| 
On the web there are four major types of "search
engines." It is important to understand each
in order to effectively market to them. Look at
these search engine marketing tips and information
for starters.
Directories list sites based on themed categories.
Usually they use a human editor to review the
submissions. The most popular directories are
Yahoo!, Looksmart, Zeal and DMOZ. Yahoo! also
has its own directory but uses Google's search
results.
However, since buying Inktomi (a crawler based
search engine), Yahoo! will most likely switch
from Google very soon. In fact, this has already
happened at Yahoo.ca.
Submitting sites to directories sometimes requires
a fee and can be challenging to get listed. The
human editors often only choose sites they deem
worthy. So before submitting to directories make
sure you read the directory's guidelines, your
content is good, and there are no problems with
your links or code.
Crawlers use ‘robots’ or 'spiders'
to gather information about your site and they
follow links to and from your site. The major
crawlers are Google, Lycos, Inktomi and AltaVista.
Sometimes it is not required to submit to these
search engines because they will find your site
from other sites linked to yours. However, it
is recommended that you submit to them to speed
up the process. When preparing for crawlers it
is important that you have a good internal linking
strategy and that you get links from other sites
to yours.
Hybrid engines use both a directory and a crawler.
A good example is MSN. MSN uses Looksmart's directory
and Inktomi's crawled listings. Most hybrids give
higher ranking to sites which appear in their
directory portion of listings (paid listings).
Submitting to these requires submitting to the
directory, crawler or both.
 |
|
Paid
Placement Search Engine |
|
|
These are search engines which rank sites based
on how much the advertiser is willing to spend
each time someone clicks their link. The most
popular is Overture (previously known as GoTo.com).
Many of these types of engines sell their advertisers
to other search engines. For example, you will
notice the top results on Yahoo! are sponsored
links, which are actually Overture advertisers.
Getting listed on paid placement search engines
is easy and instant, but can very expensive.
For an in-depth analysis on how you can improve
your performance on search engines, please contact
our sales team today.
back to top
|
