a regular basis should assure you good rankings, directory listings are somewhat out of your control.

The difference between search engines and directories is that search engines (AltaVista and Google, for example) use programs to search the web and create their databases, while directories (like Yahoo) use human beings to decide whether and where to list web sites.

However, directories do use search engine technology to find sites within their own directory (Yahoo uses Google’s for example), so including your keywords in the title and description of your submittal will still have an impact on your directory search rankings.

Lately, some directories such as Yahoo ($199) and Looksmart ($99-$199) have begun to charge for submittals of commercial sites. These payments are still no guarantee of getting listed in their directories — the choice is still left to human whimsy. Be forewarned, too: despite having to pay for a submittal, these editors probably will still change your description.

Here are the major search DIRECTORIES:

 

• Yahoo! - directory listings are called “Web Sites;” search engine listings, provided by Google, are called “Web Pages.”

   

• LookSmart - provides search results for MSN and directory results for Excite and AltaVista.

   

• Netscape’s Open Directory - its content provides search results for AOL and Netscape and directory results for Lycos, Google, and Hotbot.

   

Link Popularity

In an effort to have the most relevant sites appear at the top of search engine rankings, the majority of search engines are now using a concept dubbed as “link popularity” as a ranking criteria. It’s based on the presumption that if popular web sites are linked to your site, you must be a web site of some importance, too.

Link popularity is fairly simple — the links that you have coming into your site from other sites boost your site’s link popularity. Link popularity is not only based on the number of links coming to your site, but also the *quality* of those links. For example, if you have a link pointing to your site from the home page of another site that has multiple links pointing to it, then that one home page link would boost the link popularity of your site more than multiple links coming from the links pages of unpopular sites (confusing, I know).

 

• Tip: Having your top keywords in the links that point to your site will help your rankings on search engines like Google

   

To read more about increasing the link popularity of your site please read one of our older tips called”Link Popularity and Search Engines“.

Other resources:

SearchEngines.com
SearchEngineWatch

Static vs. Dynamic Pages

Dynamic web pages are pages that generate information from a database or CGI script. The basic difference between a static and dynamic page is that a static page (ex. https://www.webadvantage.net) has all of the coding on the one page, while a dynamic page (ex. https://www.webadvantage.net./tip_archive.cfm?tip_id=138&&a=1) uses a permanent template and then draws the page’s unique content from a database.

Although dynamically generated pages may be more efficient for webmasters, they are usually a roadblock for search engine robots. The search engine robots get confused when they read a “?” or “cgi-bin” in the web site’s URL. Currently, only Google is officially indexing dynamically generated pages.

For more info on search engines and dynamic pages please check out: ClickZ

Paid-For Listings

There are currently three different types of paid-for listings when it comes to search engines:

1. Pay-Per-Click Rankings: GoTo was the first search engine to offer pay-per-click rankings where sites bid for placement on certain keyword search terms.

Read “Tackling the GoTo Goliath“for information on other search engines offering this type of service.

2. Pay Per Directory Submittal: As we discussed before, certain directories actually charge to have new commercial web sites added to their categories.

3. Per Per Search Engine Database Submittal: Inktomi is currently the only search engine database that charges for inclusion. For only $20.00 a year, your site will be included in their database. This is important because Inktomi’s search technology is used by such search engines as HotBot, AOL, and unpaid listings in GoTo. Your fee also includes re-indexing every 48 hours.

Manually Submitting To Search Engines

To get the best results, we highly suggest submitting to search engines by hand. There are multiple mass submittal programs out there, but a great deal of them are blocked by the search engines that you’re trying to get ranked in. What’s worse, many of them are just gimmicks that will add you to gigantic spam lists. We highly advise you NOT TO DO THIS!

To make it easy on you, here are the submittal pages you’ll need:

AltaVista
Excite
FASTSearch
Google
Hotbot
Northern Light